knp

You realize most people never have a "thing", right? Believing in having a "thing" is something, in my experience, that seems to be peculiar to those of us with major educational aspirations...most people don't actually think about jobs in terms of life-defining career passions. Having an okay job and coming home and investing in your hobbies, family, and/or friends is a perfectly happy and healthy way to live, and that is in fact how most people—those who aren't in poverty—live! If you want that, you are not wrong or unusual for wanting that. And many happy people without a "thing" are married to other people who value hobbies and stability more than rapid career advancement, but some number of those people are also married to high-powered-career-type individuals. Most academics are not married/partnered to somebody from a "comparable" school. They spend their lives with all sorts of people! The "comparable" school thing a very small pool, and with the whole diverse world of human experience, why would you constrain your heart like that?
Anyway, I don't mean to discount your doubts: it's definitely possible that you will be unhappy dating your boyfriend while you are still looking for your "thing." I can't answer that for you. But that's only one possibility—I want to affirm for you that that's not universal, so you could also be perfectly happy deciding that your "thing" is having a nice life, a nice job that never follows you home, and all the other perks that follow from stability and free time. It might totally be an awkward year before you get in somewhere! But it could also be totally fine.
As somebody who spends a lot of time fighting the your-career-is-your-life thing in Type A circles, even as I somewhat participate in that myself, I have a prescription that I think would help. Find some media where some of the main characters find happiness outside of their career. My first suggestion would be Parks and Rec. I can't think of a lot of other suggestions right now, but basically, you're looking for the opposite of the West Wing. 
That's because "I feel like so many people have told me (including my bf) that individuals in couples need to be totally individual and have their complete separate lives outside of each other in order for the relationship to flourish" makes me feel like you are getting ONLY the "passion! career! job! work!" messages. If that's so, I think you'd have an easier time deciding what you want if you had media that affirmed that you can be happy without being "rah rah career" every month of your life, to balance out the input you're getting. It's not like "passion! career! whatever!" is bad, at all! But there's many ways to be, you know.

Maybe this is just because I have been on both sides of the impostor syndrome feeling, but within academia, I am often more inclined to trust the academic talent of the less prestigiously-qualified half of any room. At this point in my life, my resume is nice and shiny. Graduated with honors, fancy college, whatever. Looks great on paper. When I got to my fancy college after a totally mediocre high school education, though, there were all these kids from prep schools even fancier than my college running around talking about their senior year thirty-page research projects (!) and their electives in tenth-year Japanese and jazz guitar, while my eyes bugged right out of my head at the idea of writing a college paper that was five whole pages long. What I learned over the seven years in which that transformation took place, and which I hope you will come to realize too, is that a glossy resume like mine has little to no correlation with intellectual depth. They may shine, but you are absolutely worthy of shining right along there with them. For an admissions committee to choose you, as one such excellent committee has already, means that they saw your talent. I don't want to give the impression that I think that all or even most students with more traditionally prestigious qualifications than yours are coasting by on a thin layer of polish and gloss. It happens, though, and because you are working for this, and working your way up, you should know that your admissions committee(s) chose you for you.
I don't think it's very helpful to think about this as a question of "talent," though, even though I just used that vocabulary. Instead, I find it much more effective to think of academia as a question of skill—skills can be nurtured and grown through practice, and a tremendous amount of academic practice is based not on talent, but on practiced skills. For the near future, for you, I think the rate at which you hone those skills is only going to accelerate. You mention that your analysis and prose have greatly improved in a year—it is really hard to make dramatic improvements once you're already at the top of your game. How many Olympians can easily shave 10 seconds off of their mile time? Not many. I probably could shave whole minutes off, though, with an investment of only a month or two, because right now I am a couch potato. I don't doubt that you'll have your work cut out for you in your PhD program, but (even beyond the fact that PhDs push even the most prestigiously-qualified student, so everybody should see their skills rapidly develop), the improvements you've been making make me feel even more certain that your skills haven't even come close to the peak you're going to end up attaining.
As a writing teacher, can I also make a more specific suggestion on your issues there?  It's much easier said than done, but can you try to relax a bit when you write? The most effective writing comes when people use words with which they are comfortable, whether that comfort is with "ain't" or "elucidate." Can you aim for that? If you feel limited by the words you currently know, it's a great idea to learn more—but don't go shoehorning weird new words in there to try to sound smarter. Expressing ideas simply and clearly is wicked hard, but it pays off in the reception of the work. (And sure, there's like .04% of the population that naturally speaks like books, and they're probably overrepresented such that they make up like 4% of academics. But here is a Macarthur-winning writer brainstorming with a childish ditty because hey sometimes the right words just aren't coming; Not being able to think of the right phrase immediately, all the time, is an affliction that besets all of humanity, even the geniuses!)
Maybe your right place has already accepted you! Maybe it hasn't, and you'll get into somewhere better. But, no matter where you end up, I hope you can find some of your own steps and ways of thinking about this so that you not only know in your head that you belong, but that you also feel it in your heart.
 

