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knp

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Everything posted by knp

  1. It seems like the bones of a good SoP are there, but your language is very tentative. (Professors are not "teachers", e.g.; you're applying to PhD programs, yes? Then your professors are supporting you as your research becomes more independent.) You don't really sell why your work would be interesting, which is something you need to do—why is the "idea of [x]" important? Why should we care about its development? In general, I think your opening sentence and your last paragraph are the weakest parts. Why is this concept interesting, beyond the fact that it's interesting to you? If it's in your SoP, I know that you're considering studying it for graduate school. "I am considering this topic," therefore, could go unstated (or at least not foregrounded at the beginning and end). For an example of how you might change it, I think you might have something in the "renaissance" aspect (although what does that mean—just that more people were talking about the idea, or that more people were using it as a guide in their thinking about other topics, or what?). Perhaps you could start your essay with "In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Europe, the idea of [the Flying Spaghetti Monster] was growing ever more popular." That situates it in a context for why it's important from the get-go: we're talking about this because it was at one point very influential. Edit: I now see in the middle that you write that it's "a critical component of modernity," which is the sort of thing I was just asking for. I might push you to expand a bit on what that means more specifically, as well as to bring the importance earlier. And then I think your last paragraph might be too honest. Yes, many of us will change our topics after we enter graduate school, but part of this process seems to be an exercise in talking about your interests with just a little bit more certainty than you really have. (At least for self-doubters like you and me.) I don't necessarily think you need to not have the stuff about your openness to other paths, but the language needs to drastically change. Talk about it with more agency and with a more positive spin (it's not that you're unprepared, which is how the "just now starting" bit could be read, but that you're flexible or open-minded), and maybe throw in the parameters of what interests you in general. (This is something that would behoove you to do either in the introduction or conclusion anyway). For example, specifying somewhere that your interest in the history of the idea of [the Flying Spaghetti Monster] comes out of a broader interest in the intersection of intellectual and gender history in fin-de-siècle France. The alternative to making this version of your conclusion more positive is for you to scrap it and write a new one, I think. I always like to read my drafts aloud, too, to see if it "sounds like" something I could say. I get the feeling you haven't done that yet for this one. Although your writing is clear and never gets bogged down in anything weird, some of the sentences are just slightly awkward. For instance: "The other professor is [X]. There are two reasons for this." I find that pause unnatural; if I were reading it, I'd say, "The other professor is [Miley Cyrus], because of her work on both [Parisian social history] and [gender]." It's a good exercise for making your prose flow. Edit 2: I would also be interested, somewhere, in what types of sources you are thinking about working with, and to know whether you have worked with anything like them in your MA.
  2. If nobody responds in a couple of days, you might have more luck posting this in the "Literature/Rhetoric and Composition" forum. That's where many of the posters who would know hang out.
  3. I'm no expert, but I'd be willing: I think I'm going to end up with two SoPs, too, so I'm sympathetic!
  4. Can you tell us more about your interests and the background you have to follow up on those? From the preliminary information you've given, the answer could range anywhere from "probably not" to "you've got a better chance than most."
  5. One thing that has pleasantly surprised me is how nice all these people I'm emailing are.
  6. What is this author talking about that it's ridiculous and irresponsible to advise students not to go for unfunded PhDs? My god. Sure, I can imagine going for a PhD with 90% funding could be fine, like the author's friends. But "shocking" to advise people not to take a job that does not feel like paying them? I guess there are all sorts of opinions out there.
  7. Yes, as long as you can afford it and give yourself sufficient time to study for both. The GRE was very easy for me; I scored above the 90th percentile on the first PowerPrep, which I took cold, as well as on the actual test. But I had booked my LSAT for a month after that, and a month was NOT enough time to study enough to get my target LSAT score. I ate the cost of registration rather than get a score like 15 points below what I wanted. (Luckily I then decided law school was a dumb idea for me anyway, but the preparation for the two tests doesn't overlap that much!)
  8. Now, I'm not enrolled in graduate coursework—I'm doing my best to read up for graduate applications, but I'm certainly no expert. But personally, I read more footnotes than endnotes, because they're easier to glance over (me: lazy). Otherwise, I look at notes for any particularly interesting paragraphs. As rising star notes, though, this is frustrating when you flip back and just find a list of archival locations. But if I'm reading a 3-page mini-section quickly because it isn't the most relevant to what I find interesting in the book, I almost never bother. Or if I think the author is wrong or making weird assumptions, then I almost always check the notes. For example, when I found a very famous and much-respected book (published in the mid-90s) by an elder male professor whose acknowledgments thanked forty-eight men, his secretary, and his wife, you betcha that his assumptions got extra scrutiny.
