Jump to content

maelia8

Moderators
  • Posts

    766
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

Reputation Activity

  1. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from Aptorian in Dealing with a massive prestige boost from undergrad-grad   
    i am in a similar situation to you, moderatedbliss - I went to a small, not very well-known or high-ranked private liberal arts college and will now be going to a top-ranked research university for my grad degree. For me, I'm much more in awe/worried that I am going to look stupid in a group of people who mostly attended more prestigious institutions for undergrad and are used to a more competitive environment. At my college I felt like I knew where I stood and when my work was good enough, but now I am a bit afraid that I will land in a group of people who are somehow much better than me and i won't be able to complete with them. Makes me a bit afraid to open my mouth! I know this is probably a silly thing to be worrying about, and I'm sure I'll feel better once I know where I stand after spending some time with the other grad students in my cohort. Right now I worry about being the DUMBEST person in the room and thus finding out that it's the wrong room
  2. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to Esteban Arias in DAAD 2019-2020   
    Hi! Any news regarding the selection committee meeting or when the results will be announced for the Phd Research Grants?
  3. Like
    maelia8 got a reaction from BananaSlug4MSW in Pens/Pencils which brands do you prefer?   
    I third the Pilot G2 as my favorite pen - the cartridges are cheap to replace and the rubber grip is pretty plush for what's essentially a cheap gel pen. I've been using the same 5 or 6 ones for the last five years and simply replacing the cartridges.
  4. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from Teaching Faculty Wannabe in The Positivity Thread   
    I had the first day of my new internship at the graduate division of my university, working on graduate student professional development! Very excited ?
  5. Like
    maelia8 reacted to Adelaide9216 in The Positivity Thread   
    I was forwarded to the national competition for the Vanier scholarship! 
  6. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to Sigaba in Language Examination in History PhD Program   
    They can ... if you're an Americanist.?
  7. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to TMP in DAAD Short-term Research Grants for historical research   
    Are you sure you don't need to be in an enrolled PhD program to receive this kind of short-term grant?
    I was rejected (and that was after printing 30 pages and paying $30 postage to NY!).  I found a "sponsor" by writing to him and telling him what I was interested in doing in Germany and if he would write a sponsor letter.  German academics do this all the time.  It's just a formality. You are not actually expected to participate in the host institution's life or whatever.
    Finally, it sounds like unless you use a transnational approach to your proposal, you are not within the targeted area of research.  While I have not read DAAD's new initiatives, there is a strong push within German studies to explore Germans' and Germany's interactions with Asia, Latin America, and Africa. If you are coming from an Asian country, you could write a topic about interactions between your country and Germany, perhaps during the decolonization period? Or the development of  trade partnerships?
  8. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to TsarandProphet in DAAD Short-term Research Grants for historical research   
    In my experiences in Europe (but not in Germany), you would need to contact a professor there who would "sponsor" your application. In my case, the head of the section of modern history at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences just wrote a letter for me.
  9. Like
    maelia8 got a reaction from curious_cat in DAAD 2018-2019   
    In Germany everything's closed for Good Friday and Easter Monday, so we won't have news until Tuesday at the earliest. Fingers crossed!
  10. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to Archie011 in DAAD 2018-2019   
    Sorry to hear about the rejection.

