happygreengrass

Oooh, I missed a lot of happy dances in the past week (I have the teacher plague). Congrats to all the new acceptances!!!!

I am mentally tossing goodness in all directions

You are not alone in hollering madly; I danced up and down in a room that's essentially made of windows in the middle of a teaching day. Congratulations!!!!!!!!

Definitely! I'd be so excited to chat with/meet other gradcafe folks!

Thanks for your congratulations :-) I will be rooting for everyone still waiting for answers!!!

Hey there, I'm a current and future UB student, I'd be happy to do so if it's permissible (I haven't copied from the special collection, so I don't know how it's regulated). I should be up there in a week or so (I'm currently student teaching and don't go often), so PM me what you want and I'll try to snag you a photocopy.

I can't believe it; I was sure I was out of the running, but I just received my acceptance to UB. I want to jump up and down and blather ecstatically. I feel like the little engine that could. I've lost my command of the English language.

I'm assuming rejection from Buffalo, and I feel sort of like I'm going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, depression. I know it's incredibly silly; what did I expect on my first try with only one school?!?! I just don't know of anything other than scholarship that I love and do well that also leads to (miniscule) paychecks. Anyone else having a preemptive wallow?

Eep. Anyone else feeling irrationally impatient since we passed the 1st of February? I keep looking at the previous year's dates and wondering why there's so little activity right now. Then I fantasize about careers of academic hotness, and realistic alternatives like working at a used bookstore for $8 an hour. The inside of my brain looks like an indie web comic.

Maybe if I did this, I would feel better... and maybe not.

I'm running the probabilities (not my strong suit) as I see UB acceptances roll in...historically, it looks as though they send them out mostly in the first week of February, followed by a string of rejections and an occasional March or April in off the waitlist. So, it seems likely that if I haven't heard by the end of next week, I should be doing some drinking and banging my head on my desk. But...not until then...right?....right???

I took symbolic logic as a filler math course in undergraduate, and adored it. I was embarrassingly eager; apparently reading and arguing philosophy conditioned me to add so many qualifiers that most everything I said in class proved out as true. I say embarrassing because young-twenties-me was clueless to the fact that having your argument assigned as homework (work out a proof) is NOT a good way to make friends. *sigh* *dreams a little about patrons and professional philosophizing from some European hermitage, then goes back to refreshing the application status webpage*

Snow Crash would be fun to write a paper on! I fit Atwood's Oryx and Crake into my thesis, but the weird mythos/tech/environmental crossover in Snow Crash is super fun. "The deliverator is a type A driver with rabies"

Ooh...that's right up my alley! I do ecocritical theorizing/analysis of speculative fiction (particularly utopias and heterotopias). My writing sample for my MA application was on posthumanism, and my thesis was on...well...basically your area of interest. You should also go to Buffalo, and we can all have grad-student play dates. There are a couple of professors at UB who are fab for ecocrit...so excited/nerve-racked!!!

Rochester is only too far right now because my daughter is 11, and it's about 75 minutes. If I don't get in this year, I may apply to Rochester next year; they have a few speculative fiction people too (among them someone who specializes in Samuel Delany, who I adore...), which would be great fun! Yes let's both! We can rant about Donna Haraway (except the companion species title, too much saliva for me) and Catherine Hayles together It's all settled then; someone just needs to inform the admissions committee.

Hm. And now I look silly, because this intro wasn't showing up in my browser, so I reposted a similar intro under the English 2013 forum. I promise I'm not a spambot, though at this point, we may be on par in terms of intellectual capacity

Oop, and I almost forgot, to the other anxious Buffalo applicants: I'm pretty sure that it's only university-wide fellowships that have a GRE cutoff of 1260 or something like that, and not the departmental stipend/TAship offer by the English department. The big ones (presidential scholarship, etc) are a rare catch anyways. Disclaimer: I could be wrong, it could have changed, but I'm about 90% sure I'm right .

Regrets: 2 errors (1 missing "s," one missing quotation mark) buried in my writing sample (which I found on the umpteenth read AFTER submission). An occasional concern that I overemphasized my interest in speculative fiction and under-emphasized my ecocritical stance (I think this one may just be nitpicking) A raging concern that the cleverly composed (but not autobiographical) narrative of my SoP is a little too clever, to the point of being grossly ambitious and wishy-washy about my love for the department. (Honestly, sometimes it reads just fine, and other times it feels like it was written by Joan of Arc). Pestering the office staff about my papers (three times, but they know me well and I was obsequiously nice...) Ah! This thread may not be happy space right now, lol.

Ooh. I'm ambivalently thrilled to find such a large community of language nerds freaking out online. Hello! I'm in a David (if David was a woman) vs. Goliath situation, where I can only geographically access a single school, and cannot move. So it's Buffalo or bust, at least for the next 7-8 years...on the bright side, I went there for my MA and did very well. On the down side, they have about a 5% admission rate... *facedesk* Pleased to make your internet-acquaintance, folks. I know I've seen at least one other ecocrit person floating around...any other ecocrit/theory/speculative fiction folks? If you also play guitar badly, you may be my doppelganger.

Make me three (or four or five, depending on how long this thread goes...). And the best part of the dream? My 6 figure student loan debt is suddenly due in full because of said forgotten class.... o_0

@ohgoodness, thanks! Sometimes I imagine all of the amazing novels that I "must be" destined to write if I'm rejected from the PhD program; silly, I know, but it helps a little to think of the strange alleyways of fate that may open up if this one collapses in on itself. And worst comes to worst, there's always next year.

I'm a lurker who's materialized because...well...lurking is creepy. And I'm feeling very inadequate too; like pea-shooter-against-a-dozen-armored-tanks inadequate. I'm geographically tied to the Buffalo area for the next 7-8 years (co-parenting with ex), so there was literally only ONE school I could apply to. (Rochester may be an option when my daughter is older, but the commute is too much of a stretch at this time). I went to UB for my MA, I have a recommendation from the current and former heads of graduate admissions, I have teaching experience, I work with ecocriticism (currently popular there), and my thesis is the source for my writing sample and received lavish praise from said former committee head. So why do I feel like I'm going to be adjuncting and subbing for the rest of my life? My brain just keeps telling me that 1 application is a foolhardy shot in the dark. I have no idea what to do except reread my SOP over and over again, moan as I look at the number of applications most folks have submitted, refresh the survey page on gradcafe, cross my fingers, and feel like the little engine that couldn't.

repellent odor

Hi Everyone! I think lurking is creepy, but I keep looking at the application status page and the "bet on where you'll get in" thread, so I guess I should introduce myself. I'm the crazed PhD applicant standing in the road and waving my pea shooter at the armored tanks (ie, only one application in). I have geographic limitations, and there's only one school in driving distance: SUNY Buffalo I am a ecocriticism/theory blend sort of person, I went there for my MA, my fingers are crossed, and I'm hunkered in for the wait (or staring at my screen unblinkingly for hours at a time, you pick). *freaks out*