BerenErchamion

I've received an offer (fully-funded for five years) from one Ph.D. program so far, don't expect to hear back from the others until mid-February at the earliest.

One thought I've had (and I've mentioned in my SOPs, when they ask for career goals) is using the knowledge I would gain from a Ph.D. of how to "do" history to help develop software solutions (bibliography or note management, information retrieval, even optical-character recognition for enhancing old and faded documents) that are specifically tailored to the needs of historians. Computer programming has been a longtime hobby of mine, and I'm involved in a few practical OSS projects as well as some personal, theoretical/experimental projects. It seemed to me that this would be a very useful way to blend my intended vocation with my avocation, and take advantage of the fact that I can speak the language of those who would be actually doing the design and implementation of these software systems. And if that doesn't pan out, I'm always interested in being a regular feature writer for publications dealing with my political persuasions or personal interests.

It might be worth it to call a temp agency. That's what I did after I finished my BA this past May. I got placed in a job that I'm good at (and they really like me), but I absolutely hate and won't mind leaving when the time comes--but in a company which has plenty of advancement opportunities should I not get accepted anywhere, and that actually isn't a company I wouldn't terribly mind spending the rest of my working life working for (I hate the job because the job itself is pretty crappy, but that's an unavoidable part of the job itself and has nothing to do with anything the company does). Companies that hire through temp agencies expect lots of turnover, and at any rate you don't have to tell anyone until after you get hired (or accepted). Incidentally, I just learned of my first Ph.D. admission yesterday, which I have to admit makes it very tempting to just up and quit and spend the next seven months reading, pursuing my other hobbies, and spending time with my girlfriend and family.