dr. t

It took all my willpower not to drop an H-bomb. Also, everyone has a Fulbright these days; us good scholars get Mellon grants. But seriously, I didn't quite see that. I see an enthusiastic intellectual who thinks they have it more figured than they actually do, which is pretty much the definition of an undergraduate. This is kind of the other half of the phenomenon @TMP described, though. If professors are disinclined to re-teach writing, they are even more hesitant to challenge trite ideas proposed by an enthusiastic student out of fear of crushing them. Thankfully (???) my undergraduate advisers were a bit more brutal. When I turned in a 20-page seminar paper which was written like the paragraphs given above, my professor told me that he "would usually not recommend someone with this level of writing ability continue on to graduate education." He knew, of course, that I'm a stubborn asshole and that this would simply make me work twice as hard to prove him wrong. It also came with 4,000 words of commentary and suggestions on a 5,000 word paper. To drive the point home, this is the problem with the paragraphs given above. However, I wouldn't put intent (i.e. "to cover up") behind it - I'm a big believer in a close relationship between form and understanding. That is, the confusion exhibited by the sample paragraphs are not hiding an absence of insight. Rather the "musings" are being confused with insight. Again, I want to reiterate that, while my comments are harsh, I don't think the OP is a "bad writer," because, as Adventure Time tells us, "being shitty at something is the first step to being kinda good at something," and I think that they're a typical writer for where they are in their academic life. And OP is certainly brave to put their writing up for comment on a public forum populated with jerks like myself - a bravery which, when coupled with a receptive attitude towards the feedback they receive, will certainly pay good dividends.

When confronted with a binary, any graduate student worth their salt should reflexively deconstruct their binary. Effective, concise written communication is an art form, and precision is not incompatible with beauty. One needs only to look at scholars such as Peter Brown or Paul Fussell to see that.

Option #2, then. Being an eminent professor is not the same as being good at writing. In fact, there seems to be very little correlation at all.

If the above paragraphs are representative of your work (and I assume they are, because why else post them), then you have a lot of basics to get down before worrying about these sorts of esoteric differences. Your style isn't "musing". It's meandering, confused, and imprecise. My comments above illustrate some of the problems, but if this has passed muster with your professors, they're either not paying you too much attention or should not be tasked with teaching writing. EDIT: This was really harsh! Wow! Clearly quals are getting to me. I stand by what I said, but please forgive the tone.

I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you @kenalyass. I made the same mistake about five years ago now.

I think your sentence structure is unnecessarily complex, to the overall detriment of your argument. You also have quite a few unforced errors, particularly the absence of necessary words. FWIW, these would be my edits for your first paragraph above: "The d Definitions of words changes over time, evolving a certain connotations and breathing life into (changing the meanings of?) actions and documents, which allows one to rearrange and categorize in a way that may not have been possible even a short while ago. Those definitions can alter the way a person views the past through documents and shape the narrative in a way that has not been done before (redundant). One does not need to There is no limit the definition or connotation of words, and so to. The same can be done with documents. Each document is one snapshot of a larger conversation and can take on a new meaning with each reading inside a larger album of documents (this is unnecessarily restricting your previous argument, which is that documents change simply when the meanings of their words do - broader context is unnecessary). This would include documents originally meant drafted to be constitutional or legal in nature. The Union of Utrecht and the Pacification of Ghent, two such constitutional documents, can be seen are (don't pull the punch - this is what you're arguing) not only as blueprints for a new fledgling state, but also as pieces of dialogue in the larger body of political conversation (I'm confused - you were talking about how documents change their meaning over time, but now you are talking about them as singular moments in time - which do you want to talk about); additionally and more interestingly, (never tell your audience what they should find interesting - demonstrate that it is) the documents show not only that there is a conversation, but that the political dialogue during the formation of the early modern Dutch Republic was an important political game and identifies the players involved. ('interesting' is one word for the argument that a political argument inherent in a text was part of a political game, and that people were involved in that game - you might also try 'trite', 'tautological', or 'self-evident')."

I don't think I agree with this at all. In a lot of ways, it's much easier to teach originality than it is to teach writing, but I think it's particularly artificial to think of them as separate skills.

Do not use endnotes unless you wish your paper to be hurled about an office with particular abandon.

Brown has a pretty strong early modern department, including Tim Harris and Hal Cook. I think the UMiami prof kind of put their finger on the concerns I would have over your application list - it's not that you necessarily have too many schools, it's that the schools you have mostly have fairly shitty placement records. Here's a productive exercise: go to the academic jobs wiki page and check out postings for English reformations history over the past few years. Then go to those school's pages and see who got the job, and where did they get their degree. That should get you a decent sense of the prestige networks in your subfield.

