m-ttl

Shhh, don't tell them Leonardo da Vinci was a scientist who made innumerable discoveries. They might explode from learning things like this or this.

My cohort next year will be 5 students total. I'm just always disappointed that all discussions of the problems of academia and degrading value of the degree end up in STEM folks declaring the humanities useless and the problem. It's frustrating -- it pretends as if there is no interdisciplinarity between STEM and the humanities/arts. It acts as if there is no benefits or values to these subjects, nothing that could be useful, and, even in STEM, that's simply not true. I don't think that you can honestly run a world with only one discipline. I'm tired of such value calls from people I would otherwise hope would work for the greater whole rather than just themselves.

I decided to look through both programs, because it seemed interesting and I'd never really seen that program before. Honestly, I agree - it looks like there are a lot of similarities between the two, and I'm also really fond of practicums/fieldwork/practice. Emory is going to offer you two complete summers of fieldwork in the same location, which would give you the follow through on your original work and practice. Honestly, chat with the current Emory cohorts. See if you like what they say. I'm a big believer in things happening for reasons, or working out in the end. Even if you wanted to go to UCB, there's a definite chance that Emory has something amazing to offer you, and if you go, you'll absolutely enjoy it and being immersed in the program. Names and locations aside, ask yourself if you'll enjoy the process of learning, you'll find your studies fulfilling and applicable, and if you think you'll leave the program having learned what you wanted and able to work. Keep in mind as well, Berkeley is not in San Francisco, it's in Berkeley. It's close by, but about 40 min to an hour by public transportation, or if you take a car, you'll have tolls and traffic to fight. That's not unbearable, for sure, but don't over-romanticize and disappoint yourself over something imperfect to begin with. UCB wouldn't be a perfect choice anymore than Emory would be. But Emory, as far as I know, is directly in Atlanta, and is much more central to the rest of the city. Sometimes one of the mistakes we make is making ourselves miserable because we believe our secondary options will never be as good as our first choices, which simply isn't true. It honestly looks like half of your battle is just approaching your second choice on a level playing field and clean slate. If Berkeley isn't in the picture, does the Emory program hold up for you? Can you enjoy it, or will you honestly allow yourself to regret one thing forever? Getting over hopes being dashed takes time (I ended up going to a safety school for UG because my top choice withdrew funding) but in the end, I realized I could really enjoy where I was at and still benefit quite a bit if I didn't constantly regret something that simply wasn't meant to be. Good luck!

It honestly sounds like you have a great choice with Emory! Berkeley is nice, and I understand why the Bay area would have such an appeal. But Emory is a Brand Name. Honestly, looking at the Emory site and the explanation of the degree you were accepted for, it looks like an amazing program. You consistently intern and have two summers of fieldwork in your field. Honestly I can't see any reason why going to Berkeley would be bad for your career at all. I would go...it's not Berkeley but it doesn't have to be.

Not to mention you'll have more potential options next round for your PhD (if you do well in your MA). I would go for the MA, it sounds like you'll be happier and learn more with better support!

Did anyone else get an email rejection (download this attachment!) AND a letter rejection? Talk about a buzzkill -- I felt it was kind of unnecessary when I already got something in my email inbox to see it all over again in my snail mail.

This just in: a few STEM folks have decided to deride the nature of humanities -- halfway through their opposition, the strange symbols on their keyboards no longer made sense. Words became meaningless. Literature ceased to exist. For those who thought they could or would communicate through image or symbol, all forms of creation by humans became shapeless void, not abstract expressionism, but something much more confounding akin to the mysterious dark matter which occupies our universe? What is it? How can we comprehend it? We may never know, as the need to communicate has escaped them. Can they communicate by music? We'll never know -- the arts are not a portion of the almighty STEM. We may only hope to someday communicate with such higher beings who need no arts, or literature, have no history, and therefore no past -- no morals and thus no ethical dilemmas. Perhaps time will tell the usefulness of their ascendence into a higher plane of useful being. Until then.....they seem to understand capitalism to some small degree insofar as it gives them money. ....For every other STEM person, or SS or Humanities folk -- we can recognize that "use" and "Value" are being determined by "money" and not of societal importance of knowledge or information -- and that the poster is A.) a troll and B.) recognizing the problem in Graduate school ed isn't just *one* type of graduate degree, and won't be solved by fussing "it's those damn literature majors, I just know it!"

I informally accepted mine a few weeks ago, but sent my signed contract/acceptance priority mail yesterday. Feels good. Even got on a list for an apartment, arranged a summer internship -- it's great to have everything set up.

