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SilasWegg

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Everything posted by SilasWegg

  1. Hey @yanicus congrats on the Rutgers acceptance! I'm a second year in the Rutgers English program. If you have any questions, send a message.
  2. I think you might want to consider the MA at Virginia Commonwealth University. There are a number of faculty there working on Southern Lit, 19th Century, and/or African American. Definitely check out Les Harrison and Kathy Bassard. The stipend is in the ballpark of the other programs you are considering but the teaching demands are a little less. Richmond is a great city, housing is relatively inexpensive, and there is a ton of civil war history and really great resources and research opportunities for that. The department is a good size and the faculty are all lovely. I had 2 great years there. I'm at Rutgers doing a PhD now but I really miss my VCU times. GO RAMS!
  3. I applied to doctoral programs during MA coursework. It was brutal, distracting, nerve-wracking, and incredibly time-consuming. When you are already stretched pretty thin with your time commitments, it is important to allocate your resources wisely. If you can, assemble a little squad of supportive professors who can walk you through the process, lend a supportive ear, and hopefully write amazing reference letters. Without the support of these good people, application outcomes are dubious at best. 1. When did you start preparing for the GRE Literature Subject Score? Did you study with a friend or professor? I think you should aim to get a score that breaks 600. Some may disagree but I imagine some adcomms use the subject test as a cut off. My background is in American lit so I really had to beef up on English poetry, especially before 1900. Getting a grasp on major trends in 20th century literary theory helps too. Make flash cards, take practice tests, but don't over commit your time to this aspect of your application. A lot of schools don't require it and, for those that do, it appears to be mostly a formality. 2. If you needed to retake the GRE to make your scores competitive, did you prep during the summer? I took it twice. My score only bumped 10 points on the retake despite countless hours of preparation. I might have had a bad test day but, in retrospect, I truly wish I had applied the law of diminishing returns here. Certainly, my time would have been better spent doing almost anything else. 3. How did you manage to work on your applications (i.e. writing samples and SOP) during a busy schedule? Or did you submit your applications after finishing your MA? I reworked a chapter from the MA thesis as the writing sample. This was a really good two birds/one stone scenario. Profs were already giving me tons of support in composing the thesis project so retooling for the writing sample didn't tax those relationships. SOP is a different story. Though it is a short document, it has to be air tight. Make sure to be forward looking: outline a research project, explain how the degree will aid you in developing professionally and intellectually, maybe describe how working with a particular faculty member at the program will be beneficial to you. Strangely, none of this is as easy as it sounds. 4. Is it okay to ask a professor you work closely with to look at your writing samples Get as many people to look at your writing sample as you can. More importantly, get help with the SOP. The statement of purpose is a genre unto itself, one which applicants rarely have had practice in writing. Also, you want to get a nice conversation going between the SOP and the writing sample. The support of faculty will certainly help in conceptualizing the broader connections between these documents.
  4. I did a multi-year application thing. The first time through I was basically clueless and got shut out. The second-go-around I had the support of some amazing faculty, a clear research vision, and a much better application "strategy" over all. Even though I was a MUCH better qualified applicant on the second pass, I got served a hefty portion of rejections, especially early on. I thought I saw the writing on the wall in January but in the coming weeks I received strong offers from programs I didn't think I had a shot at. Even though its tempting to consider all the ways you could beef up your app for next year, the fact remains that you have your hat in the ring right now. Like you, I sent out apps during the last year of an MA program. It was incredibly difficult to focus on the press of here-and-now work as it seemed my future was hanging in the balance. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't been so gloomy and anxious in those brutal months of waiting. To me, it sounds like you applied to a nice range of schools, have a clear focus, and the support of some excellent faculty. There's much cause for hope and little reason for despair! This is all to say: rather than considering ways to improve next year's apps, think about the happy dance you will do when you get the phone call.
  5. now that this thread has touched upon the great un-charted and under-examined topic of academic fashion... this year i don't have to teach but i have a ton of coursework. this is the first time in a long time that i haven't had to put on a funny little blazer or a plaid tie everyday. reveling in my new found fashion freedoms, i have begun dressing like a teenager for class. no more suede elbow patches for me! however, more and more, i find myself wondering if wearing band tshirts, jeans, sneakers, and ratty thrift store sweaters and/or third generation hand-me-down flanels to seminar makes me look like a filthy slacker who just finished huffing gas in the parking lot. is the seminar NOT anything goes fashion-wise? am i supposed to be going business casual to these class meetings? or is there a happy fashion code middle ground which i have transgressed with impunity?
