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I'm getting the sense that you can't go talk to any of these people face to face, because you live too far away? I might have different advice if you can pop your head around any of the relevant people's doors, so just checking. I'm also going to assume that you have already sent the email you're waiting for the response on. If you haven't, send it by 9 a.m. tomorrow at the very latest! With those assumptions out of the way: 1) You have to give this person at least until Monday. Sorry! Them's the breaks. Did you know when you sent your email that this person had missed some deadlines before? If yes, it was a bad idea to wait this long to ask. As they say, "Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine." It'll probably be fine! I don't think the delay is going to have any consequences beyond giving you worse nerves over the next couple of days, but you don't get to go bothering a person after only two days when your justifiable nervousness was caused in the first place by how late you asked the question. 2) That said, I think it might be kosher to ask your backup person something along the lines of "Hello! I am applying to graduate schools this fall and I am trying to figure out who I want my letter writers to be. For informational purposes, and not as a formal request from you just yet, do you feel that you could write me a strong letter?" Then you are on their radar, but you have not wasted their effort drafting a letter before you're sure you'll need it.

Check out Christopher Grasso at William and Mary. Does Drew Faust, at Harvard, take students, or is she too busy being university president? Neither of these are sufficient on their own—they're more Civil War/early Republic than you are, I think—but they came to mind.

Let's try this again in bigger letters. You are in danger of being expelled from your university for plagiarism. Not for this assignment, because your professor has given you one pass. But since you don't understand what you did wrong, you are going to make this same mistake that you had two professors object to, again. Would you like us to help you? If you have any instinct of self-preservation, please see the questions in my previous post, and answer all of them. If you don't figure out your problem (whether online or offline), you are DEFINITELY GOING TO BE EXPELLED FROM YOUR PROGRAM BEFORE THE YEAR IS OUT.

Let me break this down for you. People are trying to help! But you are being too vague and brief for us to assist you. For starters, you keep trying to explain in two sentences or less. That's just not enough information! It would help if you tried again under the following criteria. 1) Make sure your description of the situation is at least two hundred words long. Twenty words hasn't been doing it, and we can keep reading twenty-word posts for infinity and it still won't be sufficient. 2) Having trouble writing a longer summary? Try answering the following questions. All of them. Other posters, this is just a start, feel free to add more. What sort of program are you enrolled in? A research PhD? A master's degree? A more professionally-oriented program, like something in education or business or public policy? Please give a general idea of your field: I don't need to know that it's economics, but "a PhD in a social science that runs experiments with people" would help. Are you enrolled in courses? Do you also have internships? Will you be required to write a thesis for graduation What's your educational background? Was your undergraduate institution accredited and in-person? Was it in the United States? Was your major the same as the subject you're in graduate school? Have you ever done independent research before? Have you assisted in a lab before? Have you written any papers over 500 words? Have you written any papers over 1500 words? Have you ever had to write a paper where you had to cite a source you found on your own, rather than writing a paper from a pre-set list of sources? What on earth is this paper? You have managed to describe a type of paper that nobody here recognizes. Please try again. Is it a course assignment? Will you be graded on it? Is it a research proposal? If so, what is it a proposal for? What's the deadline? Who supervises and/or evaluates it? What objections have your TWO professors communicated to you about this paper? When you asked why you had to meet with them about potential plagiarism, what did they say? I don't care if you don't think it makes sense, or if you don't think their objections count as evidence. The closer you can reproduce what they said, both at your meeting and in any relevant emails, the better we can help you.

Perhaps it would help if you explained your relationship to these "crackpots espousing modern theory." Did you just mean to express your frustration that you felt that one or two professors carried their branch of theory to an unhelpful extreme? The word choice was unfortunate at best, not merely informal—"crackpot" will always make academics associate your sentiment with the American anti-intellectual extreme ('why don't we just not fund anything that enhances human knowledge? all we really need are small business owners, engineers, and homemakers')—but if you've read and liked a lot of anthropology and just didn't like the approach of a minority of professors in your department, that could be okay, as long as you stop saying anything that makes it sound like you disdain the entire field. On the other hand, your comment about the zeitgeist makes me feel like my charitable interpretation might not be right. Does the fact of using one of the ten or so most popular current theoretical approaches automatically make someone a crackpot? If so, I don't understand what part of anthropology you do want to do. Can you explain? This field uses theory! I am not passionate about every theory that's out there—I'm glad that this field interrogates gender, e.g., but it isn't the focus of my work. (I do technical stuff with ritual performance.) If you hate so much of modern theory, what part of anthropology do you like?

