danieleWrites

Adjunct jobs don't pay well. You should apply if you want to teach these classes and it's within your financial means to do so. However, if it will cost you more to do the job than you will earn (driving more than 100 miles away, one way, sounds like a bad idea to me), then you're better off not doing that. The caveat has to do with the needs of your particular field. However, it seems that a gap year isn't that big of a deal. Instead, you can maintain your scholarship by doing music things in your area and keeping up with the research as you work a regular job. Do whatever it is that you do. As an English lit and composition person, I would found or join a writing group, do volunteer literacy work, be a tutor or a teacher in education programs, and so on. I would also continue to write and do what I could to get published as well as reading the journals in my field. Of course, I did live near my former university and had access to the library and its databases, so I could keep up for free. I would also apply to be a substitute teacher with the local school district.

We went and had some non-IHOP crepes at a local watering hole for the granola set. I had mine Florentine. I'm a convert. That's not fair, Lynx. Nutella makes most everything better.

yolk has a good point. Judging is human. We consider "good judge of character" to be a desirable quality in a person. Our daily lives and literature is peppered liberally with phrases that express regret for poor judgment of others like: "I should have known s/he was like that...." Profiling others isn't just helpful, but actually necessary. We use social cues to make decisions on how to converse with others. These cues come for social constructs (men don't wear dresses for regular apparel, women are afraid of snakes and spiders) and from the way a person appears (clothes, accessories, hygiene, and so on). Most of the time, these profiles work out for us. It's pretty safe to say that if you meet a guy in flip-flops, a t-shirt with some kind of beer joke on it, and a Git-R-Done trucker hat, asking about his investment portfolio won't open new avenues of conversation, just as you generally can't have a good conversation about the merits of 4.10 and lockers in Dana 44s with 33s with a suit. That's being judgmental and assuming all rednecks don't have portfolios and businessmen don't like to tinker with their jacked up 4x4s trucks. We all know that's not true. Some rednecks have great investment portfolios and some suits spend more on one 4x4 than most of us will spend getting a PhD. Don't kick yourself for being judgmental. We all are. The trick is to stop the profile before we categorize someone negatively and then act on it. Oh, he's fat and short, therefore he's not intelligent. Oh, she's wearing heels to class, therefore she's a slut. Oh, a guy hanging out at a playground by himself, therefore he's a pedophile. Be fair. So, you're a woman walking in a mostly empty, parking garage after dark and some guy steps out of the shadows near the exit door and starts walking the way you're walking. What kind of profiling do you do? Be fair, but don't be stupid. Odds are the guy is just going to go to his car and isn't paying attention to the woman at all. But enough bad things happen to women, done by men, in parking garages after dark. Well, you get it.

Why is it that the one book I need to have in the next five minutes, or I will perish in ways that would make Bugs Bunny jealous, are noted as "in" in the catalog, but are no where to be found in the library itself? I don't even have to wander around prodding nearby people with book piles because there aren't any. Yeah, yeah, I'm a rude library patron. I'm building a Kindle library that I wouldn't have to build if I could just read French. But no. I think German is the way to go because I dislike crepes. They're unsatisfying pancakes. They're like pancakes where you have almost, but not quite enough flour, so you stick in ground cardboard because you think no one will notice. And really, has no one heard of pound cake? Still. Me without my stoopid book. Gorn dangit. ETA: could I reek of entitlement more? Sheesh. I'm embarrassed for my family because they have to admit they know me.

My ideal job would be tenured professorship. However, that's only one thing I can do with a PhD in English. The program that was at the top of my list (and the one I got into, yay!) offered me flexibility in ways that other places simply don't. I'll be walking away from it with a PhD in literature and a couple of certificates in composition. Yay! I am, of course, kicking myself in the butt for not going to medical school and becoming a GP, but it's probably a good thing. I am not good with people that way. So, anyway. I think one of the reasons they liked me was because I said I want tenure, but I can also do this, this, that, and the other thing, not to mention a few courses for this thing and I can do that and this and that, or a few courses in this other thing, and I can do that and that. Oh, and while I adore your program more than any other, I ain't going if it's not funded. So, while I lament the state of higher ed., I don't lament it for my career. I'll have one whether I'm tenured or not. I lament it because I'd rather be tenured, but more because I think the new direction we're going in education is not just worse than what we used to have, but it's actively detrimental to students and to society at large. I also think that the more terrifying article on the future and education isn't about academia at all. It's about offshoring. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402555.html Blinder doesn't outright say it, but then he didn't look at MOOCs. It's hitting humanities hard right now because the recession turned Tenuretopia into an Adjunct Shanty Town. Online offerings (MOOCs don't really work) are going to start changing the face of American academics. Why hire a tenured prof when you can pay someone in India to do the same job at half the price? Online courses are already here. So are online degrees. It isn't just the humanities that are in trouble.