Yes, basically this. I would encourage you to meet a lot of people, and I think you're smart to want to be meeting people from a wider range of ages and contexts than your cohort in graduate school might offer. I think the whole categorizing impulse—of stacking everybody into a single 'social maturity' slot on a linear scale—is probably not going to serve you well. People can be naive or mature about different things, you know? Like you say that people's professional maturity and social maturity are different, I'd break down social maturity into a lot of different things. Not just, "romantic" and "friends," either, but regarding finances, or grieving, or ability to not take impersonal things personally, or news, or realizing that people have different sides, or articulating what your own emotional needs, or, or, or. (I'm afraid you may not agree with this example, but I bet if one of your friends developed a chronic illness, you'd have the social maturity not to freak out and in that panic never speak to them again. You might be surprised, based on my reading of your experiences, at how many people—ranging in age from high school freshman to bona fide grown adults past middle age—will do the latter!) Keep up with therapy. (Maybe try to find a therapist who pushes back on the black-and-white thinking? I'm not sure affirming "yes, you have a certain emotional age that is exactly analogous to all people of a different chronological age, despite the fact that people that age certainly also have a range of maturity" is helpful for you.) Join lots of meetups. Hang out with people of all ages, certainly including the younger ones, but don't ignore the older ones. (I feel like the average age of "will I ever find love? I've never had a boyfriend or kissed anybody" letter writers to the advice columns I read is [anecdotally], like, at least 30.) Try two new things a semester, or whatever number feels right to you. Are there support groups for your illness, or young people who've faced similar challenges, on your campus? That could also be a helpful outlet.

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.

You realize most people never have a "thing", right? Believing in having a "thing" is something, in my experience, that seems to be peculiar to those of us with major educational aspirations...most people don't actually think about jobs in terms of life-defining career passions. Having an okay job and coming home and investing in your hobbies, family, and/or friends is a perfectly happy and healthy way to live, and that is in fact how most people—those who aren't in poverty—live! If you want that, you are not wrong or unusual for wanting that. And many happy people without a "thing" are married to other people who value hobbies and stability more than rapid career advancement, but some number of those people are also married to high-powered-career-type individuals. Most academics are not married/partnered to somebody from a "comparable" school. They spend their lives with all sorts of people! The "comparable" school thing a very small pool, and with the whole diverse world of human experience, why would you constrain your heart like that?
Anyway, I don't mean to discount your doubts: it's definitely possible that you will be unhappy dating your boyfriend while you are still looking for your "thing." I can't answer that for you. But that's only one possibility—I want to affirm for you that that's not universal, so you could also be perfectly happy deciding that your "thing" is having a nice life, a nice job that never follows you home, and all the other perks that follow from stability and free time. It might totally be an awkward year before you get in somewhere! But it could also be totally fine.
As somebody who spends a lot of time fighting the your-career-is-your-life thing in Type A circles, even as I somewhat participate in that myself, I have a prescription that I think would help. Find some media where some of the main characters find happiness outside of their career. My first suggestion would be Parks and Rec. I can't think of a lot of other suggestions right now, but basically, you're looking for the opposite of the West Wing. 
That's because "I feel like so many people have told me (including my bf) that individuals in couples need to be totally individual and have their complete separate lives outside of each other in order for the relationship to flourish" makes me feel like you are getting ONLY the "passion! career! job! work!" messages. If that's so, I think you'd have an easier time deciding what you want if you had media that affirmed that you can be happy without being "rah rah career" every month of your life, to balance out the input you're getting. It's not like "passion! career! whatever!" is bad, at all! But there's many ways to be, you know.