Ah, I see! Yes, I'm a big proponent of the "don't go directly to graduate school" thing, too—I think that in my case, it made sense to take three years off to work (including two years at a different college's research center related to my interests) in lieu of a master's program, but we'll see. I love the city I'm in now, so this year I'm rolling the die to see whether I get into one of my top four PhD programs. (There's another three applications, including Washington, that I go back and forth on approximately once a day.) If not? Oh well! I get to stay in a great city in a decent job for another year, and try again the next time around. In that case, I'll start expanding to look at regional studies master's degrees especially—my language preparation is way above average in most of the languages I'll need, but it would be nice to be way above average in all of them. For now, I feel ready (if that means anything), so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj4nJ1YEAp4

re: Joan Callamezzo Do you advise all prospective graduate school applicants that they should get an MA before applying to PhDs? I'm happy to investigate them if I strike out on PhDs this cycle. I can see how the post you just quoted could be interpreted to sound like I would never consider one, but that isn't true. There is no master's program I would choose next year over keeping my job and paying down my existing student debts, but I'm open to the possibility if I do another round of applications and one of them offers me funding. This is all with the possible exception of Washington, because of its weird structure, but I seem to go back and forth on that one every week. But thank you for the information! I guess it's time to send off another round of emails to my contacts there, since my first set must have gotten lost in a sea of inbox junk somewhere. re: Alain Good for you! I hope the reply was good. I agree that it is the worst that we have to break habits we learned in the first place to deal with sexism! But while I would never argue that women should adopt masculine habits to get more respect (e.g. some people advise to "talk with a lower voice," which I disagree with), there are a couple "coping mechanism" habits that I have found it helpful to unlearn. When I wanted to apologize less, I actually started with the mantra "fewer apologies, no excuses." I had dozens of chances to practice that latter bit because I am always, perpetually three or four minutes late for everything. So I started choking off my "Sorry I'm late, the bus had some mechanical problem with the ramp not raising again so we couldn't leave" or "Sorry I'm late, I couldn't find my keys even though I always keep them in the same place until I thought to look if they'd fallen on the floor" to "Sorry I'm late—(strangled noise as excuse tries to escape)—I hope I haven't kept you waiting." Much better, no? As someone listening to that excuse, I'd rather not hear all the details, which just aren't that interesting. Obviously, "no excuses" is an exaggeration, but I found that moving to a model of just saying, "I'm sorry, I can't volunteer to help out that Saturday" (without saying whether that's because I'm taking a relative to a doctor's appointment or whether I just have an appointment with my Netflix) was a helpful place to start.

One thing I've been practicing for six or eight years now is making fewer apologies, which I think is an idea you might find helpful, too. I'm a young woman, so I had picked up a habit of apologizing for my own existence. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/10/13/jennifer-lawrence-has-a-point-famous-quotes-the-way-a-woman-would-have-to-say-them-during-a-meeting/) I don't know your gender, but that habit tends to make people tune you out. Unlearning it, on the other hand, makes people take you more seriously. (Although it sucks that the burden is on us to break a habit we developed in the first place as a coping mechanism against society's prejudices.) You are asking for three minutes of each professor's time, on a matter that could save you $80-100 (if they're retiring, e.g.), more than thirty days ahead of the deadline. You have nothing to apologize for! That's a reasonable request! Go you!

No, it was the third-semester undergraduate course. I placed in, although I'd taken enough Italian that the first year undergraduate course must have been decently quick. Other people seemed to get the novel OK, but honestly, it was kind of beyond me! I managed to get the gist but reading that particular novel well was not something I could have managed until fourth- or fifth-semester. (E.g. I misunderstood what actually happened in the climax until we discussed it in class.) But I still thought that was a pretty fast language-learning trajectory in comparison with most harder languages.

I found that French and Spanish have a little more overlap, grammatically (verbs), than they do with Italian. So if you have a Spanish background, I'd guess French will be the easiest other Romance language to read. Reading Italian might not be quite as quick a process as reading French, but we're still only talking levels of simplicity: Italian's grammar is a little more different, but it's still very easy. (Also, Italian sounds more like Spanish, so speaking Italian with a Spanish background might be easier than speaking French.) At the end of third-semester, non-accelerated, no-background-in-Romance-languages-assumed college Italian, they had us reading a full, literary novel. Since you asked about other Romance languages, I will also say I've found Portuguese to be a little bit more difficult than the first three, but that's because the pronunciation isn't intuitive to me (even less so than French). Then there's Romanian, which is weirder, but yes: I've found that French, Italian, and Spanish are all at about the same difficulty level. Although the one thing I did find is that it's very difficult to take two Romance languages simultaneously, unless (maybe?) you're at really high, literary levels in both. The time I tried to take lower-intermediate French and high-intermediate Italian is the one time in college I was failing things right and left. I just kept using this word salad of "romance language," with bits of grammar and vocabulary from both French and Italian, and it was awful. So I dropped Italian and then it cleared up.

