Borden

Oh god, you're giving me the vapors just thinking about this happening. We aren't even supposed to wear nail polish in case we might have to handle art.

Building on m-ttl's second point, I got my internship that led to my current job because I had worked two summer internships at my smaller museum, and could point to the insane list of things I'd done there simply because they had a permanent staff of six people and having an intern with an art history/academic background meant they could fob things like research, gallery tours, and label writing off onto me and get on with the things they needed to do to keep the lights on and the doors open. Small museums, whether history, science, art, house, industrial, whatever, can act as fantastic intensives in what museum work is. I hated a lot of the stuff I had to do during those internships- I never want to do fish prints with a group of 30 6-year-olds in hundred degree weather again- but boy oh boy was I prepared when I got here. My internship here was much more focused and narrowly defined, and was brilliant for teaching me all kinds of things that the others hadn't. In my time here it was also clear that I was working with a lot of other kids who had not been prepared, who had been told that their BA from Wherever made them qualified to move up the ranks just by having gone there, or because Uncle Bob has that same Rembrandt print in their hallway at their lake house, and who realized through the internship that they weren't actually interested in this field and re-examined their goals. I've also worked with a lot of kids from Wherever that are brilliant and going places fast, and well-deservedly, but they do it without a sense of entitlement. The big thing is to gain experience so you can either confirm your desire and gain experience, or realize that it's not for you and still have had the experience that can then inform your choices in the future. It's how I look at having TA'd- it was a great experience, but I'm not interested in making a career of teaching in a classroom.

I work at a major museum in a very busy department, that's where my experience with ill-informed interns comes from. I've heard a number of them say, "Well, I didn't know it was so much reading!" because they hadn't been disillusioned about what it actually takes to put on a show or acquire a work of art, and they left the museum track because they realized it wasn't for them.

This is a HUGE part of it, and I'll add- so you know that it is actually what you want to do! We get a LOT of interns who waltz in from their Ivy League/Small Private School thinking that they're going to rocket to the top and go to fancy openings and curate shows, and then they realize that they're going to be someone's research grunt for a decade and that they actually hate reading and writing at the volume that's required of a curator, and drop out of the field. If you want to be a curator, you have to know what you're getting into, and you have to commit to a long period of grunt work.

My big take away from two stints at my small local museum is that I never want to work in a place where I have to build my own set pieces and do my own painting again, but I also learned how to install site-specific pieces, do lighting, write labels, and make a pretty cheese tray for opening night. It's valuable experience even if you think it's weird and not helpful at the time (artists, btw, should never be allowed to bring dirt and plants from their backyards into the gallery for their pieces because that's how you get ANTS).

I applied to two schools that didn't even ask for my GREs, wahey, and my hilariously awful quant score and not-special state schools didn't keep me out of one of the other ones I applied to that did. Ah, quant.

I've no interest in embracing the microfilm. I use it plenty at work for all those sources and have for several years now and I haaaaaate it. At least NARA is starting to digitize finally.

Really, really the worst. I know this is unrelated to grad school, but it's all I'm doing at work today and I'm losing my mind.

I will, but I don't know how applicable what they ask me to do is going to be for other people- I'm going straight into my dissertation so I've already been working on the relevant reading lists and I'm guessing that anything else they have me do is going to be pretty specific. Ugh I should probably read Foucault sooner rather than later. Bleeeeeeh.

I just emailed my advisors asking what if anything they want me to work on for the next few months so I can get cracking immediately when I arrive, but you also reminded me that I needed to get an Italian reader to refresh because it's been ages since I've had to do anything with it in any meaningful way beyond the odd translation or caption skimming for work. So thanks! Whee more self-assigned homework.

Oh god I'm going to have to teach my parents how to use skype. Send help.

I live 2500 miles away so I tend to keep them in the loop more than I necessarily would if I lived at home, just because any sort of decision involves that much more effort to pull off in the practical and to help us all feel like we're involved in each others' lives. On the other hand, it does mean hour-long conversations with my mother on a weekly basis where we rehash why, yes, moving to the UK to do this degree with this person is the best idea even though it's going to make life difficult for a few years, no, this other offer is not as good or as valuable in the long run, no, I do want you to be involved in my life, yes I will miss you, of course I understand how this means I won't see you as much, no I TOTALLY don't plan on marrying while I'm there and having babies and getting a job at the V&A and never coming home where on earth did you get that idea, etc etc etc.

I agree with m-ttl. I went to state schools that are almost NEVER mentioned on these boards for my BA and my MA, and they both were very insistent about concerns with methodology, historiography, theory, and how these areas interacted with our individual areas of specialty and special problems our areas might face- so I, as a 19th century sculpture person, might interact differently with a Panofskyian sense of iconography than say my Italian baroque friend would, and we'd have different questions of connoisseurship or need for interaction with the object directly versus through reproduction, and issues of materiality or availability or primary documentation. Even my community college 101 classes touched on these kinds of problems at a basic introductory level. If I can get this at a school that never breeches the top twenty list for art history at the BA level, and which more than prepared me compared to students who came from top-tier schools in my MA, why are people putting themselves into debt for this? I get very uncomfortable when these sorts of programs are pushed as the best way into the field when they are inaccessible for large numbers of qualified students due to financial reasons, and no one involved seems to think this is a problem.

m-ttl, my mother wants me to try that with one of the schools that made me an offer to see if they'll up the ante.

Thanks! I'm actually about to email my POI-turned-advisor and let her know that I'm officially accepting and see if there's anything they want me to start working on that I haven't already done over the next few months- I am the definition of eager beaver and I've already given myself huge reading lists to get through but if there's anything they want me to start doing officially or unofficially so I can hit the ground running I want to know nowwwww. I had to write out basically a chapter outline of my dissertation for my application so now I really just want to get cracking, since they've basically already unofficially approved my topic and methods. I'm so glad things seem to be working out for us second-rounders this year! I don't know how you had the intestinal fortitude to do 11 applications, I actually dropped one of my schools that I'd originally planned to apply to because I just couldn't face doing another one. We'll have to have some kind of digital pizza party on April 15 around here!!