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.

I never had to 'catch up' in this particular way, but when I had my project of 'catch-up' in a couple other social dimensions, here's what I did.
Read a lot of advice columns, e.g. Savage Love. It helps you realize other people are having the same issue...or are having other issues that you now might understand a little better! I don't know how it is in computational biology, but my field requires a couple really hard (from an English background) languages. So I've spent a lot of time in language classes. One thing that everybody always talks about in language class is how it is much better to be the worst speaker of the language in the class than it is to be the best student. The way learning works, as long as you start out able to keep up at all, you will progress much more rapidly than the others. Usually at the end of the class, all the speakers are about the same level, so the more advanced ones were occasionally bored, but the lowest-level student will have rocketed up to match them. I wonder if this might be a helpful way to think about your social relationships, per St Andrews Lynx. You will likely do better to find people who are bringing something cool to the relationship, even if sometimes you're out of your depth, than somebody whose only positive traits for you are that they're about at your "social level." If that's all you needed to have in common, you might have been friends with the other kindergarteners in kindergarten. But relationships need more than that, so find the meetups suggestions and work on finding the 'more than that.' Because this seems to be a source of anxiety for you, I'd try to find a biweekly or monthly therapist, because you're embarking on a big project and it will make the project nicer if you can check in occasionally with somebody about how it's going. Try not to have sexual relations with people you actively look down on. Getting physical with someone you not just don't respect, but who 'repulses' you, is both a shitty thing to do and, if you keep doing it, will make developing a healthy attitude about sex and/or romance much harder in the long run.

The admissions version of this:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense

Yep! That's how relationships work. I am, at this point, very friendly, very social, love people. (At least on the academic scale: on the population-of-the-United-States scale, I'm a mild introvert.) I have more in common with you biographically than you might think, although I do not and will not disclose the specifics on this website, whether publicly or over PM. But I'm now at the very friendly and comfortable with basic social interactions stage. I have also never had a relationship, whether a passing friendship, a dating thing, or one of my best friends, where all of those things aligned. People have too many needs and wants! I never expect to find a relationship like that, either. But my human relationships are based on having a lot of things in common, or sometimes just one thing in common. Like, I have a friend whom I don't like all that much, and who I don't think particularly likes me either (we're solidly neutral on the 'how great is this person' evaluations), but we have very compatible habits of how to check in while working on something else. Not a core friendship, but it is a friendship.
So, anyway, yeah. You're trying to skip too many steps in your relationships. You gotta start with casual friendships—which not that bad, so far as these projects go. (I had to start with 'you and the guy working at the coffee shop exchange a single pleasant sentence each about the song on the radio' as something that initially seemed impossible.) I've never been in love. Maybe two-thirds of the people in first-year graduate school haven't, either. I also wouldn't be surprised if I graduate from here in my 30s without having been in love. But even if I don't go on a single date in the next decade, I'll construct a full life anyway. Also, on your whole extremely specific checklist, this is not how to go about this. Unfortunately, a word I use because many of these will be boring, you have to start with casual dates: you do not want to go into a coffee expecting "life partner" or even "brief, life-altering experience on the model of 500 Days of Summer." (Do not model your life on that movie.) You gotta go in hoping for a nice half hour with an interesting human. From this you figure out what types of people are actually compatible with you.

Yes, basically this. I would encourage you to meet a lot of people, and I think you're smart to want to be meeting people from a wider range of ages and contexts than your cohort in graduate school might offer. I think the whole categorizing impulse—of stacking everybody into a single 'social maturity' slot on a linear scale—is probably not going to serve you well. People can be naive or mature about different things, you know? Like you say that people's professional maturity and social maturity are different, I'd break down social maturity into a lot of different things. Not just, "romantic" and "friends," either, but regarding finances, or grieving, or ability to not take impersonal things personally, or news, or realizing that people have different sides, or articulating what your own emotional needs, or, or, or. (I'm afraid you may not agree with this example, but I bet if one of your friends developed a chronic illness, you'd have the social maturity not to freak out and in that panic never speak to them again. You might be surprised, based on my reading of your experiences, at how many people—ranging in age from high school freshman to bona fide grown adults past middle age—will do the latter!) Keep up with therapy. (Maybe try to find a therapist who pushes back on the black-and-white thinking? I'm not sure affirming "yes, you have a certain emotional age that is exactly analogous to all people of a different chronological age, despite the fact that people that age certainly also have a range of maturity" is helpful for you.) Join lots of meetups. Hang out with people of all ages, certainly including the younger ones, but don't ignore the older ones. (I feel like the average age of "will I ever find love? I've never had a boyfriend or kissed anybody" letter writers to the advice columns I read is [anecdotally], like, at least 30.) Try two new things a semester, or whatever number feels right to you. Are there support groups for your illness, or young people who've faced similar challenges, on your campus? That could also be a helpful outlet.