@gingin Oh, I am so sorry! There were about two years of undergrad where I was on a lengthy recovery from surgery. A fair number of the professors I had in those years know me primarily as "that girl who cried," since the painkillers I was taking messed with my emotions something major. Sending strength!

Cuddling otters! Sorry for the struggle bus on this end. Warm wishes!

Well the upload software is turning that from a nice idea into a terrifying close-up of an alpaca's eye only, and I can't attach anything new through the 'edit' software, so let me go find something smaller and that maybe isn't a gif.

I have a whole folder on my computer of pictures I look at when I am feeling sad and helpless. Since I can give no advice here, let this baby alpaca give you a kiss.

+1. I always love it when I am not the only person to have difficulty interpreting something, so thanks for that!

Oh yes, I know; if admitted there and only there, I might defer and try again next cycle, in light of these issues. But because my POI is really great and there's a strong backup slate of like four people I'd love to work with, I haven't crossed it off the application list quite yet. I will be quite cautious in where I choose to attend, but I'm not yet at a point where adding another application is either cost- or time-prohibitive. First paragraph: fantastic suggestion! That sounds like a great way to thread this particular needle (or to decide that I should not, in fact, apply). On the second part, I wrote a long thing about the narrowness of my applications vs. of my interests in general, but because I anonymize my interests, I think it would have been too vague to be interesting or helpful. The short version is basically that I might well be being too picky, but some of it is because I'm skittish about bad research fits after a very difficult undergraduate thesis process, and I think the rest of it is situational, not inherent to the narrowness of my interests. Although it is good to check in on that situation routinely, so thanks for the reminder! (I do read the jobs wikis every year, and I am quite aware of the importance of not setting myself up for that juncture to be any more painful than it's gonna be anyway.) Thanks for the advice! It's all very helpful. I've looked at Michigan's program, and I only wish there were more of them. But I think with my searching today and yesterday, including the help from this forum, and re-searching my original long list, I've been able to find another 2-3 programs to apply to, which gets me back up to a number I'm comfortable with. Crisis over!

I am reminded of an ex-boyfriend I used to have, back in undergrad. Both of his parents (who he says are unhappy and unhappily married people) are professors, and he wanted to get a PhD and try for a tenure-track job, too. After we graduated, he enrolled directly in an MA degree. "Are you sure you want to do that?" I asked him. "You know, the job search is a pain, but it's manageable." "Oh yes," he said. "I have a comparative advantage in this field compared to entry level jobs, so this is what I want to do right now. Although you're right, it is funny that I won't ever have a real job until I'm over 30, and also that I am choosing to follow exactly the same path that is the reason my parents' lives are now so miserable! Ha ha!" Just because it's easy, doesn't mean it's the best available option.

Thanks so much! That's a load off. Also, I'm out of upvotes. When does the counter reset? I haven't been logged onto the forum since ~9 pm EST yesterday, so I would've thought I would've gotten my new ones by now.

Oh really? That seems way more normal than how I read it! This bit on the prospective students page in particular gave me trouble: That made it sound like more of a stand-alone master's, which I don't want. I did know about the possibility of promotion, but that text made it sound like it wasn't something common. So, just on a more nitty-gritty application thing, do you know if I can write a PhD application, then be admitted to the master's and pick that up on the way? Or did you have to write an MA-style application? (I am hoping for the former, since that's easier for me given the materials I've already assembled.) I have written to more official sources at the school, but it's now been a while since I sent my emails, so thanks for helping answer my questions in the meantime!