  9. Oh, Texas A&M is one of the best schools on the planet for getting an education in maritime archaeology, no? I don't know how selective it is, or how long the list of other maritime archaeology schools is, but even I've heard it's really good. (And given my normal interests that's saying something.)
  10. Not a "favorite" exactly (hard to say yet), but I've been watching the Wet Hot American Summer TV series. When the professor didn't show up, I was thinking he just wasn't in this series. But, ouch, that parody of academia was a little close to home for something I was watching to not think about graduate school and fellowship applications. The words "tenure denied" just are not good escapist TV right now!
  11. Your interests sound fascinating, and in line with the global/transnational work that is on trend today. I wonder if this might help with the job market or, more short-term, the competitiveness of your applications? I feel like as a member here, I see two main categories in people's "research interests" posts. First come generic posts, which seem maybe too broad for graduate study. (Some number of these result from attempts to anonymize the poster's interests, which necessarily introduces vagueness.) Then there are the detailed, interesting posts that, at least to someone with no idea about that particular field of inquiry and state of current scholarship, sound promising and professional. Yours is in the latter category for me. So that's a good thing, even though Russian history is particularly dire. (Although if we're "lucky," Putin might create enough crises to inch it back up the priority list........:( ) I do want to point out the contradiction in asking for programs with good placement rates, and then being intimidated by selective programs. Not always, but the two tend to go together, so aim high! I am not particularly rah-rah about encouraging people to go to graduate school, but I am a big supporter of applying to all the schools you would like best, even if such schools are difficult to get into. You never know, and you can only shoot yourself in the foot by being too modest to apply to your dream place. (If you have 10 dream places, then yes, it's probably fine to apply to 8.) Go you! At the same time, I'm very glad I took time to work a job in America before applying to graduate school. My first one was alt-ac-y and thus not that far out of graduate school thing, but yes, so nice to have a paycheck and an apartment and normal American non-academic friends. 5/5 would recommend. I still think you sound like a great candidate for graduate school if you want to do that, but if you want to take time off now, it worked out really well for me. Oh, a PS on terms: SLC is either small or selective liberal arts college, I think (I usually see it SLAC? correct me if I'm wrong), and people on CHE fight about which S should be the predominant meaning. "Alt ac" is "alternative academic" careers, which I think I've seen people use for both "any job someone with a PhD chooses to do after deciding to leave the search for a job as a professor" and "jobs that are sort of related to academia but don't include being a professor." CC is community college, although I don't know how many jobs there are at community colleges for medieval historians like Telkanuru or, worse, people like me who do like 17th century Vietnam or some such. (No offense to early modern Vietnamese historians, but I think we're probably in the "obscure" boat together.) I've personally been assuming that if I want to teach mostly my field rather than world history and nothing else, which is a non-negotiable so long as I stay in academia, I won't be able to find employment at a community college. (Don't worry, I do have Plans B and C, as staying in academia is itself the negotiable part). Telkanuru, is there more medieval history in community colleges than I had thought?
  12. Spine surgery's a bitch, PM me if you want to talk to someone who's gone through it. It sounds like we have different problems, but who knows? I might still be able to answer questions.
  13. Before your parenthetical, here I was thinking that that was the coolest single person to exist!
  14. I try not to email them from a week before their university starts classes to two weeks after; because I am lazy, however, and sometimes don't look up their particular university schedules, I am generally waiting until late September to email the ones I haven't contacted yet. (Not all: I might email people from the University of Chicago, UGA, Stanford, and other places on the quarter system with late start dates now, while late September might be bad). The ones I've already emailed tend to get a short email (under 200 words is best). The ones I've written have all included three parts, in various combinations. 1) Hello my name is KNP and here is a 2-sentence-max summary of my academic project/interest. 2) Are you taking students this coming year? 3) Follow-up question, whether about a work of theirs I liked or about other places they'd suggest applying or something. It can be fine to ask to meet for coffee, I think, if you live within a short trip of their university or you happen to be visiting their area anyway. I've met one of my POIs since we were in the same city for a little bit and he has a reputation for being generous with using his time to help out younger graduate students. I thought we wouldn't have much to talk about, but it was a very nice conversation, and he made some helpful suggestions for my applications. So, I wouldn't say categorically don't request to meet, although I am not going to suggest meeting any other professor (I do not live somewhere convenient).
