rising_star

You need to check your departmental and university handbooks for information on this. It is likely that you wouldn't have to start over with courses, provided the courses you took toward the PhD will also count toward the MSc. You'd have to look at the specific course requirements for the MSc in your department to determine this.

maelia8, typical suggestions are to look at places like Banana Republic, LOFT, J. Crew, Gap, and The Limited, as well as their outlet stores. What you're comfortable with will play a big role in this. I know some women that teach exclusively in khakis or trousers, while others never wear pants to teach. Any of those stores should have some business casual or nicer stuff that you can try on and play around with to see what you like. There's also Karen Kelsky's advice (which I don't 100% agree with but here it is anyway): http://theprofessorisin.com/2011/07/28/what-not-to-wear-assistant-professor-edition/. For example, you can find great deals on new stuff if you shop the sales and the outlets.

I definitely second the advice to buy stuff once you get there. Your fellow grad students will know what you need and where to look for deals on it. I am also a big proponent of wearing scarves and a hat to keep warm. Good gloves are essential (and also, touchscreen gloves aren't as warm as you might want). Solid winter boots (by which I mean "snow boots") are a lifesaver if it's a place with snow or slush. I actually have two pairs, so I can somewhat coordinate with outfits. Depending on how cold it is and your tolerance, you may also want to invest in snow/ski pants, which are waterproof and warm but look super dorky. If you have an office, you can change your shoes and entire outfit once you get in to something more appropriate for being indoors. Other things I'll just say, as someone that has lived in both very hot (40C in the summer) and very cold (-24C) temperatures is that while you will adapt some, it will also be a big shock to your system. Wear layers. Be prepared to need to add or remove clothing throughout the day. Sunny does not equal warm as fuzzy has said. Get in the habit of checking the forecast so that you can be prepared if a front is coming and the temperature is going to drop dramatically during the day.

Get familiar with the phrase "Similar arguments have been made about X by Y (citation) and Z (citation)..." as it's an important part of scholarship. You will come up with ideas and then later find them in the literature. That's fine. What you have to do in your writing and through careful reference to the other text is show that you came up with this argument independently and it's definitely a good one since other scholars have independently reached that argument/conclusion too.

There are some past posts about this: You might also be interested in fee waivers: I hope this helps!

I mean, I personally wouldn't move (change graduate schools) to be with a significant other. You have to think long-term. How likely is it that you and your SO will end up in the same place post-PhD? Are there advantages (connections, placement, publication opportunities, grants, etc.) to staying at your current institution that will better your career? I mean, there must be a reason you chose your current school over your significant other's school initially so, what were those reasons? Throughout graduate school, I always put my career first, even if that meant moving away from my significant other to pursue my degree. I have some regrets but those are minimal because, in the end, I knew what I wanted for my career and knew that I'd be unhappy in the long run if I didn't pursue my dreams.

Sure, but I was also paying attention to the original post. Francophile1 said they were getting Bs from the hardest professors, not that every paper grade they received was a B (which I think is what you and ExponentialDecay have assumed/concluded). If some grades are Bs and some are As, then Francophile1 sounds, quite frankly, like many master's students I know and went to school with. Making the jump from undergrad writing to grad writing is not automatic for everyone, though it's clear that some people think it is or should be. I think it's great to recognize a weakness and ask for help on how to fix it, which is something that few grad students do even when they need to (perhaps out of fear that they'll be told to just drop out, as some of you are telling Francophile1 to do). I feel like if you don't have anything nice to say, you could just not say anything at all, rather than telling the OP to give up, quit, or become a high school teacher (because obviously HS teaching is for those not capable of being college professors, apparently). ETA: And, by the way, telkanuru, telling someone to drop out of college in their first semester based on one paper is probably not the right advice for any professor to give. As I progressed through graduate school and now that I actually am a professor, I am horrified that one would ever think it was professional or appropriate to say something like that to a student based on a single data point. And yet, that professor did. I have a feeling that some of those posting here will be exactly that kind of professor, assuming they get a TT job in the future. Why not instead work with the student, try to explain to them why their paper isn't meeting your expectations, and what they might be able to do to improve, rather than telling them to quit immediately? One poor performance shouldn't ruin someone's aspirations, plans, or goals. If one bad paper or test were to ruin one's chance at graduate school, I suspect many of the folks here wouldn't be here at all because they'd never have even been able to consider going to grad school.