Oh, sweetie! No, you're totally right: you need to be doing the opposite of this. You don't have a whole lot of time and space to experiment, I realize, but can you try reverse outlining your chapters? Write summaries in your own words—I am comfortable enough with my material to allow some quotation, but for really difficult readings, I only let myself paraphrase. There's lots of other tips and tricks you can try, but you want to force that extra step of comprehension, not just remembering. Is there a study skills center you can go to through your university?
That sounds about like my attention span, so don't worry about it. If at all possible, try to make those breaks good breaks, though. Go divert your attention into something else—look out the window, do some stretches, make yourself a copy and try to think about other things—for ten or fifteen minutes, so that you can come back a little refreshed. (Getting exhausted and then clicking around the internet for twenty minutes as a 'break' will do much less for your renewed attention span.)
I'm sure other posters will have more thorough advice, but you can do this!

I am planning to start my PhD in the fall. This deeply depressing (mis)ordering of priorities, which seems to be all-to-common amongst grad students, is what makes me the most worried about doing a PhD. What you are suggesting is that we sacrifice (or, at best, delay) the most fundamental and intimate aspects of our lives - financial security and having a family - for our work.  If you went to a job interview, and the interviewer offered you the job, a job which you would no doubt enjoy, but told you that the pay was so terrible that you would go into debt if you took it, and you would be unable to have a family for many years, would you take that job? No, you would laugh yourself right out of the door. Why is graduate school any different? The second sentence in this quote offers a clue. You imply that the only alternative to grad school is to work as a "manager at the local grocery store five nights a week". As @telkanuru wrote:
@DCguy, I think you already know this. I'm pretty sure you know that grad school and working at a grocery store are not the only two options in life, especially for someone who is smart enough to get into grad school. Instead, what you are implying is that grad school is the only worthwhile path in life. And that is why you are suggesting that we sacrifice, again, the most fundamental aspects of our personal happiness and wellbeing in order to do it.
So, why am I worried if I don't share your opinion, or your priorities? I am worried because grad school is a process of socialization. I am worried because if the rest of my cohort shares your priorities, I will be constantly looked down upon for going home to spend time with my wife and family, instead of burning the candle at both ends during another late night at the library. Perhaps that isn't you. Or perhaps you weren't planning to have a family that soon anyway, so delaying it is fine. But mostly, I am worried that you are contributing to this socializing process right here on gradcafe, before us new students even get to our programs, and reinforcing this toxic culture of sacrifice for the next generation.
Every aspiring and current grad student should print out this quote and stick it on the wall above his or her desk. I too am absolutely shocked that such a statement is at all controversial. Thank you to @telkanuru, @Sigaba, @Calgacus and @TMP, who show us that there is a better way. 
 