I wanted desperately to move to NYC as well -- until I saw how much the school I applied to was going to charge me to attend, not to mention the cost of living there. Perhaps at 28 you have a better savings than I do, though! I've got UG debt to worry about, etc. Even a small move can run you thousands of dollars in a relocation. In terms of practicalities, do you have a nest egg to live off of? When you finish your MSW, can you get a job in social work in NYC and then take a year to transition yourself? Can you manage a temp job, if you don't get a social work job? Roughly your options/steps are: * Have money saved up * Rent in a temporary sublet, couch surf, find a roommate (you'll need to be on a lease for that which is more difficult) * Find a job immediately: social work, or temping until you make enough money to be a roommate or get a longer sublet of a few months *scrape by your NYC expenses - no splurging *Get accepted to NYU. If you get loans, see if they cover enough for having a roommate, splitting a studio, etc. * If you lack a guarantor, which I'm going to guess you don't make 30-40x your rent, and it sounds like your parents won't do it (which would likely raise the amount to 120x+ the rent) -- find an institutional guarantor. Which means finding a place which will accept this from you, some apartments don't. (I don't think you'll necessarily need one if you're becoming a roommate but that varies) *Budget roughly $1,400k per month on rent. I was able to find a scant amount of places (studios, mostly) going from $1-$400k, but they could be hell holes for all I know. From what I've learned about the NYC rental markets, you have to be ready to jump *that day* not a month down the line. Many people use agents and the like. * Don't live in manhattan unless you're prepared to spend at least that much. If you're spending less, you probably have a roommate, which looks recommended anyways. Still, ask yourself if you can live in a studio with a roommate -- and in a six floor walkup without a real stove. So say you do find a place for $1400 a month, you need, minimally, $16,800 just on rent. Ideally, you should be making roughly $56,000 a year. http://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/rent-to-income/ ...which is why so many people get roommates. Footing that bill on your own will be wildly stressful. Would you end up homeless? I don't know. Do you have enough money saved to start in a sublet? Do you think you can handle another roommate, or two? Are you willing to work other jobs to make rent? If you get accepted to NYU, how will you pay for it? With loans? Will the loans also help you with rent? How much debt will you take? How will you pay it back? If the loans pay for your rent, how will you pay after your MFA is completed? Why pay for the MFA -- what purpose does it serve for you and your career? I am sure there are dozens of classes, salons, etc for NYCers who write. So what purpose will the NYU degree serve, other than to give you closure on something you wanted at 18 (ten years ago), and get you to New York, which can be done in a myriad of other ways?

I'm ALSO mixed race and appear white. I still have run into people I know for a fact are white and only white, and get sugar skull tattoos with little or no regard to their meaning because "it looks so cute!" Trust me, I'm the last person to assume I know someone's race -- I've been on the receiving end of very nasty accusations I'm lying about being of native-mexican descent -- but I've still run into plenty of people who are NOT latin@ and identify as white doing this. That is my complaint. Incidentally my complaint is also that because people who are white do appropriate these symbols, if I were to ever get a sugar skull tattooed in honor of someone I had lost, it would look like and be assumed I was also appropriating that imagery, instead of people assuming a very pale latina taking part in her own culture. I resent that. But trust me, we don't disagree re: visuals of race. That said: Mucha tattoos are one of my all time favorites. I also love this one on a librarian - cool incorporation of text: Also cool: http://tattoohistorian.tumblr.com

I have more: Another Lichtenstein Van Gogh: Seriously what!!!!!! I have NO IDEA how well this tattoo held up but it's GORGEOUS Klimt:

Famous art history pieces: Guernica The Great Wave Awesome Lichtenstein tattoos: Mucha:

Yes but the fact of the matter is, as an academic who is a cis heterosexual man in women's studies, you simply have to be prepared to check your privilege constantly. It's not about whether there is space -- of course there is. That's what privilege IS, to always have space accorded to you, your voice heard, etc. So it's not about that: it's about this person respecting the fact that they are always accorded that space in society to be heard, and they are interacting in a realm of academia which by very nature, questions that privilege, and is about the marginalization of women because of that space. The question is NOT: can a man succeed in women's studies, but rather: can a cishetero man in women's studies understand that he is being allowed into a space where he should never expect to be the dominant force, or viewpoint. The fact that this is said: Is proof to me that this guy has absolutely no understanding of his privilege, of rape culture, of schrodinger's rapist (look it up), of systemic misogyny, racism, and sexism in society where it IS safer for all involved (and any woman) to expect the worst of someone, especially when they walk into a space traditionally about already being marginalized by someone who is literally afforded most of society's privileges to begin with. This is nowhere near the same level as women in STEM being "Tested" as a result of sexism, and comparing the two is, quite frankly, a poor understanding of how sexism works. Can they readily admit and understand they are part of a system which favors them as a heterosexual man?