This is, quite frankly, an incredibly rude and condescending response. You have zero clue about the OP's academic background prior to the MA but are asserting that the OP has never been able to write an A-grade essay in their academic life (18 years of education as you put it). I earned maybe 2-3 As total on papers as an undergraduate and still somehow (likely as a shock to folks like you, ExponentialDecay) successfully completed both a master's and a PhD with full funding for both programs. One can improve on their writing with time, practice, and critical feedback from others. Why not simply provide the OP with useful resources rather than tell them they'll never be able to produce professional scholarship? OP, pay the doubters/haters no attention. I had a professor who gave me advice like ExponentialDecay's when I was an undergraduate. Had I listened to them, I would've dropped out of college and never become the teacher and researcher I am today. 2 years of B grades in a MA program are not great. However, you can still improve, Francophile1. If the issue is that your arguments aren't strong enough, see if you can go to office hours and have a professor explain to you what else they're looking for. Is it that your argument itself isn't making sense or that you aren't providing sufficient supporting evidence for your thesis? I find that the latter is very common, as there's a tendency to tell, rather than show, the reader what you want them to know. If this is the case, you may want to add more quotations or examples from the text to bolster your argument. Another possibility is that they're saying your arguments aren't strong enough as a way of saying that your arguments need to be more nuanced. Are you arguing broad or narrow points in your papers? Sometimes it can be difficult to argue an extremely narrow, specific point so we go broader, which then leads to a weaker argument overall. You'll want to be careful not to do this. Working--and exchanging papers--with your classmates could help you with this as they'll be familiar with the literature and theories you're drawing on in your papers. If you can, Francophile1, find a partner or a couple of people who you can share drafts with and get feedback from. As knp and VirtualMessage have said, writing is a process full of revision and you'll want to go through multiple drafts before submitting a paper. For example, I went through 8 rounds of revisions of my most recent draft manuscript before getting feedback on it from one of my peers. It was only after incorporating that feedback and reading it through another time that I then sent the manuscript in. Tedious? Yes. But I wanted to make sure it was the best writing I could submit to increase the likelihood of it getting published. There's some excellent advice here. For class papers, think of the professor as the editor if you're following what VirtualMessage says. You'll want to go through several full drafts and revisions, get feedback from peers or the Writing Center, and revise again before you submit your paper. This means starting early on your papers (4-6 weeks before they're due if possible) and putting some serious time and effort into both the research and the writing. It is doable!

What level of service are you talking about? There are differences between departmental, university-wide, and national service. I focused on the latter in grad school and I don't particularly regret it. I was never that involved in service work for my department, in part because I didn't want to be (lots of internal politics I was trying to avoid). At the same time, I did service work for the national association for like 6 years as a grad student and it was a valuable experience in terms of networking, making a difference, and learning about association governance. There's also the level of commitment issue. At my PhD university, there were easy opportunities to do service without having to, for example, attend meetings every single week. Such opportunities are things like judging an undergraduate poster conference (which takes 2-3 hours on a Friday) or evaluating graduate student travel grant applications (takes 5-6 hours max). These are relatively easy to do and still count as service which you can list on your CV. Also, reviewing those travel grant applications made it easier to write my own because I had a better sense of what the reviewers were looking for and how to make it easy for the reviewer to find exactly the information they needed.

Have you considered taking a more general survey/overview of the historical period (either at the advanced undergraduate level or the introductory graduate level) first and then taking the historiography seminar next semester or next year instead? That might help you feel more prepared for both the content and the writing style required in advanced history seminars. I took graduate level courses outside my discipline as both a master's and a PhD student. I enjoyed all of them and found them to be an enriching experience and a good complement to the coursework in my discipline. Yes, they sometimes require a different writing style but you may also be able to work with the professor to tailor the final paper toward your interests and skill set.

The first thing that comes to mind is reading more academic papers. The more academic work you read, the better able to mimic their style, tone, ways of argumentation, etc. The second is that you might want to consider forming or joining a writing group where you can exchange writing with peers and get feedback more informally. Seeing how others write can also help you see weaknesses in your own writing.

CVs typically don't have fancy formatting but they should be aesthetically pleasing. You should list your unpublished theses (both college and master's) on your CV somewhere. Take a look at the CVs of other grad students to get a sense of the kind of things you should include.

The discussion here might be helpful:

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As someone who has studied Cervantes in the original, I'd say that the reason it's difficult to read isn't because Spanish classes emphasize speaking (mine never put speaking above reading and writing) but because reading Golden Age Spanish prose is like reading Old English. It's a somewhat different language than modern Spanish with different spelling, some changes in word usage, and other little changes that make it harder to comprehend if all you've ever studied is modern Spanish. That said, I loved getting to read Cervantes and Lazarillo de Tormes (perhaps the first European novel!) in the original in college.

