My third writer is someone outside of my MA program, my undergrad advisor I kept in touch with, within my discipline but outside of my field (ie cultural anth instead of archaeo). My chair's interest directly align with my own but is an absent-minded, awkward, busy professor that is brilliant at research and funding but horrible at advice and responding to emails. My other committee member, however, is in the right concentration as me but with an utterly different focus, more thesis writing and perspective advice than anything, and admittedly knows little about the specific focus that I want to pursue in my PhD. This, on top of never doing course work with other committee member, makes me think that he is a poor choice. I feel odd about having two recommenders outside of my graduate program. To me it looks like I didn't get along with anyone, though that is not the case, it was just a 1 year masters that I either did research or took classes with Dr. A or my chair.