  6. The SOP is a very strange genre of academic writing, one with many field specific conventions. Consult closely with a trusted faculty member and choose each word very carefully. Said faculty member should also be able and willing to provide the formatting advice you need. I would give you my two cents but this would invite a flurry of comments decrying my unorthodox formatting techniques-- all this is to say ask for help from faculty, not the internet.
  7. The princeton review study guide offers a decent introduction to the test and is a great way to get started. HOWEVER I must caution that it seems like ETS might be experimenting with the test format and some of the strategies which the PR study guide recommends may not be useful. In fact, preparing for ID and super-POE type questions might be a waste of time. I took the test in October and was surprised at how few ID and POE questions were on the test. Instead, there were far more long reading passages and interpretation questions. There were very few stand alone ID questions and there were ZERO super-POE. I'm not sure how this may alter your approach to test preparation. These changes in the testing format make the test much more difficult to prepare for (as if it wasn't an impossibly difficult test to prepare for already!). You may want to spend more time on the interpretation questions of long passages and poems in the extant practice tests available online, maybe dial back on the ID and POE questions. More than anything, be prepared for a speed reading test.
  8. Hey this thread is way more interesting than the grad school ponzi scheme thread ive been trolling for the past 20 weeks.
  9. Some gas for the flames... http://www.artandeducation.net/school_watch/entire-usc-mfa-1st-year-class-is-dropping-out/
  10. ToldAgain, I'm a little confused about the question but I can do my best to answer. After the first year of coursework in the MA, I proposed the topic and formed the committee during the summer (before this past application season). Fall 2014, I composed one chapter, which served as the WS (with some tweaks). I circulated the chapter/WS among the committee as an intermediate draft and got some feedback. The committee wrote letters based on this chapter draft as well as previous coursework we had done together. I wrote all the other thesis chapters this semester (ack!). At the program PhD program I will attend in the Fall 2015, dissertation writing doesn't happen until the third or fourth year. So, in theory, the research for the MA thesis can sort of marinate, or I can build on it, or never look at it again. Regardless, the idea is that it prepared to me to devise and execute a larger independent research project before beginning a dissertation. Are you in a direct-admit MA? If so, that process is totally different and I have no idea how it works. My MA was terminal, so I had to transfer out to do the PhD.
  11. Having just finished the MA thesis I can say that this process really helped facilitate PHD admission and may have laid some groundwork for dissertation research. Though the entirety of an MA thesis can't serve as your writing sample, one thesis chapter is about the right length and can be easily adapted for a WS. In addition, doing this kind of self-directed and rigorous project gives you kickass material for a personal statement. Also, putting together a committee helps in getting letters (and gives the LORs good material). Really, I have to say, if you do an MA and plan to go on to doctoral study, doing a thesis is a logical fit for the application process. One major drawback is that it's a tremendous amount of work. I had a heavy teaching load and some tough coursework this semester. Completing and defending the thesis has been awful. I haven't had my head above water all semester and I haven't been able to commit as much time to the thesis as I would have liked. Whatever. It's done and I passed. Still, if your MA requires you to teach or has a mandatory course load (like mine) you might want to consider an exam or directed study or something. Also, if you plan to write a dissertation, I can see how the thesis could be seen as a kind of very time consuming high stakes "practice." Hopefully, when I start a dissertation in a few years, this writing project will provide some kind of research scaffolding for whatever I take on. I'm reluctant to say I will pursue the same topic for a dissertation but maybe I can broaden the scope and sophistication of the thesis into something more? At the defense I sorta got the feeling the committee's questions were geared towards a dissertation type defense... Maybe they were trying to get me to think dissertation..