One branch of my family is Black Irish. The term Black Irish has been used as an insult, and it's also been used as a common name for a phenotype. I'm wondering if I should be mortally offended because someone used an Irish name for a non-Irish person, or because someone finds Irish names offensive, or if someone thinks phenotype-based naming schemes are inherently racist, or because someone thinks that Kieran is a bad name for anyone who isn't sparkly white. Actually, I'm offended that a bunch of English descendents would think that it's appropriate to use an Irish name. Seriously. Do they not realize how offensive it is to steal a person's cultural heritage while they're also still stealing a person's ancestral land and oppressing a person's people? I'm so glad I wrote in the Godzilla-Mothra ticket in 2012.

I'm a good wife and mother. My qualities as a wife: I am a whole person without him. I love him and I have trouble sleeping without him there (seriously, it's a pain), but I do not need him to be happy and fulfilled. I am also smart, funny, loyal, cute, cook and back, and have a great rack. I am also mean, sadistic, spiteful, and love to wallow in a good bout of schadenfreude. I don't do laundry and I have been known to throw all of the dishes out rather than wash them. There is nothing worse than being in a relationship with someone who cannot be whole by themselves. There's a difference between being lonely and being so desperate for a relationship that the other person has to be the source of a person's self-worth, sense of value, and reason for living. (Before you protest, Pinkseter/Corrupted Innocence, print off your statements on this thread and show them to your therapist.) Lonely people are not so desperate for a relationship that they'll do anything to be in one (your words, not mine); lonely people want a relationship, but they don't need one. Desperate people want a relationship and they really, really don't need one because a relationship based on emotional dependency is toxic. My qualities as a mother: He made to legal adulthood in good health, no trouble with the law, with prospects for the future, and isn't (currently) a burden on society. He can balance his checkbook and find the DMV by himself. He also drives like a little old lady and can do his own laundry. He has no idea where the barber is, though. Can't win 'em all. I popped that slime-coated ur-human out by myself. He was a bit early, but the placenta was tres cool looking. It was like a purplish, deflated basketball with veins. I could totally see the horror movie thing going on, just give it eyes and teeth. Vagina Dentata for realsies! But. He wasn't mine, completely and totally mine. He was his own person. Sure, I taught him that there's no such thing as bad sci-fi, but he won't watch Star Trek TOS; he prefers Godzilla (good gravy, where did I go wrong?!) and he doesn't know who Surak is. I kid you not. He's got my eyes, my intelligence, and my ADHD, but he did not find Fight Club amusing and he hates math (yeah, I'd think he was switched at birth, too, but he was the only boy on the ward). I love him dearly and he loves me dearly, but he's still not mine. He's living in another state, now, and it hurts, but it's right for him. Kids grow up. Husbands have their own lives to lead, their own work, their own friends, and their hobbies. What do desperate people do when their spouse wants to go watch the game with friends (try to tag along or, worse, provide a curfew)? Pinkster/Corrupted Innocence (this new name is very Twilight Fan Girl), you might have great qualities that make you great (as Loric put it) husband-bait. But you have one singular quality that makes you husband-bane: desperation. You've consistently shown desperation and you've said you're desperate. Not using hyperbole to talk about being lonely and looking to change that situation, but actually desperate. If anything, your use of the word desperate is an understatement. You are not speaking of your future man in terms of a real relationship. You're speaking of your future man in terms of an Edward and Bella and Jacob relationship. Which you probably think is romantic and wonderful and cried at the end. Edward and Bella have a horrific relationship of manipulation, co-dependency, and a mutual inability to be healthy. Jacob is even worse. Men are not stupid people and the kind of man you want for a husband (a good man who is caring, loving, and will provide for the family) is the kind of man that runs screaming, the other way, when a desperate woman starts making cow eyes at him. Seriously. Print off this thread and your other I-want-a-relationship threads and take it to your therapist. Or send him/her a link.

I took a random-ish sample (okay, I closed my eyes and put my finger on the screen and it was the address bar, but yeah). So, that's the sample. Here's a rewrite of it: Though my childhood in a small town in XXX didn't offer anything in physics, I persevered and earned my bachelors with Honors at the U of X. My rationale: you use too many adjectives and adjective phrases to describe irrelevant things. "very small underdeveloped town called XXX in the north-eastern part of XXX" is a prime example. Your country has relevance, but the town and its location doesn't. Not because the town is irrelevant (it certainly isn't!), but because it won't have any meaning to the people who read the SOP. I could tell you that I grew up in a mid-sized, faceless redneck town called Groo in the central highland plains of the United States, and the only thing that you would get out of it would be "mid-sized" and "United States." You might get some other stuff out of it, like faceless or plains, but they don't give you any information about me and physics. I can't offer you specific advice about physics or material science. Nor can I speak to the intricacies of your situation. However, I can tell you how to cut sentences out. William Zinnser calls it "clutter". We throw words and phrases, even whole sentences or paragraphs, into writing in order to make it sound or feel better. Sometimes because we have no idea what to say, so we're just writing. After the first writing, it's cut, cut, cut. Look for adjectives and adverbs first. If you're using them, be very clear as to why these words are important. Next, look for nouns that add length but not substance and look for the ways in which you can fix the phrases and sentences they're in. Sometimes, you can get rid of several sentences that way.