I mention I'm native-mexican because it's tiring to see countless folks decide they're experts on my culture and then go and get a tattoo about it, or worse, don't know anything about my culture, and get those tattoos anyways. I don't care if it's your field...there are plenty of other things which represent anthropology besides native tattoos or symbols/art! The fact that you'd be defensive and flippant if someone has a problem - and even if one group says its okay, not every native group will agree or feel the same way - just shows me you don't understand the attitude you need for that kind of honor. You should have read the link I had! It's by tattoo artists who are experts on tattooing. You can put words on a canvas. But for artists (and art historians ) we're very aware that canvas should be in consideration. The human body is not a book, nor is it static. Good lettering is popular in tattoos and looks good. But lines of text (e.g. a poem) will eat up space and look terrible: You, dear tattoo client, are not flat white paper. You're a series of interlocking muscle bands, & you're covered with skin that is anything but white. You are cylindrical, almost every part of you body is long & rounded. But its not rounded evenly, like a pole, each surface is tapered, being much wider at some points & narrower at others. You're also topographical, with some points rising & dipping dramatically. On top of all that, you're also flexible, so unless you've been stuffed by an expert taxidermist, the minute you move, you will morph into even more elastic contorted shapes. When you try to apply text to this living organic medium, the lines waver, the letter size changes, the spacing inside the letter closes up, the spacing between the letters & between the words run together. It looks like crap. And Guttenberg spins in his grave. [...] Text does the opposite of this. It needs negative space in order to be legible, & since it's read in lines left to right, it needs to be straight, slicing up all that flowing anatomy into ribbons, graphically speaking. It becomes a visual road block, destroying your natural curves. This is why you don't see straight lines or geometric shapes in tattoo flash, every flat surface gets twisted, corkscrewed, & warped. That's not because of all the acid we did in college, its to conform our art with the flow of your physique. If type is snaked along the lines with the muscles, it trashes the leading, & it quickly becomes illegible, & defeats the whole point of getting text. The article goes on to discuss other reasons why tattoo artists despise text tattoo which sort of goes against the medium. I've also never seen a literature tattoo which is plain text that looks better than any tattoo with interprets a text into an image/text combination. Personally I think it would be cheating to say that I think any tattoo would relate to my field but nonetheless, I love American classic tattoos. And though it's not who I study, Mucha prints have wonderful translation into tattoos because Art Nouveau fits into a lot of "good" tattoo qualities, flatter dimensions, rich colors, black outlines, and curving lines which look great translated onto skin.

So do you realize then that intersectionality was a term coined by black women to discuss black feminism and the intersection of RACE and other issues which effects black women and women of color differently than white women ooooorrrrr are you just erasing them like other white scholars....? Exactly. Not even implicit -- but explicit dedication. This happens in Art History courses as well regarding the Male Gaze. My new hero. As if it isn't already hard enough to deal with privileged people in academic spaces -- they even permeate and dominate the fields which seek to explore the minority space. being confronted with your complicity in structural racism and sexism is scaaaarryyy i guess.

Personally I find the expectation that you would earn that kind of tattoo to be a sign of the appropriative nature of the exchange in itself. It really rubs me the wrong way -- it just seems in poor taste to believe you could assimilate or would be deemed worthy of that honor by what is now to you, an unknown group of peoples you're going out to study. It's not just the "omg super cool native tattoo bro" tattoos that are appropriative and this is frankly expectant of what would be a gift and an honor. You can get a tattoo of deep meaning and relevant to your research that isn't something you'd have to push to get. It just doesn't feel like your place to expect or ask for that - especially if they're related to sacred/initiation rites. related: as someone of native/mexican descent if I see one more white girl with a sugar skull tattoo, I might lose it. also related: art historians and artists who cringe at bad/poor quality/cliched (but not classic) tattoos. Guys please, it's a form of art on your body! Make SURE it's going to be done by an artist giving you an original piece of work, and avoid purely text if you can. You're a 3D canvas, not a book!

I don't know that I'd want a whole month's worth of floating time. (This is coming from a military family though - everything got done on a very compressed timeline.) I think some of the timeline you might want to give yourself is dependent on the size of the town/city you're moving to. In a small town, if you have a car -- I can't imagine needing a month to figure out which grocery store is the cheapest when you could hit them all in a day. But if you live in a major city, I imagine it's going to be mostly dependent on what's nearby, even if you do have a car. You'd be finding your neighborhood bodega, so to speak -- and with google maps, I think that could be fairly painless. The majority of things I think can be found online nowadays: nearby dentists, doctors, schools (if you need them for children), grocery stores, bookstores, malls, electric companies, cable companies, libraries, churches, hospitals, etc. Nowadays all you need to do is google a city and a hobby and you can probably find like minded friends - boxing, knitting, what have you. So I would invest time into getting to know people in the department, unpacking, and maybe figuring out local transportation and the layout of the city/town/school. I could see maybe wanting two weeks, but I'd be afraid I would get side tracked in unpacking if I thought I had all the time in the world! Haha.