  12. I took myself off the Maryland wait list. I hope this helps you!
  13. I can address this issue only in terms of my own experiences and I'd prefer not to engage with a set of cherry-picked examples from slate.com or chronicle. For what its worth, these observations are anecdotal but I think they may substantiate the notion that collaborative efforts between and among university entities can lead to more egalitarian practices. I interact with two distinct departments: an english department and what we can call a "rhet/comp" department. In the english department, most faculty teach a 2/2 load in addition to admin duties and new hires on TT lines do the same. Adjunct pay has been steadily increasing and is far above national averages. They work with a very select group of adjuncts who are paid to teach and only teach. I've spoken with multiple senior faculty who have passed up travel and research grants to preserve these opportunities for adjuncts and new hires. The rhet/comp department is a different story. There are not enough lines of tenure here and the vast majority of the faculty are on 12-month contracts that pay at a variety of scales which seem to be entirely arbitrary. These faculty routinely teach 3/4. Given the adjunctified nature of this department and the horrendous overburdening of administrative duties, it seems as though opportunities for advancement are highly competitive and are strictly policed by what could be seen as a kind of "in crowd." However, because this department is responsible for the reading/writing training of every student in the university, they are gaining more control of hiring practices and do indeed work "collaboratively" with a variety of university entities to these ends. In both departments, there has been a move to shift some teaching duties to grad students, opening up lines of support. These funding lines for students do not seem to drive down the pay-scales of adjuncts and grad student teaching is accompanied by intensive mentoring, which faculty often undertake in addition to their less-than-glamorous teaching loads and administrative responsibilities. Basically, this system wouldn't work at all if everyone was just concerned with protecting their own professional interests. Again, I must agree that some faculty and administrators are very protective of their turf and will insulate their reputation with a set of underlings who legitimize their departmental clout. They hand-pick hires from a mysterious set of inner and extra departmental affiliations. Others bear impressive sounding titles but do very little to contribute. Admins inhabit well-appointed offices and it is unclear what they are doing in there to me. However, these examples don't indicate any kind of "ponzi scheme" to me, rather they bear out the inefficiencies and abuses of any bureaucratic entity. I should point out that this is NOT an R1 institution that grant a PhD in english. It is a large urban teaching college with a public endowment. My outlook might be influenced by the fact that I've never been caught up in the struggle for absolute power of the tenured elite at "top-tier" programs.
  14. My derision of these professions is based upon the precise set of capitalistic ethics that underwrites the dismantling of altruism in the university. Most faculty I know have reasonable outlooks on these issues and are actively working to reform departmental practices of exploitation. I am aware of the set of academics you are referring to. Unfortunately, they often occupy positions of power and tend to kick down the ladders... there is a smug unimpeachable deception in this academic sect. Still, I'm highly skeptical of the tautology in this statement. Academia is in a state of constant reform and there are many who risk their professional standing to implement more egalitarian practices. To suggest that such faculty don't exist, or even that their efforts are insignificant, implies a closed system of discourse in the academy which oversimplifies the situation.There's no debating the impact that nepotism and deception have upon thwarting our future careers. However (and I say this with no resistance to the bottom line of your comments) working collaboratively to change these practices offers rewarding possibilities to the future of the profession.
  15. I am hard pressed to think of any profession that is not "predicated on mass exploitation, inequity, and total hypocrisy" in some way. I might be old-fashioned or naive in believing that careers in the humanities are less so than, I don't know, say, corporate law or commercial real estate. Now I'M the one running off the rails with odd comparisons...