No.

I recognized the former from your reference to breaking a heel, yes. But I just wanted to point out that this is hard for some to negotiate than it is for others. This observation is neither mine nor particularly controversial.

Note that this is an avenue of approach that is more possible the whiter and more masculine you present. Women and people of color often have trouble with performatively divesting themselves of certain aspects of their authority.

First, talk to the archivist. You may need to pay for the archive to reproduce the image and grant you copyright. Assuming you don't, does the archive allow you to use a tripod? If so, just use that and you can set up some really nice archival photos - though you may want to invest in a particular lens too. If you can't use a tripod, one of the pieces of advice I've been given is to tie a string to your camera and tape a coin to the other end. Stand on the coin and pull up lightly on the camera to make the string go taut, stabilizing the camera and the image. I have lots of other tips and tricks on how to do fun lighting effects to highlight erasures or palimpsests if that's your jam, but I suspect you're dealing with more modern documents.

I wanted to highlight this because I think the subsequent responses skipped off the side of the point somewhat. From how I read @Sigaba, it's not about the particular content of the paper. As a subordinate in any workplace, you should, as a rule, never simply dump a problem in the lap of someone higher up the food chain. That's not to say you never bring an issue you're having to a supervisor, but rather that you should only do so in a manner that shows you are competent, clear-headed, and have a handle on the situation. That is, you have a concise statement of the problem, a couple of well-formed thoughts on how to deal with it, and what you want from your boss is advice and guidance as to how you are going to handle the situation. Your boss may well say that this is above your pay grade and they'll take it from here, but they should be the one to suggest that. This is about phrasing, and about presenting yourself to your supervisor as a competent professional.

Gaiman’s First Law: Picking up your first copy of a book you wrote, if there’s one typo, it will be on the page that your new book falls open to the first time you pick it up.

Something that hasn't been mentioned here is to have explicit conversations between yourself and the professor (or supervisor, etc) regarding how you approach this student with written documentation. Tell your professor in writing that you have some concerns about student X, what you've tried, and what you intend to do. When they provide you feedback, send a written acknowledgment of that feedback and your intent to comply with it. In short, cover your ass. These days, I follow a similar pattern with any student who looks to be tending into C territory or worse, particularly if they're NCAA athletes. Addendum: if you have an office or associate dean of Diversity and Inclusivity, they might be of some help. Mine seems mainly concerned with not hurting the poor white boy's feelings when he says something racist, though, so YMMV.

I can't really think of a reputable program that has rolling admissions, but my knowledge of the subject is not encyclopedic. To @AP's point, it doesn't seem to be a causative relationship, of course.

Justify yourself!

Eeeeeeeeh. I think our department is much more forward-thinking in some respects than most, but 'flexible' is not a word I'd particularly associate with it. Your freedom of movement is highly adviser-dependent in any program, and premodernists are, generally speaking, on the conservative side. (I think it still serves your needs, but be careful with your expectations)

Yes, exactly. Most history programs don't generally like their students taking classes in other departments, never mind schools. Mentioning that you would like to do work elsewhere does not encourage confidence in your argument that you fit well at the institution in question.

Yes, I use it for everything I write. It looks neater.

Your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. To whit, no one cursed at you. There's just cursing in your vicinity. I understand that it's easy to interpret what I, like others in this thread, am attempting to provide - a realistic and unvarnished assessment of where you are and how it pertains to what you want - as an assault on you. That is nowhere near my intention; it does not seem to be anywhere near anyone else's intention, either. But to the main objection, I can only offer the opinion of the inestimable Stephen Fry, formerly of Queen's College, Cambridge: "The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just a fucking lunatic."

This is just silly. Sure. People could accuse you of secretly being a Deep One, a servant and harbinger of the dread lord Cthulhu (Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!) because you had squid for lunch. It doesn't mean that such accusations are true, that anyone will care that they're made, or that you should let the possibility of such accusations dictate your actions. Yep. Your belief that they need to adhere to academic writing styles in academic texts.There is no religious obligation for believers to add +JMJ+ or PBUH to their texts, which immediately differentiates it from the Jewish proscription against writing out the name of god, and in any case it's the subtraction of a letter instead of the addition of a verbal refrain. That's why you find plenty of journals which will use "G-D" vel sim. If you can find an example where you regularly (or ever) find PBUH or JMJ, let me know; as far as I know the answer is there isn't one.

Academic Job Wiki is like the "results" portion of grad cafe with none of the forum camaraderie.

Repeat after me: my cohort isn't my only source of social engagement. Go join a college club team, take up a hobby, or just go to the campus bar. There is a world beyond your lab!