    In the meantime, no new info here and it's the end of the work day. With the Easter right around the corner, I guess I'll see you guys on Tuesday and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for everybody!
  11. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to MicTric in DAAD 2018-2019   
    And so, another week with no news... This whole thing is getting boring. 
  12. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from ChlorophyII in What were you doing when you got accepted?   
    I live in Europe, so morning/midday US emails reach me at night. I was sitting at my computer watching TV and had just finished dinner when I heard my inbox ping. I saw that it was my first grad school notification link and immediately clicked on it as I was expecting a rejection for sure (my first choice and first-ranked school). The link led me through to the website and at the top it said "admitted." I just stared at for it for about ten seconds, checking to make sure it was real, and then I started laughing and screaming alone in my apartment at 9pm and I am sure that my neighbors all thought I was crazy. I called my mom and said, "I GOT INTO BERKELEY!!" and she said, "you're shitting me. FOR REAL?" The next day at work I couldn't pay attention to anything anyone said, and it was like I was walking around in a golden haze. 
  13. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to fuzzylogician in Love, Academia and Success   
    It's worth considering that despite the fact that your cohort mates may admire some aspects of your work or personality, you might all benefit from you being a "normal human being with flaws" around them. If for no other reason, then so you can tell them that you appreciate that they are trying to flatter and support you, but instead it's generating anxiety and makes it more difficult for you to connect with them. And also so they learn that judging what you see on the outside is rarely the full picture, even for someone who you envy. But honestly, at the end of the day, you have to decide that you'll make friends with people regardless of how they do academically. There will always be people who are better than you (or so you think) and those who seem to do worse. That has not much bearing on whether they'll be good friends. You also need to choose to not measure yourself against others and to do your best to find friends who are the same (and they do exist!), because comparisons aren't healthy for anyone. 
  14. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to samman1994 in Love, Academia and Success   
    From the stories I've heard, most of the people I know with PhDs met their significant other in grad school and or got married during grad school. Also, I would not worry too much about changing yourself or your activities to find a man. You want a partner in your life, someone who believes, endorses, and will stand by your side throughout your activities and trials. Yes, doing such activities may limit the pool of men that will be interested, but there are plenty of men out there.
    I also wouldn't put a date on marriage, or even kids to that extent. You want to get married at 30? That's fine. You want to get married at 40? That's perfectly acceptable too. You want kids at 35? That's fine. I wouldn't put a time-frame mentality on it (oh no, all my friends at my age are married and have kids, what am I doing with my life). You do you. Hell my philosophy is, I don't even want to get married until my late 20s. I want to enjoy my 20s (and by enjoy I mean stress over exams, now applications, and eventually dissertations).
  15. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from DGrayson in How important are friends/social life in grad school?   
    I absolutely agree with this. I just passed my quals, but three people in my cohort are dropping out (two decided in the last two months not to take the exam, while the third took it but already wanted to leave before he took it). The one thing that these three people have in common is a strong disconnect with other members of the grad student community. They never attended colloquia or stuck around for wine and cheese afterwards, didn't attend meetings of the History Grad Association, and didn't talk to other students about the pitfalls of choosing your orals committee, taking classes in x outside department with x professor (who other grad students know). Two of them had very strong social lives outside of grad school, and the third isolated himself and really developed no connections in the city at all. 
    As a result, all three of these folks missed out on very useful information, or struggled needlessly to plan or prepare things that would have been much easier if they had been in the loop. Although your major professor knows many things, other grad students are often very valuable sources of information when it comes to navigating university bureaucracy, meeting deadlines for things like funding applications and teaching certifications, and telling you about how to navigate setting up committees or informing you where to go for more information. If you don't take the initiative to get to know people in the first year, you could find yourself shut out of a valuable network (especially involving graduate students in years above you who know the system and are often happy to give new hands advice). I have no doubt that in the case of these three who departed, feelings of confusion and isolation contributed directly to their dissatisfaction and fear about taking their qualifying exams, ultimately persuading them that the Ph.D. was not a happy place for them. I'm not saying the result was inevitable, but their lack of support and connections with other graduate students definitely contributed. Just as professors collaborate and dialogue with each other on a regular basis to make their work easier, Ph.D. students have a better time of it when they network with each other and collectively support each other professionally and academically. 
  16. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to spectastic in How do YOU prefer to take course/lecture notes?   
    i try to do everything electronically now. hard copies are harder to keep track of. especially when the lecturer uses slides, it's helpful to just pull up copies of those slides and write notes in them, instead of wasting effort to copy what they write down.
    I use xodo app to edit pdf files, and i think evernote is popular for actual note taking.
    most tablets support this kind of stuff. not as precise as paper, but I still like it better than paper.
  17. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to nhhistorynut in What kind of history do you prefer to write?   
    I'm a themes and theories person. I had a hard time picking just one lol. I specialize in race relations, so theme-based and theory-based research/scholarship are equally relevant and useful.
    I'd add, too, that I avoid "great man" histories because they don't really interest me very much.
  18. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from lordtiandao in GRE "Splitters"   
    @lordtiandao I basically went into the GRE with a goal quant score beforehand, and promised myself that if I fell lower than another predetermined point that I'd retake it (in my case, my reach goal was to break 155, but my minimum was to break 150 or retake. I got 152, so I didn't retake it). As long as you pick a range that you are comfortable with and that is realistic for you based on practice exam scores and manage to hit it, then I wouldn't retake. It's not about the size of the gap between Q and V, it's about knowing your abilities and being able to accurately assess whether retaking the exam could conceivably result in a significantly higher score within the time that remains before you have to submit your application. If not, and you're not wildly off the acceptable range for your school, I wouldn't worry about it.
  19. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from laleph in GRE "Splitters"   
    @lordtiandao I basically went into the GRE with a goal quant score beforehand, and promised myself that if I fell lower than another predetermined point that I'd retake it (in my case, my reach goal was to break 155, but my minimum was to break 150 or retake. I got 152, so I didn't retake it). As long as you pick a range that you are comfortable with and that is realistic for you based on practice exam scores and manage to hit it, then I wouldn't retake. It's not about the size of the gap between Q and V, it's about knowing your abilities and being able to accurately assess whether retaking the exam could conceivably result in a significantly higher score within the time that remains before you have to submit your application. If not, and you're not wildly off the acceptable range for your school, I wouldn't worry about it.
  20. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from VAZ in What kind of history do you prefer to write?   
    I'm more of a themes person - I look at a time period of two decades or so and examine how the way that that theme was addressed changed during the aforementioned period (in my case, reproductive policy and travel journal propaganda in 3rd wave colonialism). It's a bit source-based too (why are these journals representative, and what about them indicates certain flavors in the editing process for publication as thinly veiled propaganda?), but what really gets me going is themes and change over time.
     