Oh man, you guys, the Lifetime Network's show UnReal is kinda really good. The episodes are all streaming online. The basic premise is that it's behind the scenes of a show like The Bachelor except this show is scripted and the main characters are awesome and flawed. It's really entertaining.

I took 3 days of Latin followed by 4 years of Spanish in high school. When I showed up at college, I basically could not speak Spanish, especially not without practicing the sentence in my head a few times (or, preferably, writing it out and then reading it). I took 3 semesters of college Spanish and still wasn't very comfortable or confident speaking Spanish. Then, I studied abroad in a Spanish-speaking country and got over being tongue-tied out of necessity, which works really well. I'm not opposed to the teaching of Latin in high school. In fact, Latin was the language that pretty much all of the "top" students at my high school (the ones taking AP classes, doing dual enrollment at the local college, in the National Honor Society) took. They competed at Certamen (is that the name?) and other Latin competitions on the weekends (such participation was mandatory) and they all seemed to have a lot of fun. I'd wanted to learn a language you could actually speak, which is why I took Spanish instead of Latin.** Are there aspects to learning Latin I wish I'd had? Absolutely. The knowledge of grammar and word origins would've been phenomenally helpful. But, I ended up learning a lot about grammar by subsequently studying Spanish and an African language in college. The African language operates totally differently grammatically than English or Spanish, which really expanded my knowledge of linguistic possibilities. I also think language learning should go on throughout someone's life. I audited a couple of foreign language courses in grad school (same languages I'd studied in college) and absolutely loved it. I'm planning to start teaching myself another language in the upcoming year, possibly seeking out conversational partners on campus who know the language. If learning Latin or any other language early on can motivate people to study languages throughout their life, I am all for that. But it can be hard to do in public schools where money is lacking for good instruction in the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. **I had taken a year of a spoken language in (private) elementary school because it was required and I loved it. But then I went to public school where language classes weren't offered until high school. I taught myself numbers and phrases in several languages using books and cassette tapes from the public library when I was in elementary school but ultimately gave up on the effort because I didn't have anyone to speak to or practice with (I was trying to teach myself German and Italian for reasons I can't remember at all). So I might've been biased about wanting to be able to speak another language.

I think you're absolutely right about the search committee expectations, juilletmercredi. The expectations for publications when one is on the market are insane. They're especially insane if you consider that they're overkill for folks that will end up outside of R1s or R2s. I interviewed at a SLAC where the requirement for tenure in the social sciences was 5 peer-reviewed journal articles, and they would count up to 3 published in graduate school. In a way, this makes sense if you want someone to focus more on teaching rather than research. At the same time, it also means that they interview and sometimes hire people that have met 40-60% of their publication requirement for tenure before even starting work! That is a total mismatch in the system and one that I personally think should be corrected by de-emphasizing publications. (Side note: de-emphasizing journal publications might also halt the proliferation of journals and reduce the cost of journal subscriptions, saving university libraries a boatload of money.) I know that for people in history or anthropology or comparative literature, acquiring the foreign language skills, having the time to go to the field/archives, and then spending the time translating and interpreting documents and data can be very time-consuming. It's not like switching to a 5+2 program shortens the amount of work that would have to go into a dissertation. It may ultimately dissuade people from pursuing comparative dissertations or ones that require extensive time in the field or archives. It also depends on what the expectations are for incoming students. For example, I started my PhD program with a master's degree in the same field already. I already had the language skills needed to do my project and some of the theoretical training. Had I not had those things when I started, it would've taken me longer to actually be able to go collect the data I needed. So I'm wondering if the 5+2 program model at UC-Irvine is going to lead to programs admitting more students that already have a master's, rather than those with just a bachelor's...

Well, this is something that is definitely changing. When I worked for state universities, we were so called "mandated reporters". That is, if we knew about a sexual assault or sexual harassment, we were obligated to report it to the appropriate administrators. (An example of where people have gotten in trouble for not doing so is the FSU case with Jameis Winston where athletics employees knew about the allegations, didn't report them, and in some cases were subsequently fired.) My private institution doesn't use the term "mandated reporter" but, essentially, we are. If a student starts to tell me about being sexual assaulted, it is my duty to alert them to the fact that I may be required to report the incident to the Title IX coordinator if they tell me about the incident and that I then have no say over what happens. If I know and don't report it to the Title IX Coordinator, then I am potentially risking a Title IX violation for the school, which is why we're required to report what we know, even if it's only partial information. I have made several reports based on partial information and even hearsay this year, in part because I'm not about to get fired for not doing so. Yes, this is totally CYA but that's the way many colleges are now interpreting the "Dear Colleagues" letter. I'll just add that a lot of what I just said is based on my experiences as a faculty member. I didn't get this kind of detailed training about Title IX related reporting obligations as a graduate student or even when on a fellowship last year. But my sense is that is changing as colleges try to stay in compliance with the updated guidelines from the Office of Civil Rights. You can send a request to have your account deleted. I (or another administrator) can delete your account but all of your posts will remain on the site.