More than say, a week and a half? How much would be a good "adjustment" time?

I'm not really sure why you downvoted me when I made it clear I was quoting a professor who I didn't agree with? I'm just at a loss. I specifically said I didn't necessarily agree and could have easily been rejected for other (very valid) reasons, and that the views were not my own. I have nothing against Williams - I'm not bitter or upset, and I don't think less of the program. I was only explaining what a Professor said to me - that a place like Williams would ideologically be very very different from Bard Graduate Center (which is not strictly an art history program to begin with). He told me they were interested in mostly producing academics, and I disagreed with that because well, obviously they have the Clark. I just don't see how relaying a conversation is worthy of disdain? I think I know what thread you're talking about and to be honest, I maintain those people are being ignorant jerks about body-policing. Anyways: Congrats to curiositykilledthecat!

Yeah, haha. I'm already on a waiting list for an apartment, asked a friend to move with me, the whole nine yards. I'm obsessed with pinterest now so I know what I want to purchase for my new place, what my design inspiration is, etc. I think I'm going to ship my books, and then sell or donate a lot of stuff I don't want or need. I think I was a lot less anxious about the whole ordeal once I figured out I could afford what I would absolutely need. Hm, well take this with a grain of salt. It was a conversation I had with a non-tenured (younger Columbia grad) Professor in my department who offered to help me with my SOPs, and bought me coffee: He felt that the biggest issues I'd have wrt Williams would be: I was not coming from a good school, and he felt that Williams was still firmly entrenched in some elitism, more or less. Obviously I do not attend Williams or know about it personally, but I can see how it would be considered traditionalist. It is one of the best MAs for Art History, and is known for sending its students to excellent PhD programs. Some of the other programs I applied to were FAR less traditional (Bard Grad Center, for example) and he felt that might appear at odds in my SOP. He wanted me to emphasize traditional art history approaches. I think there are plenty of Williams students who go on to work in museums, but it's a bit more of an academic bent in some ways. In the end he didn't continue helping me (just...stopped! It was odd but then, he's not my professor and I did fine on my own), but I knew he would probably be right that I favor things beyond the traditional. I still applied, because I thought it was a great program. Picking out the weaknesses in my profile (for illustrating why I may have been rejected): scores, stats, or school of origin. too narrow in focus for an MA - I had a specific idea of what I wanted to accomplish, and I don't know if the POIs had interest in supporting it, or if it would have fit the program's goals. simply that other applicants were better or more suited to Williams goals and interests which they may have thought weren't going to be easily or well supported in the program - it was clear I had interest in working in a museum, I have no idea if this helped or hurt. my writing sample was probably weird without the images since they asked us to remove them and...visual comparisons were part of the point for my paper, and they simply weren't pieces you could find with a quick google. Looking back, that really bothered me about the application, and I knew that submitting what I did would be risky. Didn't contact any POI I got accepted where I did because it was not at all a stretch to "fit" and have my interests supported. ETA: I also may be being hypercritical of myself. I told them not to accept me if they weren't going to offer funding. So that's a possibility too.

I thought the PhD IFA was highly competitive but I don't know about the MA...I would assume it is also somewhat selective?

It's no problem! I was rejected. I would have liked to have been accepted but it's probably for the best, because I would have turned them down. I kind of assumed when I didn't hear right off the bat for acceptances. Alas, I am not the one clearing up a spot for you off of the waitlist, sorry. Totally wish I could be! It's slightly disappointing because I thought I would try, but I got warned by an assistant prof my uni wasn't very elite and that could have played into it (plus I can come across not as formalist/traditionalist as the program does so that was difficult to align with). I suspect I didn't meet their profile/fit as well as other people did, hence the rejection. It was a nice email though, but I didn't bother responding.

Williams gave me a decision today. You should hear something soon?

This forum has a terrifying lack of empathy, and understanding of BASIC concepts regarding food politics, body politics, disabilities and general human decency. Seriously I'm beginning to think they should require a basic sociology class, something that covers poverty, disability, race -- certainly maybe some of you can try looking up "food deserts". Or....basic economics: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128621057 It doesn't even matter if the OP is serious or not, and what the cause of their weight is. Personally I'd rather be around someone who "chose" to be fat than a bunch of people who choose to be assholes.

I have assumed that the stipend is essentially (in the majority of cases), the wages you earn by teaching/being a TA/RA. The free tuition is getting paid to attend classes, the stipend is money earned by doing the teaching. Even if you find it moderately uncomfortable to live off of, getting paid for what is essentially intensive job training is nice. I say that again with perspective -- I don't know about everyone else, but I've done more than my fair share of "you get paid with magic experience dust only!" internships. It's not the best deal I've ever run across, but we can either do what we love, or we can make money. Sometimes you don't get to have both at once.