Sounds like fun. Please do. If you have anything related to rhetoric and pedagogy, that would also be appreciated. Comp programs just never seem to understand the value of oration, yanno? Teachers of public speaking have so much great stuff, especially on ethos.

ur lyk sooooooooooo rgt brosef y shud ne1 uze email dec0rm 2 wrt a pr0f itz no bigD 2 rit lyk u tak r txt cuz decorum iz wht 0ld p33ps do whn dey try 2 b cool FYI: Digital Natives are worse at being "tech-savvy" than Gen-X. I have to teach too many of them how to use a UI that doesn't resemble the home screen of their smart phones. One (not the CompSci guy, either) knew what rooting an Android meant. None of them knew how to do more with Word than open, type, and save in the native format. Many of them don't know what the word "browser" means, unless its referred to by its app name (firefox, chrome, etc.) so most of them fail hard with unfriendly apps like Blackboard and then whine and cry about it. Tech-savvy my shiny hiney. Digital Natives will use devices first, and will expect instant access to anything. Just because they're more comfortable reading Moby Dick on an app than in a book doesn't mean that they know jack about how to actually work tech better than us old farts. Get off my lawn! Damn whippersnappers. Back in my day, I actually had to use paper. And share a single phone line with everyone in the house. And it was attached to a wall in the kitchen. And nobody could text. And no Call of Duty! Not even the first one. And we had to walk to school uphill, both ways, in blizzards, and beat off starving bears with our trapper keepers and pencils. It's that yellow thing with the point on one end and pink rubbery thing on the other. It's a stylus for paper. Really.

Thank you for proving my point. As you would not be happy in an English department, which finds hasty generalizations and the concept of "words on a page" as unpalatable as you seem to find literary approaches to Shakespeare. Less so, perhaps, since hasty generalizations are a sign of poor abilities with rhetoric. Thus, we are all very pleased that you are not in English. Though, I have done fine in theater.

I wasn't reeling. I refused to go to any school without at least enough funding from the school to waiver tuition, even if that meant that I wouldn't get a PhD. I do roll my eyes at graduate tuition rates, though, particularly when I have undergraduates in some of my classes. If they're gonna get the same course, they should pay the same rates, trot on in with the same expectations of baseline knowledge, or GTFO. A combined course with two sections and two separate sets of major projects does not a different course make. What it makes is a bunch of undergraduates looking glassy-eyed and lost when the PhD students talk, or the PhD students dumbing it down so the undergrads can participate. Yes, I did take up this whine with the DGS who chalked it up to university politics, and then we started a lengthy bitchfest about the idiocy of the paradigm of the university as a vo-tech, and now I'm going to wander off and quit griping.

When I got done with undergrad, I had 196 credit hours and two BAs (this is usually 160 credit hours). I took a lot of unnecessary courses before I figured it out. You're a sophomore. You have time. This spring, look into internships related to organic chem. Go back to your professor before the next semester starts and talk about the research assistant position. If you have to go through human resources, or financial aid, or whatever hoops before he can hire you, it's better to do that right away, right? Join the organic chemistry club (if they have one). Sure, you missed out on freshman opportunities, but there are many other opportunities still available. Sure, you're behind (in terms of time to graduation) the people you started college with, but you're aren't behind the people who are just starting out in organic chem. You're actually ahead because you've got some general coursework completed. Don't think of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior in high school terms. Your standing is a measure of how many credit hours you've successfully completed, not how close you are to graduating. There is no "catch up" to this. There is just changing your major, which many, many people do every semester, and not kicking yourself for not realizing that you preferred organic chem before you actually got to do organic chem on this level. You can start research right away, actually. Log onto JSTOR or Web of Science, or EBSCO, or whatever other databases UT's library offers, and find journal articles on organic chem. Find journals. The Journal of Organic Chemistry is one of the big ones. You should find access to it online via the library's page. Read it, cover to cover. You're not doing primary research, but you are doing some research. Read what the organic chem professors have published by sticking their names into JSTOR. You can get some ideas about what people are doing in organic chem and maybe whether or not you'd be interested. Do a web search to see what kinds of jobs are available for people with degrees in organic chem. Just because you get a BS that doesn't mean you have to go to grad school. Maybe there are jobs you're interested in that don't require grade school. You can do research with a BS in industry. The good thing about looking at what kinds of jobs there are is that you can make some choices about a minor (or double major) that would help your future. Wanna travel a lot? Language. Do the job ads seem to mention communication skills? English. Do they work with animals? Biology. You can see how this works. A lot of people in industry are interested in mentoring in some way. Find the organic chemist association/society and see what kinds of things they offer in terms of helping you make decisions about the field and how much of a degree you need. Maybe they have a mentoring program. Maybe they have information on the various types of research going on. And so on. Don't think about what didn't happen or compare yourself to others. Think about what you can do over the break to figure out your future.