  15. Hey guys, I've mostly prepared as a historian, but my projected thesis topic is very interdisciplinary: the three books I see as models for my work are all by anthropologists who turned to history for the projects I want to emulate. So I think I'll be applying to about 5 history programs and about 3 anthropology ones, all at schools that are strong in both. I expect to contact POIs in about three weeks, since universities are starting back up and professors must be especially inundated right now. In addition to the "are you taking students" question, I expect to need to ask about applying to history or anthropology on a school-by-school basis. I did meet one lovely POI earlier this summer; he mentioned that if I wanted to apply to his anthropology department (and not just the history department in his school and take classes with him sometimes), I should apply to NSF GRFP. O, Christ! I thought. Another sort of application, for a fellowship I had not at that point even heard of, where I am only 90% sure what category of anthropology I fit into. (What's "other"?). And one with a quick-approaching deadline and a very low acceptance rate. So I am currently feeling rather inundated, and I am going to go work on my SOPs over lunch. Just: overwhelmed. In some ways, my preparation for this is really good, and in others, it's seriously flawed. (I assume that puts me in a very large category of applicants.) At the same time, it's a big world out there, and there's a lot to know in it. PS I am very annoyed that one of my schools requires both an academic SOP and a two-page "personal statement." Look, my usual SOP will probably have like 3 personal sentences in it. What more about me do you need to know? I am feeling quite ornery about having to remove those three sentences from the usual SOP, and come up with a lot of words about myself to fill the space instead. College admissions essays are a terrible genre ("here's a story about how I am excellent! verbal flourish") and I was very happy that I thought I was rid of them. Good luck all!
  16. On the topic of Wisconsin, I am almost definitely not applying to UNC-CH because of that state's own self-immolating war against education. I wouldn't recommend that as general advice, but one of my letter-writers told me that the chaos has made my POI start seriously trying to leave. It's a shame, because she's great, but perhaps if I get shut out this cycle and she finds a new job, being able to apply to work with her would be one silver lining.
  17. I am very supportive for half of Joan Callamezzo's comment, that languages are almost always a crucial part of what we do as humanities scholars, and yet I do think the "both French and German" thing is limited to the more Euro-based fields. The list of languages I have to know for my period and region is four long, with a very high average rating on the State Department difficulty scale, followed by French as a nice fifth that I assume most scholars can read, since Portuguese is one of the four. (I love that my research will be language-heavy!) But although I love how German sounds, I am not in a field where it is required or (I think) a common skill. Although yes, at the MA level, OP most certainly doesn't need anything beyond what they had in undergrad, and probably not even that. Although if you want to check out the next level of your language for one semester, OP, it could be worth the investigation! I love languages, and I've hated every first year and half of the second year language courses I've taken since I was fifteen, because really I am very tired of asking my classmates' names and what foods they ate this morning.
  18. I know almost nothing about his scholarship, but I met Joseph Koerner (Harvard) once at a talk, and he was just the nicest person. It's not often that I remember an academic for the loveliness of their personality, but he's one of those. Edit: his biography seems like he might have shifted his focus to (fin-de-siècle?) Vienna now, but I saw him talk about seventeenth-century Dutch painting and architecture.
  19. Surely Coursera or Udacity or your local university online or night classes at a nearby community college has an introductory statistics class? Some of those options are more expensive than others, but all should be far less expensive than another whole master's! Or can you find a meetup group doing such things in a city near you? I have taken a couple computer science classes that tend to be about $100 for 8 hours of instruction by lecture in a classroom in a local suburb. Although that may be more trendy, and thus easier to find, than statistics. Or could you just buy a statistics textbook and work through it? I always struggled with math and I still found intro statistics very easy (it may be quantitative, but it isn't much math, I think), so if you don't mind self-teaching that might be an option. Introductory statistics is one of the university world's most meat-and-potatoes courses, and there must be ways to get your hands on that knowledge without a two-year commitment. That would then give you a foundation to find more advanced skill sets/courses (more statistics? some economics? I have no expertise on what those would be), where I would suggest continuing with what worked for the first one. I don't have much advice about jobs until then, but if you could go back to being an assistant during the day, I think you could pick up at least a good part of the quantitative skill base you need at night. Having a goal like that, even if it's not the goal you're pursuing at your job, might help you feel less stuck while you work on your skill-building project. Whether to use those statistical skills to get into a master's in economics or something (hopefully with funding!), or to be able to get your foot in the door as an entry-level policy analyst where you can learn more skills on the job, I don't know. But I think there are options that are closer to you and much cheaper than enrolling in a program internationally. You mention being worried about credentialism; I can't speak to that in your field, but because quantitative research skills are often picked up through a combination of undergraduate courses outside one's major and learning on the job, I suspect that a social science research methods master's might be overkill, so long as you acquire the skills somehow.