This is frustrating—I started out having exhaustively researched and compiled a list of all seven programs in the country that seemed like good fits, narrowed down from 50-ish possibilities. Having lost one of the seven a while ago and another two last week, I might be too committed to "saving" all four that are currently left. (And two of those are at one school, where I'm applying both to Anthropology and to History.) I've kept one of the other two on my list, for now, by deciding to apply even though my POI says he is likely to retire early and thus not be taking students next year. (From our conversation, I think there is about a fifty-fifty chance of this. If he makes the decision to retire before my application deadline, then of course I won't apply.) So this one I'm having trouble writing the fit paragraph for is my fourth program, the only one on my list that isn't part of Two Program University and has a POI who is taking students. That combination might mean I am too committed to "saving" this application. It's been increasingly seeming like it's Two Program University or bust, especially after losing two programs in a week. I'm a gambler, but rolling on my odds on one university and one complicated retirement situation seems a little much even for me, so I'm grasping at straws to write one (or two!) applications for anywhere else. And I am particularly loath to strike this one from the list because the professor is my best fit on the planet. Is the lack of other support really enough to strike an entire application, if that's the case? But the thing is, while I don't currently see a good fit with the department, I wouldn't be alone and unsupported except for the one guy. I have a fantastic fit with both that one professor and with the university itself. There are lots and lots of people I could work with in departments all across the university, although no more than one per department. (Meaning that I would have this issue of "well, there's this one cool person" in every possible PhD application I could write for this university, not just for the anthropology department.) So I would love to get a PhD there, and there are tons of resources for me to draw on. When I contacted my POI, he pointed me to them. Except, somehow, none of those resources seem to help me make my case about departmental fit. However, I'm having trouble understanding how much of a problem my difficulty with the departmental fit thing indicates that I actually have. Although I don't think my fit with the department is great, I think it's possible that I'm missing connections because of my history background. In history, fit is a lot more "okay, so who works in your region?—they have three professors in your region, great, that's a good fit." In anthropology, more of it should be theoretical and methodological. I found it pretty natural to figure out where I'd fit in TPU's anthropology department, but I do think it's possible that the history thing is tripping up my ability to find connections here at this program. So I hope that's the case, and I hope it provides a better explanation for why I'm trying to force it! I don't want to force a fit that isn't there, but I have at least some clues that suggest the problem might just lie in my perception.

Thanks! Yeah, I'm much more familiar with the anthropological side of this particular scholarly problem than I am with the historical, but since I am generally more historical, I figured I should start getting caught up on that. (I'm out of upvotes.)

Oh, this struck a chord with me, too. Come sit by me and we will complain about our tribulations as people with moderately unpopular interests. I'll bring coffee. Can I chime in to ask the more experienced posters for advice on how to take that expansive view on theoretical frameworks, etc.? I've done so successfully with one of my two anthropology applications, I think, where there are four professors (who study different topics in different regions) I'd love to work with. (I am also applying to 3-4 history programs.) But I'm having problems with my second anthropology application, even though I love the idea of going there: it's a fabulous program generally and my POI wrote the book for my interests. (Different continent, though! I wouldn't be a total clone.) However, this program requires that I list at least two professors whose work is relevant for me, so that I can show I'm a good fit for the department as a whole. Reasonable! But I honestly can't find a compelling link with any of the other professors, despite poring over all their faculty webpages. I would love tips for creativity here: surely it isn't possible that a very large, very highly-regarded anthropology program only has one professor whose work is relevant for me? On the other hand, I'm linguistic anthropology and, faculty-wise, it looks to be about a three-and-a-quarter field program, so maybe it is possible. I will note that making my case for my fit with the first department came really naturally. I hope that's a sign that this problem is program-specific, not a mismatch between me and the entire discipline of anthropology.

Hello! Time to ask a question of the collective wisdom. Do you know of any historians who work on colonial language issues? Any region of the world is fine. I'm looking to expand my list of applications by one or two, so I'm searching for history professors who study colonial language. If I then research the department and find someone else who works on my region, that's a strong case for adding it to my currently too-short list of programs. Unfortunately, the only program I know of that fits this two-person relevance model is Washington. Vicente Rafael's books are the sort of thing I'm talking about, and they have interesting professors in my region, too! Problem: Washington requires an MA for admittance to the PhD, and I do not have an MA. Nor do I want one. I guess I'm open to considering that path if I strike out on PhDs this cycle, but for now, that requirement's a problem. Thanks in advance!

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but why do you disagree with her? What are your reasons for thinking that her argument is wrong?

Here are some small resources I often forget, but might be helpful in getting to the point of picking up the phone and calling the counseling service. Encouragement: http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/ http://calmingmanatee.com/1 You can refresh for more, although in the past year they've added some ones I find very unhelpful. So start with this one. The amount of time I have spent weeping at a manatee on a screen when life is overwhelming is...a lot. But it helps, so I have no shame at this, and neither should you.http://emergencycompliment.com/# Calm: http://www.calm.com/ http://naturesoundsfor.me/ http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/listen-to-the-most-relaxing-song-ever-170097 Not really in either category, but this site works like a good friend that talks you through it, with sort of a neuro- bent to understanding the different responses stress is causing in your brain: http://www.relaxonline.me.uk/sa1/index.html Warm wishes! We're just strangers on the internet, but we do care about you.