This makes no sense to me. While the applicant's qualifications and interests won't change, what does change is how/why the program can work with those qualifications and interests. Every US university with a PhD in literature in the English department has an American Literature PhD. They'll have faculty that specialize in each period. But I wouldn't write the same SOP to separate programs. I would tell them the same thing about my interests, I wanna research American Lit stuff involving military actions to see what American Lit writers think of the use of submarines (or whatever). But I wouldn't completely ignore what the program has to offer. I'd mention specific faculty who I could work with and, more importantly why I think those particular faculty would be helpful. I'd mention a variety of things that are both completely true and specific to the particular program. Aside from two sets of sentences that explained why I wanted a PhD and what my research interests are, the rest of the SOP was different for each program. And each SOP was completely true. How is that disingenuous?

First, my credentials. Well. I can spell my own name, though I don't usually know exactly how old I am. I'm within a year or two, but I'm usually wrong until I've done some subtraction. I teach composition and like to write calculus equations on the board when I take classes in poetry writing. But, here's my real credentials: consider what is written herein in conjunction with what the various instructions on SOPs that you've read have said, with the requirements the program you are applying to has put forth, and with your own experience as a writer. Do you think I know what I'm talking about? Should you pay any attention to it? Is any of it useful? Second, I'm not going to give you a formula for what the standard SOP is like, or a list of things the various thousands of admissions committees will be looking for. There are plenty of prescriptions on the internet, many of them written by professors who have presumably gotten sick of badly written SOPs. Third, I'm not promising that SOP writing be easier after this. It'll be harder, actually. I'm not promising that you'll get in to any place you desire, or that there is any one best thing to put in the SOP to get noticed. That would be totally impossible. Each discipline has its own needs and values, as does each university, each department, and each faculty member on the admissions committee (adcomm). There is no one size and it doesn't fit most, let alone all. There are conventions (use Standard English, for one), but other than include your research interests, I won't advocate that any one thing is strictly necessary. I leave that up to the more knowledgeable. The advice: First thing is to deeply understand that you should write an SOP for each program. Most people take this to mean write one master SOP and then tweak as necessary to make the one SOP applicable to each university (U of A becomes U of B, Professor X becomes Professor Y). You can do that. You can be very successful doing that. You most likely, really shouldn't do it. The next thing to understand is the SOP's purpose. Why do the adcomms want to see SOPs? Shouldn't transcripts, letters of recommendation, and a writing sample do it? After all, transcripts and samples show the actual scholarship and the letters verify it. The SOP isn't for showing scholarship off, or to act like a resume, or anything. So why do the adcomms want an SOP? Why are the SOPs one of those make-it-or-fail things? What is the SOP's purpose? In job hunting terms, the SOP is like a cover letter. The cover letter is to make clear connections between the resume and the job ad. For you, its primary purpose is to make the adcomm offer you admission with full funding. For the adcomm, its primary purpose is to help them see how you would fit into their program (make connections between their program and you). By fit, I mean do they have faculty (or enough faculty) in your area of research interest that can advise, mentor, supervise, and/or committee you through the program to get your degree? Do you have the kind of understanding of the discipline, your research interests, and their program that would make you successful? Do they have something to teach you? Offer you? What can you offer them? They want to brag on you as much as you want to brag about them. If they offer you admission, will you be a good scholar? A good student? Here is the most basic question the SOP should answer: What is it about you that makes you a better prospect than everyone else who's applying? Understanding the SOP's purpose, in practical terms, means that you will know what to put into it and what to leave out of it. And how to phrase it. So, with the purpose in mind, there comes the question: what should you put into it and leave out of it? What format should you use? (MLA? APA? Is footnoting okay?! What about citation?!) Should I stick in a personal story that everyone seems to recommend, except for the half that don't? My research interests? The story about why I got on F in that one, very important class? I'm not going to answer those questions because I can't. Every discipline and department is different. I will give you an answer you won't like: research. Find out the requirements each program you're interested in has for the SOP, think of the SOP's purpose: and now research. Research is one of the basic keys to writing an SOP. It's no different than the writing sample you'll be including in your application packet. For each program you apply to, do some research. How much research you need to do depends on a lot of things, the least of which is your personality. More research does not automatically mean a better SOP. Less research doesn't automatically mean a better one, either. What makes the right amount of research? The ability to craft an SOP that is specific for the program that