Just so you know, even the jobs at the "smaller liberal arts colleges" are quite competitive. You'll still be competing against literally hundreds of other applicants for such positions. These positions are more competitive than people often realize, especially since for many they aren't the fallback plan but the desired result. If you want to be competitive for a job at a LAC, you'll need solid teaching experience while in graduate school, in addition to publications and ideally a demonstrated ability to supervise undergraduate student research. If you really want to do a lot of research, you'll be unhappy at a LAC where many times you're teaching a 3/3 or 4/4 teaching load.

If you want to be competitive for a TT position, you need to go the top ranked program that you can get admitted to. As far as I know, OU is not a top 10, top 20, or even top 30 political science doctoral program. American politics is an especially competitive area so you'll need to be in a top program. Even then, your age is likely to prove an obstacle on the job market, as there seems to be age discrimination (there have been multiple lawsuits filed against institutions in the last few years alleging this). While you're in your master's program, beef up your research experience and quantitative skills. Be a research assistant if possible so you can be a co-author on publications and conference presentations. Good luck!

Different scale of operations. I'm no longer at a big research institution. We have a Title IX coordinator and then multiple deputy Title IX investigators who assist with investigations. We don't turn things over to university lawyers very often but that's because we don't have a big legal team to turn stuff over to. Life is very different once you leave the big R1/R2 arena. Also, we're not floundering because we have a top-notch Title IX coordinator with years of experience doing this kind of thing. They're pretty much an amazing person who handles these cases as quickly and confidentially as possible. And I say this having had to report several things to them this year that I heard from students or about students or faculty.

Warning: disjointed thoughts below. Wow! That's more money than STEM professors are making at some institutions. At the place I taught at last year, assistant profs in biology make $55-70K. In the same state university system, there's a research scientist in chemistry earning $54K and a full-time lecturer making $52K. That said, that state university has some amazing retirement benefits that I fully wish I could return to (10% of your pay with no required contribution/match on the employee's end). I'm obviously not in STEM and I also don't make $80K but I also don't think I'm underpaid by any stretch of the imagination. I don't live in a big city which affects things, obviously. I just did a cost of living comparison and it seems my salary would have to go up by over $20K if I lived in Boston or NYC. I guess what I'm saying is that while $80K is a nice ideal, it would be completely nuts to pay postdocs that much in certain parts of the country. It would also be very controversial to pay postdocs more than faculty. My original point was along the lines of what RollRight has brought up. There is plenty of need for teaching at colleges and universities, especially as they increase the size of their incoming classes. College tuition is going up and yet the number of full-time faculty has been stagnant for years at many institutions. While yes, there is a need for some of the growth in administration to meet federal mandates, it's obscene how little of many universities' budgets actually goes toward instruction. I remember being shocked by it as a graduate student (luckily/sadly, I've now grown accustomed to it). Colleges and universities have systematically divested from their actual teaching/educational mission in favor of numerous other priorities and as part of the neoliberal model. I would love to see something where accreditation is tied to having a certain percentage of classes be taught by full-time faculty. I work at a college that makes relatively minimal use of adjuncts (I think they're less than 10% of the instructors on campus) and I'm proud of that. Part of the reason for that is that, even in tight budget years, the college has remained committed to adding new TT faculty, rather than using adjuncts as a stopgap measure. Is it costly upfront? Absolutely. But today, a campus tour was going past my office and parents got really excited when they heard there child wouldn't be taught by graduate students or TAs. It is a selling point for some schools and could be more of one if more people spoke out about the benefits of learning from FT faculty. (Note: this isn't to say that graduate students are bad teachers. It is to say that at some large public institutions, one could get to their junior or even senior year without having ever been taught by a tenure-track/tenured faculty member. We see posts from those folks here during application season as they're trying to figure out who to ask for rec letters and not having luck in securing them from people with PhD after their name.) I am not trying to bar the door and keep others out of graduate school. You'll note that I haven't said that programs need to reduce the number of people they admit. Should they for ethical reasons? Maybe but that is really field and even subfield-specific. 20th century American history, for example, is an oversaturated field so perhaps programs could not admit students into that subfield for a few years to see what happens. The downside of that approach is that you potentially lose out on having students that could revolutionize that field of study... Anyway, people need to be realistic throughout about their job prospects. Alt-ac training needs to happen throughout one's graduate career, not just at the end when one is struggling to find some sort of job. I think there should be more internships during programs, that departments need to work more closely with industry and corporations, and that students need to bear some of the responsibility for ensuring that they are employable (whether that's as a professor, a research scientist, in industry, or something else) after their degree. Students are also the ones that have a say in how graduate school affects them financially. The current funding model of many universities encourages them to admit graduate students that are fully paying for their degrees, regardless of the student's qualifications. These "cash cow" programs then subsidize other activities at the university. But, they wouldn't if students didn't enroll in them... (Sidebar: some of those enrolling in graduate degrees [typically master's, not PhDs] are doing so because they need the degree for advancement at work. For public school teachers, this is definitely the case and it's due to No Child Left Behind. You basically have to have or get a master's degree to be "highly qualified" and retain your certification to teach in public schools. Many of the people in this situation often end up paying for their graduate degree because it's either that or not have a job. It's a crappy set of choices but one that we shouldn't demonize them for. Blame Congress for that crap.) Last thing for now. This is my (admittedly unpopular) view but, in addition to speaking out about being adjunct/contingent, people need to stop applying for and accepting those positions if they want the system to change. Just as TakeruK has talked about having timelines for various stages and being willing to exit at those points, one should have the same attitude toward contingent positions. I personally decided to only apply for multi-year VAPs or full-time teaching (lecturer/instructor/professor of practice, depending on the institution) when I was on the market because I did not want to adjunct. I've gotten flak for that position publicly at a conference and here on this board. Still, I think that we have to consider our own position in this system. Yes, we've made into (or through) graduate school but that doesn't mean that our decisions stop having consequences for the neoliberal university system. If universities can't find anyone willing to teach a class for $1500, then either the class won't get taught (thereby screwing over their customers students) or they'll cough up some more money to find an instructor. I'll leave it there for now.