  21. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from laleph in GRE "Splitters"   
    I attend a public R1 institution, got 168 V but only 152 Q, and was accepted. At my school, I don't think there are any humanities-wide graduate fellowships for people with high overall GRE scores - everyone I know who got a special fellowship on top of the normal package got it thanks to special status (i.e. first generation college student, ethnic minority) or special history of community service/activism. I was told by the history dept. admissions officer that as long as you didn't totally bomb quant, they didn't really care how well you did on it, all that mattered was high verbal. 
  22. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from gsc in GRE "Splitters"   
    I attend a public R1 institution, got 168 V but only 152 Q, and was accepted. At my school, I don't think there are any humanities-wide graduate fellowships for people with high overall GRE scores - everyone I know who got a special fellowship on top of the normal package got it thanks to special status (i.e. first generation college student, ethnic minority) or special history of community service/activism. I was told by the history dept. admissions officer that as long as you didn't totally bomb quant, they didn't really care how well you did on it, all that mattered was high verbal. 
  23. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from hungrybear in GRE "Splitters"   
    I attend a public R1 institution, got 168 V but only 152 Q, and was accepted. At my school, I don't think there are any humanities-wide graduate fellowships for people with high overall GRE scores - everyone I know who got a special fellowship on top of the normal package got it thanks to special status (i.e. first generation college student, ethnic minority) or special history of community service/activism. I was told by the history dept. admissions officer that as long as you didn't totally bomb quant, they didn't really care how well you did on it, all that mattered was high verbal. 
  24. Upvote
    maelia8 reacted to ibette in Fulbright 2017-2018   
    I hope all of you have written to your congressional representative about getting the award. If you haven't done so, please do, especially after reading this: http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/what-trumps-proposed-2018-budget-would-mean-for-higher-ed/118577
    "It would also cut spending in half on Federal Work-Study programs, slash the budget of the National Institutes of Health by a fifth, eliminate programs that foster foreign-language study, and reduce spending that supports international-education programs and exchanges, such as the Fulbright Scholar program, by 55 percent."
  25. Upvote
    maelia8 got a reaction from OHSP in How important are friends/social life in grad school?   
    I absolutely agree with this. I just passed my quals, but three people in my cohort are dropping out (two decided in the last two months not to take the exam, while the third took it but already wanted to leave before he took it). The one thing that these three people have in common is a strong disconnect with other members of the grad student community. They never attended colloquia or stuck around for wine and cheese afterwards, didn't attend meetings of the History Grad Association, and didn't talk to other students about the pitfalls of choosing your orals committee, taking classes in x outside department with x professor (who other grad students know). Two of them had very strong social lives outside of grad school, and the third isolated himself and really developed no connections in the city at all. 
    As a result, all three of these folks missed out on very useful information, or struggled needlessly to plan or prepare things that would have been much easier if they had been in the loop. Although your major professor knows many things, other grad students are often very valuable sources of information when it comes to navigating university bureaucracy, meeting deadlines for things like funding applications and teaching certifications, and telling you about how to navigate setting up committees or informing you where to go for more information. If you don't take the initiative to get to know people in the first year, you could find yourself shut out of a valuable network (especially involving graduate students in years above you who know the system and are often happy to give new hands advice). I have no doubt that in the case of these three who departed, feelings of confusion and isolation contributed directly to their dissatisfaction and fear about taking their qualifying exams, ultimately persuading them that the Ph.D. was not a happy place for them. I'm not saying the result was inevitable, but their lack of support and connections with other graduate students definitely contributed. Just as professors collaborate and dialogue with each other on a regular basis to make their work easier, Ph.D. students have a better time of it when they network with each other and collectively support each other professionally and academically. 
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use