you're getting into. Here's some ideas (not an exhaustive, inclusive list of what to do) on what to research: The program itself. Look at the recent graduates and, if possible, read their theses and/or dissertations, at least in part. The acknowledgements can give you an idea about the program's culture. The introduction can give you an idea about what kind of scholarship the program produces and expects. It will also, and this is very important, give you an idea as to how the program uses language. If you speak to them in their own language, that helps your case. You've likely done this, if not, seriously, you should have done this. Look at the program's website and read it all. What kind of classes are offered for both undergrad and grad. Who are the faculty, the tenured, the assistant, the visiting, the emeritus, and the graduate students. What kind of ties to the community (both academic and their local town) do they like to talk about? Do they talk about how their graduate students are working with community partners? Do they host conferences? What happened at the last one? This gives you a taste of the program's culture. The faculty. All of them that might be on the adcomm and the ones that are relevant or somewhat relevant to your interests. Crack open JSTOR etc. and search for recent faculty publications. If you're basing your interest on a faculty member on the interests they've got listed on the site and a reference to them in an article from a decade ago, or worse, only their reputation, you don't have a strong basis to establish clear reasons why they have anything to offer you. Read their recent publications, see who they name drop in terms of theory, other faculty, and so on. Make a list of what each faculty member can offer you in terms of research, not just the ones that are directly related to it. If you're into studying apples, but Dr. V works with oranges, think about how Dr. V's work might help you out. Take notes when you research. Each program has a bunch of people, and you're likely applying to multiple programs. It's easier to refer to notes than to go back and look it up all over again. What's happening in the field with your current research interests, if necessary. This is so you can situate your research interests in the discipline, and then situation your research interests in the program. You can just tell them what you're research interests are and leave the situating to them, but you can lose that chance to sell yourself as the best amongst the rest. Research you. Yup. You. Scribble out some lists or paragraphs or whatever that inventories you. Who are your influences? Who are the theorists you keep coming back to? Who are the theorists you loathe, mock, and/or ridicule? What are your research interests in general and specifically and anywhere in between? Some SOPs will need to be more general, some will need to be more specific. Length restrictions, what you found out about the program, the faculty, the state of the discipline, and so on, can alter this for you. What kind of scholar are you? Student? What's the difference? How do you manage your time? Stress? Health? Do you expect to bring your dog? Do you have health issues? Do you have any academic things that are a negative? If you do, how negative are they? It's easy to see that as an either it's entirely bad, or it's somewhere in the huge good category, but some things are negatives that need to be addressed for certain programs, while other negatives can be ignored, or you should discuss with the one relevant letter writer so they can address it. While Sam ultimately received a C in the Research Methods course, the grade doesn't reflect the actual scholarship as Sam fell ill during the mid-term and consequently failed it; my course policies do not permit re-taking the test. What are the good things about you? Not just the grades, awards, publications, and presentations, but also the character traits. What are you weaknesses? Don't do the job interview baloney, my greatest weakness is my perfectionism. Of course, the important, probably ought to be on the SOP questions: why grad school? What will you do with the degree you want? Why are into the research you're into? Why that particular school? Why are you worth admission and funding? Research the assistanceships. Some SOPs will want you to write a bit about teaching or research with assistanceships in mind. So, do a bit of research on what these entail in the programs you're looking at. What do they do and how do they get it? Have you done assistanceships in the past? If so, what were they like? Do you have a teaching philosophy? If not, make one. Have you done anything that can be discussed in terms of the assistanceship? I taught kung-fu to white belt children, so I have teaching experience. I was part of the state herpetological society and went out to help them with their field counts twice a year. I learned that licking petrie dishes is always a bad idea, no matter how much they resemble pistachio ice cream. Research SOPs. You're doing that, right? Go on to forums (like this one) and read the SOPs people have posted and then read the responses. Look particularly at SOPs in your discipline or related disciplines. Psychology might look at other social sciences. Physics might tell the joke about the Higgs Boson and Sunday mass. Bear in mind that the people responding to and/or criticizing the posted SOPs are likely not on an adcomm. Some have been or will be, but it's not likely they'll be on the adcomm you're hoping will like you best. However, you can start to get a sense of what SOPs are like. What format is it in? Does yours look like everyone else's? Do you have the exact same opening sentence as half of the people hoping to get into a program in your discipline? I've always wanted to be a librarian since those wonderful, summer days I spent in my (relative of choice)'s home library. So, to