  16. I agree that there is a distinct form of exploitation in the academic job market and that there can be a degree of deception in our training in the humanities. Also, I believe you put it well in describing this as "alienation." The shortfall between our expectations and the realities of the job market induces a particular kind of despair, yet I must maintain that these emotions are entirely distinct from the long-term social and economic impoverishment that attends the service industry labor market. This is exactly why this comparison fails to index the set of emotional turmoils that accompany our field, leading to a very unproductive (and I must reiterate classist) conversation regarding the problems in the academic job market. Rather than co-opting the narratives of exploited labor in the service industry, we can surely develop a more precise vocabulary. There is a very distinct set of deceptive and exploitative practices in our field that delimit our careers. Let's talk about this deception and exploitation in terms that are grounded within our field. I believe this will generate a healthier and more productive conversation on this important issue. Here, I'll start. I adjuncted for five years at an urban public university, teaching a 4/4 load and earning around 30k with no benefits. I was tapped for administrative duties and departmental service routinely and I was never compensated for my time. Because I believed undertaking these additional duties would protect my professional standing and lead to advancement in the department, I willingly committed my time and energy to these projects. No one ever told me that it wouldn't matter and that because I didn't have a PhD there was a pretty low ceiling on the possibilities for advancement. Instead, tenured faculty and handsomely compensated admins hoisted their duties onto me and seemed to imply that I was being "ramped up" for some kind of promotion. When the department announced they were bringing in five new faculty, I applied for one of these 12-month contracts fully believing that I was a competitive applicant. My job-talk was polished, the responses were glowing, my interviews extremely positive, etc. Then they brought in five people from outside the department and asked me to accept an even more exploitative contract: a pay-grade based on contact hours rather than credit hours. I quit on the spot. It was crushing. In my many years of service industry work, this complex set of exploitation and deception finds no corollary. It would be really weird if I said "this was like when my boss at the restaurant bumped me off the dinner shift because he wanted to give it to his new girlfriend." My adjuncting experience is far more complicated and resulted in emotional upheavals of a very different sort. Again, let's not play fast and loose with these comparisons.
  17. I take issue with the comparison not with its message. Clearly we can talk about the job market in academia without resorting to classist remarks that equate white collar job anxiety with the brutal exploitation that occurs in the service industry. I understand perfectly that this is an argument by way of analogy but I think there is a classist assumption underlying this hyperbole. It concerns me because this rhetoric is repeated so often that it appears many people believe it to be true.
  18. I adjuncted for five years before starting doctoral work. It was the first time in my adult life I had a clear path to financial stability. Teahching four classes a semester was really hard but Wendy's it was not. If you really think teaching undergrads is about as enjoyable as working at a Wendy's you need to find a different line of work.
  19. Remarks like this remind me that our discussions regarding the academic job market are in dire need of a privilege check. To suggest that admitted doctoral students in English should consider working at a fast food restaurant instead of pursuing an advanced degree grossly minimizes the very real and very devastating abuses of the labor market in the service industry. Obviously the job market in academics is bleak, a fact which has been reiterated in many different ways and in many different threads on this board, but to suggest subjecting oneself to the abuses of a massive consumer-driven soul-crushing service market in order to ward off minimal losses in opportunity costs legitimizes these exploitative labor practices. What's worse, this comparison equates white-collar labor anxieties with the struggle of hard-working people to fend off generational poverty. The service industry, even in a fun kitchen working with cool friends, offers no advancement, no self-improvement, makes it impossible to start a family, own a home, or ever even feel "okay." I like shift drinks and tips sometimes add up if you're lucky. Then you catch a slow shift and make fifty bucks in eight hours and there's no beer in the fridge. Though $3500 for teaching a college course is exploitative, your time is your own, opportunities to advance are plentiful, the work is meaningful, rewarding, (even) stimulating, and you don't have to clean the grill. By the way, earning $3500 (at a higher service industry wage) means over 400 hours of work time. I don't think anybody on this thread would want to do 4 hours working at a Wendy's, let alone 400. It's not even oranges and apples. This comparison implies a very troubling disconnect between our worldview within the university, a noted engine of inequality, and the devastating reality of consumer-driven economics. I do believe we need to keep stirring the pot on this issue but we have to realize that our struggles go hand-in-hand with everyone whose labor is undervalued. Let's not lose perspective.
  20. In a process where nearly all aspects of the outcomes are outside of an applicant's control, GRE scores are one thing you can actually get a handle on. For that reason alone it seems worthwhile to prepare for the tests and score your very best. That said, Writing sample and personal statement do appear to have more of an impact for an admissions committee. Maybe Setting attainable goals on GREs might prevent over committing your time. Cracking 600 on the subject test and 310 on the general seems doable and would probably be seen as a positive in even the most selective programs.
  21. I gotta second empress-marmot. Five years is a long time and being near family has priceless hidden rewards: lower relocation costs, lower visiting costs on holidays, not to mention leftovers and hugs! Funding is super important and this not to downplay very real problems that result from a lower stipend. But emotions are unquantifiable riches that often outweigh finances. In the end, pick the program where you feel you can best do your work.
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