How exactly is the university supposed to prevent someone who doesn't work for them from yelling at you in a bar? I'm asking this seriously because this is the same question that the university is going to be asking itself when they hear from you about this incident. What happened in the bar was not between you and a university employee. It was between you and an employee's boyfriend. If the boyfriend doesn't work for them, how are they supposed to prevent such a thing from occurring? If you want to make sure that the boyfriend cannot harass you again, you need to work with the local police, not an office on campus. @Eigen, the original post referenced some language that implied that this might have been gender-based harassment (e.g., sexual language being yelled at someone). That is why I suggested going to the Title IX office since those offices are well-equipped to deal with such harassing incidents. While going to the Title IX office is not the same as a legal complaint, it does initiate certain protocols. The "Dear Colleagues" letter from the OCR obligates colleges & universities to investigate all Title IX complaints they receive to determine whether or not a violation has occurred and to do so quickly (within 60 days). Whether or not they can "figure it out" is entirely dependent on the investigators. It may be difficult for them to prove that there is a link between an email you sent to a professor and an incident with the professor's boyfriend off-campus. You should prepare yourself for that outcome, anotherapplicantanotherapp.

anotherapplicant, as fuzzylogician points out, the boyfriend is an individual with agency. He may have been acting on his own or based on (mis)information he got from his girlfriend. You cannot know that. All you are doing is assuming that she hates you, got her boyfriend to yell at you, etc. Now, as someone that has had some terrible interactions with students and even disliked several, I can honestly say that I never sent anyone to do anything malicious to them. I may have vented to others but, even then, I wasn't actually naming the students so one would have to put together several bits of information to figure out who I was talking about. What you're describing is gross misconduct on your professor's part but also something that you have absolutely zero hard evidence of. As fuzzylogician has said, you should think carefully about why you're doing this, what you hope to come of this, etc. It seems like you're pissed off by what the boyfriend did and trying to punish the professor for the actions of her partner. That is illogical and irresponsible of you. If you want to hold the boyfriend accountable, then do that. Cite the boyfriend as the issue in your complaints (to the police or to the Title IX coordinator). If you go the Title IX route, technically your name will be kept confidential however, given that the incident happened in public, it's likely the professor will figure out very quickly who filed the complaint. If you are mistaken and the professor doesn't actually hate you, this could change her opinion of you. Just food for thought.