take stock. First, understand the purpose. Second, research. A lot. Let the purpose of the SOP guide your research efforts. Next, get the specific requirements for the SOP from each program. Make a list of similarities. If they all ask for a statement of your research interest, score! One sentence fits most! Most of them will be of different lengths and will have different ideas of what specific information they want. Most won't tell you enough, aside from length and one or two "should have" things. They mostly won't tell you if you should use APA or if you should footnote, or how to format it. Single space? Double space? They will tell you whether it should be on paper or what kind of file format to use. I have only one suggestion: consistency. Okay, two suggestions: unless otherwise specified, don't include anything other than the SOP. No bibliography or footnotes. If you quote or paraphrase someone, cite them in the text the way they do it in the average newspaper article. As Scooby says, "Ruh-roh!" Now, start writing. Create something of a master SOP, or a set of master sentences for the SOPs. Some things should be in every one of them, like what your research interests are. Because length requirements are different for each program, you should work out more than one sentence or set of sentences for each thing you plan to put into more than one SOP. Have a more detailed explanation of your research interests and a more concise one. Even though this might be central and, perhaps, most important to the SOP, you don't want most of a short SOP taken up by one thing. Make these sentences do extra duties. If they can explain not only why you're into what you're into, but also why it's significant to the discipline/program, and how the program factors into it, bonus! The more functions one sentence can serve, with clear, readable logic, the more room you have in the length requirements to bring in other things. Think of this master SOP as more of a set of sentences you can hang on the individual SOP's unique structure. A flesh and skeleton metaphor can work here. You can order all SOPs at this point, you'll probably want to put research interests in the middle or toward the end, rather than in the first sentence, but the key here is that the skeleton of the individual SOP and most of its flesh will come from the needs of the program you're writing it for, not from some predetermined formula. No generically applicable, master SOP that has a few tweaks here and there. Here's the thing. The SOP is one of the most important documents you'll write in your life. It's not something that should be done in a few hours, after looking at the program website and spending some time on the net searching for a how-to-write-an-SOP-guide. It takes work backed by research. The readers can tell quite easily how much research you've done on them by the way you structure and write your SOP. They can tell if you're sending out a generic SOP to several programs because it will be too general. You can't change faculty names in and out, along with a detail or two that makes it seem tailored to the program. The individual SOP should be tailored from the beginning. Some sentences won't change much, so you can pre-write them. But how they fit into each SOP, the reasoning you'll use to try to convince the adcomm that you're the best applicant, and the perspective you'll take all the way to the words you use should be done with the program in mind. It shouldn't be generic. Even if it doesn't seem noticeably generic to you, that doesn't mean that the adcomm won't notice it. They read many, many SOPs every year. People who read SOPs develop a sense about the generic, the cut and paste work. How to name drop gracefully, or bring up the theory and histories and whatnot you're working with when there's only a teeny amount of space for everything? That's a bit easier than it might seem. It's not in the explanation; it's in the usage. If you can use the relevant theories and people and methodologies correctly in a sentence, you don't have to show the adcomm that you know how to use them, or how they're related, by explaining it. Trust them to have enough education to make a few connections for themselves when it comes to the discipline. Example: Novels such as Twilight exemplify how Marxist alienation can be applied to childbirth. My research interest lies in the alienation of women from the product of delivery in Modernist American fiction, such as Faulkner's Sound and the Fury. (Huh, I wonder if that would really work?) Two sentences and I've referenced theory, period, history, relevance for today, and some methodology (it's literature, not science). Use it, don't explain it. If possible, have a professor you know read the SOP to your preferred school and give you some advice. They know more than most other groups of people. If not possible, your current university's writing center can help, or other people who are familiar with the field, or with writing. Your high school English teacher or your English major buddy can probably say something about your grammar, but might not be as helpful as expected. Example, in English, the convention is to speak of historical people in present tense. Shakespeare writes, "To be or not to be," because he thinks it is the question. History has kittens. Shakespeare has been dead for centuries, he can't write! Past tense! Shakespeare wrote, "To be or not to be," because thought it was the question. Someone in the field is preferable! Finally, a word about my real credentials. The adcomm is going to do to your application what you've just done with this post. They are going to judge your credentials (your ethos, trustworthiness, veracity, credibility, knowledge, and so on) based on the impressions they get of you from what you've written. So, be knowledgeable about you, your field, and the program, and use that knowledge well.