  20. Just because it amuses me, but when somebody asked this question about CVs on the Chronicle forum, the thread went on for 24 pages. Academia sometimes really is a marvel, and you can take my tone there any way you like: http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,32865.0.html
  21. For folklore and medieval studies, maybe Harvard should be on your list? When I was a baby high schooler I was obsessed with majoring in folklore there, and I think it's strong in medieval studies, too. I know it's a reach for anybody, but it sounds like it would be a good fit, and that's the most important thing.
  22. If you live in the eastern United States, there are often local archaeology projects you might get involved in as a volunteer. (Maybe elsewhere too, but I have no idea.) One of my friends volunteers every weekend in the summer at a colonial-era dig outside our city. The more occasional volunteers get more menial tasks, but as you practice more, you can get to do more interesting things. I don't know how transferrable the skills are to Anglo-Saxon stuff, but it might be a way to get your feet wet and fingers dirty, and at least to figure out if you like that sort of thing.
  23. So you're mostly positive on Empire of Cotton, except that its economics are too basic? I'd love to hear more about what you think about it, since I'm interested but haven't read it myself. I was scared away from reading the longer version because the excerpt that appeared in the Atlantic was so wrong-headed. Its fundamental argument, as I read it, was that before the American Civil War, American cotton and American slavery were foundational to a huge part of the world economy. Then because of the disruption during and after the American Civil War, the production of cotton expanded globally into other areas where there was a lot of (free) labor available. The fundamental effect of the Civil War, then, was to globalize cotton and remove the connection between slavery and cotton, which would from then forward only be produced by free labor. The section of Beckert's argument about the new production of non-slave cotton is very lazy, however, which is unfortunate. The first half of his argument seems right, that disruption from the Civil War caused globalization of this industry, but his argument that now cotton was produced by "free" labor is vague at best. A thoughtful account might have analyzed what happened next, rather than lumping it all together as "free." Most cotton production ended up coming from India, followed by Egypt. What does "free" mean in those two contexts? Those were both under some form of British control - what were the implications of that? Was this a result of conscious British policy? Etc. If he'd talked about that, or does so in the book, my skepticism fades away. It feels like he got close to a really interesting and complete argument about how the Civil War changed cotton production globally, but by not examining what happened after the Civil War, he stuck the landing. Whether because of that laziness or some other cause, though, the facts Beckert produces in the Atlantic article are wrong. Beckert makes a big deal about how beginning during the Civil War (1861-1865), cotton was no longer produced by slaves: instead, it was produced by free laborers in India, Egypt, and Brazil. The same Brazil that abolished slavery in 1888? Sure, now slavery was a much smaller part of the base of labor for production than it had been in the United States, but you just can't say that cotton from Brazil in 1860 was "non-slave cotton," which he does. There are some small factual errors that really are small; there are others which make the reader doubt the entire piece, and a reference to "non-slave cotton [produced] in Brazil" in the 1860s is one of the latter.
  24. I haven't seen length per se affect anything, either, but I concur that I've seen people make judgments about style. While it's unfortunate that more feminine/frilly styles of dress are viewed as less professional, this does seem to be the case. For instance, in my last workplace, I wore a dress pretty much every day, but because I tended towards dark blue and red and grey shift and A-line dresses, rather than fancy sorority pink dresses, I never had a problem. That said, I also have friends (mostly in the tech industry), who've been called unserious just for the fact of wearing single-opening leg coverings rather than the preferred two-opening "pants." You may be in that situation, but that's not a work culture I know well enough to advise on.
  25. I'm living in my first house in a long time where you have to turn on the gas and then light the stove/stovetop with an actual match. Of course, 4 of the last 5 movies I have watched have, entirely by coincidence, featured houses/rooms/people blowing up because they turned on the gas and then took too long to light the thing. Great fuel for paranoia!
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