Borden

Yeah, I'm checking once a week or so just to see if they've updated the online system to say "in consideration" or whatever, or if anyone's had a phone call they've reported, but last year I was a wreck all January and February and it didn't do any good. I think it being my second round helps with the stress factor a bit.

No, I haven't looked at any of mine since I turned my last application in last week. It doesn't help at that point. I'm not letting myself be actually properly stressed until the last week of January, and then I'm not allowed to be frantic until CAA, and in the mean time I'm watching a lot of wildlife documentaries to stay calm.

It was nuts, I sent in my application on a Monday and on Friday they scheduled my interview. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is a good sign. Now I just have to wait on the rest of my schools!

It's a UK school and they operate on a slightly different system with regards to timing and involvement in the application process- it's not Oxbridge or the Courtauld or anything like that, though. It's my first choice and I'm trying not to jinx it too badly, but I will at least say that when the person I'm interviewing with first answered my emails, I was so stressed/elated/freaked out that I had to have someone else open the email for me because I couldn't believe [redacted] wanted to talk to me.

I have an interview in three weeks and I'm already losing my mind.

The museum I work at will not even consider you for entry level curatorial work without a PhD at this point, or an MA with a decade of experience at an equivalent institution. You also have to be sure that when you apply for a school that they are supportive of curatorial work as a career goal.

m-ttl I think I love you. Follow-up: I work in a major museum now, as a grunt, but a respected grunt. I also work with a lot of the incredibly well-off undergrads and grad students who come through as interns, and let me tell you, the ones who clean up and realize that they don't actually have what it takes or the dedication are by and large the rich kids. I'm from a solid lower-middle-class background. My family supports the insanity that is me moving all the way across the country to pursue art history as a career, but the only door they've ever been able to open for me is the one labelled "pig-headed stubborn work-ethic." One of the reasons I want to make it is to open the door to other kids who are willing to work as hard as it takes as long as it takes, but who haven't been given the same kind of familial exposure or support, especially minority students and women. The fact that some of us have to work twice as hard to get some of the same experiences and exposure doesn't mean that our ideas are less worthwhile, and only acknowledging the acceptability of private, wealthy schools ignores the contributions of huge swathes of your colleagues.

Not at all. This is one of the reasons many of the top-10 aren't good fits for everyone, as I keep saying. Two Northwestern faculty members told me as much to my face, because I have a museum background, a museum present, and a museum future and am entirely disinterested in being solely a professor, and my mentor who attended Northwestern and now works in the museum world concurs. Great academics, not for anyone who wants to be a curator. You absolutely must sound out their willingness to support you in museum work and provide opportunities for training. Yale is great for this, per a discussion with faculty about it last fall, though apparently there is some conflict in the department about it. Condivi, I think that your experiences in grad school lend you one perspective but depending on your career goals after it, we may have different expectations. I am comfortable that the decisions I have made-based on my advisers, work and publication experience, and discussions with POI at the programs to which I am applying- are the best possible choices for me and my future career. If you think that I'm being shortsighted, fine, but also please acknowledge that this kind of of attitude does little but shore up the perception of the discipline as snobbish and out of touch and only to be aimed for by those of means.

I didn't say they were middling state schools, simply that they aren't the sacred top 10. A former classmate of mine is actually at one of those top tier schools right now, and genuinely isn't expected to make anything of themselves afterwards despite being there because they're competing with lots of other students and they aren't receiving any support. It's not a magic bullet. Sad but true. I'm not unaware of the necessity to look at job placement, but I'm from of the school of thought that a PhD with a fantastic dissertation and publications from a top 20 school is better than never getting into a program because you only apply to top 10s that aren't good fits or get accepted and only produced uninspired, derivative work. That's why I'm working closely with mentors and advisers who are well-placed to observe current hiring practices- because they're some of the people doing the hiring in my area of interest and career path- and trends in graduate schools' acceptances and interests in a range of areas.

This is what all of my advisers have pushed from day one, that it is far more important to be with the best person in your field in a program that supports your methods, interests, and specific ambitions than it is to be one more drone at Harvard, being shoehorned into something at ultimately won't serve you in your career (Harvard gets named specifically because in my case I have been repeatedly warned off it as a bad fit on a number of levels, nothing to do with the program itself). I'm looking at and working closely with a few programs that aren't top tier on the rankings but have incredibly strong people and have shown that they're willing to support my career development and specific goals.

I feel like we could set up a back-up plan sort of situation here, like, if we hit 50 without a feud, start one with each other.

Yes. Exactly like that.

Does anyone else occasionally come up with absolutely insane, over-the-top ideas for papers to write, giggle to themselves, and file it away for the future when they're the kind of famous scholar who can get away with writing "An Illustrated History of the Penis in Western Art" or whatever? Or is that just me...

I work at a museum and I've assisted on a number of shows, so I did exactly that, put an "exhibitions" section on my CV and just made sure that I was careful to put the role I played in the show's production. The same should fly for gallery shows!

I mean it in the nicest way, I really do. The problem is that not everyone gets to go to top tier schools, and by limiting oneself to only looking at top tier schools even if they aren't actually good fits can bit one firmly in the ass. It wouldn't hurt them to look at non-top-10 programs that have faculty in place to support them.

You may have to get off your high horse (I mean that nicely, having done it myself), and look for someone who has a better overlap at a less fancy school. There are excellent scholars working at smaller schools, and you will get more out of a program that jives with your interests and methodologies than trying to shoehorn yourself into something that doesn't actually support you. I highly doubt no one is working on the Vienna Secession right now, just no one at Harvard or NYU. ETA Secession, lizzie, good lord.

Concur as to the location of the convention center, with one exception: I was stoked at the walking access to the Guitar Center as a place to kill time Thursday night. I only got to go to one other panel and it was really great, especially the discussion, and I thought the discussion on my session was great!

How did everyone's presentations go?!

Aaaaaaaah starting to get nervous/amped to present.

Are we all presenting Friday afternoon?

Honestly, if I had been handed this paper when I was a TA, you'd have been lucky to get your C-. It reads like you didn't even look at the assignment, and that you didn't proof it at all.

given the number of stories we've heard about people getting full rides after sending in personal statements with the wrong uni name in them, I think you're probably okay.

I'm presenting at in the Self-Mythologizers section on Friday. I'm getting in mid-day Thursday and then making a mad dash for the airport right after my session ends Friday, but anything between 1 pm Thursday and 1 pm Friday I'd be glad to go to!

What day are you presenting? I am too and I'd love at least one friendly face! ETA Oop Shelley I found yours, unfortunately I'll already be heading back to the airport by the time you're giving your talk!

Is anyone going to SECAC next week?