I'm not in psychology, but I do have something. First, would you still want to be in the program if you couldn't work directly with the faculty member you are interest in? If no, then probably mention the faculty member. If you mention the faculty you're interested in, and that person is either not interested in your research or doesn't feel ready to take on a new student, you might find yourself rejected simply because of that. I have seen people who have sworn they didn't have time or room for another grad student take one one anyway after they've gotten to know the person better. I've also seem people who turned out to despise the faculty member they wanted to work with for a variety of reasons. At any rate, what it comes down to is that they will judge you based on what's in the SOP. The first rounds of reading is to narrow the field by looking for reasons to reject, not by looking for the best candidate to begin with. After that, then they look for the best candidate. Don't give them reasons to reject you despite your strength as a potential student, unless it is a reason you want to be rejected. It's all about rhetoric.

There are a lot of labor abuses with graduate students, it seems. I think there's less than it may appear from the people who speak about it, simply because no one ever writes polemics about how great they're treated by their professors and supervisors and advisers. What should you do? Different nations have different laws about what grad students can do in your situation. Different universities have different policies in place. I get the feeling that you're not from a place that has English as it's main language. I don't know what nation you're attending college in. So, honestly, no really useful help here. If you are in the US, you can start by speaking with the international students office to get some advice on what your rights are and how you can discuss the issue with the professor. There may be a cultural barrier there that's making things worse. You can also visit the university's counseling center. Therapists there can help you figure out how to communicate with the professor and role play scenarios so you can practice your discussion before you have one. The advantage of the counseling center is that there are laws about doctor-patient confidentiality, so you can complain about the professor without anyone doing or saying something about it. So, figure out what is his best time of day and go to him to speak with him. Acknowledge that the work is not getting done as he expected, and then ask him if he has any ideas on how you can safely and correctly do specific tasks that require more than one person. For example: Not enough is getting done in the lab and we're falling behind on the work. I am hoping that you might have some advice for me. In the second part of the experiment, I am supposed to move a three hundred pound anvil from the floor to the table top, to test for strength. Do you know where I can get someone to help? Or is there equipment I should use? If you're not in the US, or even if you are, the first step is always to have a discussion with the person first. The professor obviously has ridiculous ideas about how much work you can do. Since his research pretty much hinges on you doing things, it's in his interests to either get your help (which may not be possible if it has to be paid for) or take over some of it himself.

It varies by professor. Ask them directly. Sometimes short papers happen because the argument won't accommodate it. Seminar papers are longer, though. The goal in my grad classes has always been journal length papers.

Yeah, that totally does not work. You have two essays at work. First, you're writing about your family's medical problems and the issues that go with that. Then you're writing about your experiences with racism (other people's oppression) and what you learned about it. The only real link between the two is locative, not thematic. Subject X is this, then we moved, and Subject Y is that. No connection. Your essay should be a unified whole, not separate. Your father got sick and your family lost its livelihood. Your diversity in there, so work with that. If you want to discuss your experiences with racism, approach it in a completely different way. Right now, that's offensive in the way the Disney Pocahontas and James Cameron's Avatar is offensive. If you don't know why Pocahontas and Avatar can be considered offensive, then google White Messiah. It's an old story. Unless you learned something substantive and human about race, don't talk about race. It's difficult for white people to talk about race problems without making boneheaded statements, like your White Messiah example, that just hurts your case. It doesn't matter how genuine or caring you are when your approach to the writing make it clear that you didn't get some key points about diversity. I figure you're white not because of your picture, but because you referred to the minority students as "they," which puts you directly into the "us" category with the white bullies. Work with your own, personal experiences. You come from blue collar, dealing with disabilities, and whatnot. Diversity is more than skin color. What can you do with your family's experiences to help your fellow students understand diversity? How can your family experience help you help other students "gain access to the resources necessary for success."

These little pedagogical moments. Unless you're teaching at a private school, you're dealing with open enrollment policies. This means that the kind of writing education your students get are hit and miss. Most of them don't know email etiquette. They don't know how to write in a professional manner. They don't know that what they've written is never read in the same tone of voice in which they wrote it. They flat don't know. At the beginning of the course, I talk about professional aspirations, advocating for yourself (and how to do it), impressions they can make, and why they should care about those impressions.My university has an email account for all students, and some of them have their mail forwarded to their personal accounts, and then respond from there. I've had emails from puerile and pubescent email addresses. I've had whiny emails. Entitled emails. Texts from people who never identify themselves and get snotty about it. Students who think they can discuss their paper via text message. Students who can't spell my name (in all fairness, Daniele isn't normal). And so on. Preemptive. I teach lower division courses, so I expect this kind of self-entitled ignorance. I give them permission to text me, but also make it clear that they should never, ever text someone in their professional and college lives without prior permission. Texting is just too casual right now. I tell them that texting on professional concerns, without prior permission to do so, has the implied message: I don't respect you. I discuss email etiquette, and why they should care (you're not going to get a letter of recommendation for your dream job when you email your profs from superprinces69@xxx.com, or show up late all the time in your PJs. It tell them that I am Ms., not Dr., because I am a PhD student. I tell them that they should always err on the side of flattery when emailing someone in the university, if they don't know the titles, because demotions are insulting. Example, if you tell someone you're a student, would you like it if they ask you when you're graduating from high school? Then we talk about familiarity and how to compose an email. And what kind of rights they have as to response time. None. At all. Deal with it. Then we talk about tone and writing, and what kind of tone is appropriate for an academic setting, and how tone is different in various disciplines. I don't do this for classes that don't have many freshmen in them, actually.

Ahh, this is not unlike an internet flame war where people frequenting the internet forum are caught between two warring troll factions. You are one of the troll factions (pardon the metaphor). The question is: how does a troll win a flame war? The winner is decided by the audience, actually, because it's a social contest. The trolls can bludgeon each other (verbally) in increasing confrontation until one of them gives up and either runs away crying or just quits fighting (usually with snarky comments elsewhere), but no matter which troll faction admits defeat, the real winner is the one that gets the audience on their side. Because the trolls must still be a part of the larger group, the audience will decide who "won" by treating one side better than the other. How does this apply to you? You're in a social group and you're something like a victim of a troll faction. You have, very wisely, chosen not to engage the trolls on their battlefield. You must now defeat the trolls, right? Your acceptance in the larger community is important. It's made worse by the fact that some of the trolls are authority figures. So, what now? Kill 'em with kindness, actually. Don't avoid people, even those at fault who don't want to fix it. Unless avoidance is the only way to avoid aggressive conflict. Passive-aggressive doesn't count. Don't be passive-aggressive either. People aren't stupid. Be civil. The trolls are also colleagues. Your spectators are now going to judge the character of you and of your trolls by how you interact. Are you an adult? Professional? Competent? What sorts of behaviors do people with these traits engage in? That is how to respond to and deal with the trolls from here on out. Since some of those trolls are in authority, you should probably find some way to address it, but only with those whose authority matters. One method might be to, during the break if it's possible, drop by the offices of the trolls in authority and try to have a civil conversation. Hey, I just wanted to stop by and discuss the X Incident. The end of the semester was pretty hectic and some wild rumors were floating around. If you have any questions, I'd like to address them. I think we'll all have a better semester if we can put the incident behind us. Should your best course of action be to lay low until you graduate, don't confront once you have diploma in hand. No piece of your mind. While you're not going to get a letter of recommendation from your trolls, discipline communities tend to be small enough that someone with an axe to grind can make you miserable. I recommend getting a stress doll and giving it a piece of your mind. The final recommendation is to make use of the university's counseling center. Therapists are neutral people bound by confidentiality rules. You can vent all you want in there without it ever getting it out to someone else. A therapist provides a much needed, attentive ear because sometimes, just being heard by someone else makes all of the difference. The therapist can also help you figure out strategies to deal with your trolls in the best way for you and your future, and can help you role play methods to work with the trolls in a civil fashion and to avoid confrontation.

I've got a BA in soc, with a significant ideological rift in my three main profs. I've also got serious ideological things happening in the literature PhD. Critical theory, or feminist theory, or blah blah blah. Anyway. I'm not sure why this is a problem because there doesn't seem to be any infighting going on with the professors that's making you choose up sides. First thing: what is your ideological perspective? Do you have one? If you have an ideological perspective, then make choices that favor your perspective because that's what you'll ground your research on. Take a course or two in the opposing perspective so you don't get so blinded by ideology that you're thinking in false binaries. If you don't have an ideological perspective, then make balanced choices in coursework and research so that you can figure your perspective out. If it's a quantitative/qualitative thing, or a macro/micro thing, think about why you selected this university to apply to in the first place. In sociology, for example, one University is very well known as a quantitative methods program, and qualitative folks are few. The Chicago "school" is known for it's micro level perspective (social groups are small, dyads and small groups where everyone meets everyone else at least once) while the Harvard "school" is marco level (think regional, national, global, pretty much societies where most members don't meet most members). Some universities focus on the Chicago school, others focus on the Harvard school. Though it's been a few years, so they might have changed the titling. Anyway, the point is, you picked this university for something in its program, so you already have a basic ideology of your own and a basic idea of how you wish to approach your research. Articulate that. This doesn't mean that you should lock yourself into this articulation, but it does give you a point of guidance. If you can't fit your ideology into the two you seem to have available, then take a balance of courses to figure it out, or go and talk with someone (or both of these professors) about how your research ideas fit into their perspectives. Think of it as exploration and figuring out how all of the pieces fit, not as a "rift" where you have to pick one or the other. As far as this rift goes, professors are hired on their research and publication, not on which side of the rift they fall into. Even the quantitative sociology program has qualitative-oriented professors, to be all analogy happy.

The upper bound? What's in your bank account? Transcripts plus application fees plus cost of any campus visits. That would be the upper bound.