Oh, bummer! Yes, this is totally a real thing that happens. I have not been in exactly this situation, but I've seen rumblings at the edge of it. What follows are a couple sets of ideas, some better than others; I've also included some of the most obvious cons of each idea, and I'm speaking from experience on few of them. I am not sure how much traction you are going to get if these professors aren't comfortable talking to you—any of the female students—at the official holiday party (!). They should be managing this themselves, so I'm cynical about how much things will improve, but hopefully one or two of these ideas will help you shift the dynamic in a positive direction, even if you don't eliminate the problem. The organizing principle is, these are all ways to break up the current (bad) group dynamic in ways that are cheerful, non-threatening (specifically in a way that will reduce your professors' resistance to your interventions), and difficult for them to avoid.
First, where is the male student in this? It sounds like he isn't be in your cohort, so this may not be for you to do, but somebody with whom he is on speaking terms and has studied or worked with him for at least half an hour in the past should try to get his help fixing this. He should never ever ever—excuse my emphasis—be standing with a group of male faculty at an academic-social event without any other students in it. If he sees this happening, he should call some of the female students over (1-3), or, if he's too 'shy', he should (outside of such gatherings) encourage female students to interrupt the all male-groups and (in the moment) make sure to welcome the entering students into the conversation. Another good strategy would be for him, next time he gets a beer with one of the professors, to say, "hey, you know it would be really great if Jane and Maria came too," so that a pattern of group happy hour beers starts to emerge.
If he is an avowed non-feminist and you know this about him, a couple of his friend students might ask to be invited along to the next beer without mentioning any gender equity reasons for this intervention. If he is sufficiently greedy for attention that even this does not fly....I'm sorry for you, that's very selfish of him. Or, just do it yourselves. "Hey professor so-and-so, are you going to that talk? Do you want to get a beer afterwards with me and Kat?" Or, "Hey my supervisor so-and-so, do you want to come out with me and all your other three advisees?"
Another one I've heard of, in more business settings, is for people to bring their partners, and that afterwards, that gesture proves the relationship is on a trustworthy footing even when the partners stop coming. I think this would not apply as well to academia, unless their partner works in a closely related field, or how you could suggest it, but I did hear people saying it had worked for them.
A final point: do not lead by fixating on having beers alone with anybody, or trying to deny that to the male student. ("If they won't have beers alone with us, they shouldn't do it with anybody!" No! Danger!) I worry that this is obvious and I'm overreacting to you just venting, but that's a horrible idea. Because you're at the beginning of the more social side of these relationships, the word for the semester is equity, not equality. It takes time to develop the relationship to the point that you're hanging out alone with a faculty member. The male student has that, and you don't, yet—it sounds true that the reason you don't have it yet is sexism, but do not start off with a crusade to get the faculty to refuse to have drinks with anyone alone. First, you have to develop the groundwork out of which hanging out alone might more naturally come. Once you've seen how that goes—if the faculty are generally receptive, but there's a lingering pattern where many of the faculty are still hanging out with the male student, and only the male student, very frequently—it might be a policy worth suggesting. (Or if more male students enter and the pattern extends that way.) In most departments, that would be a cutting off your nose to spite your face kind of situation, but I'm willing to the admit that a few departments exist where maybe this way of achieving a particular facet of equality is the best of a bunch of bad options. If one male student continues to get a one-on-one beer once a month with one faculty member, or twice a semester with maybe two faculty members, write it off as them having clicked particularly.
In general, although I have great, supportive relationships with several older male professors, it is disappointing that I don't have any close female mentors in the same way. Some of this disappointment, however, is global for our demographic cohort of young, professional women. I end with this article because your situation is very bad and I didn't want to be interpreted as fatalistic at the beginning: you can absolutely do a lot to make this better. However, I think milder forms of this problem will persist for us as long as we're early career: I liked how this article captured my mix of frustration about this and optimism about changing those dynamics myself someday, so I wonder if you might like it, too. http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/10/cant-find-a-mentor-look-to-your-peers.html

As one of the resident experts on applying multiple years in a row -- yes, you can definitely reach out to POI again. I did this after my first application cycle and I do think it helped me in year 2. BUT I would add a few big caveats. Apologies for the bluntness:
First, be aware of how much/little interest the professor showed in your project to begin with. I would definitely reach out if you had meaningful contact (as in-- the professor knows who you are) before admissions decisions were released. E-mailing a professor who never really showed interest in you to begin with in order to ask favors is not a great idea, and may turn them off for next cycle. Also, don't assume that professors will remember you or your application. An e-mail that was AWESOME to you because your favorite academic said "sure, go ahead and apply!" was probably not that meaningful to them -- when making contact again, always remind them of who you are (by using same e-mail chain as last year for instance) and your project idea. Be formal. Use your full name. 
Second, wait! Wait a few weeks or months. They're recruiting their incoming cohort, and because you're not part of it, they might be a little annoyed if you're asking for their time when they didn't admit you. Summer might be a good time to touch base again, or early next fall. You don't have to reveal that you didn't get in anywhere else-- just talk up how much you continue to be interested in their program. 
Finally, do NOT simply make contact in order to ask your POI how to strengthen your application for next cycle. To many professors, that is a very selfish request-- you're essentially asking them to do the work of reviewing your application again in order to give you advice. It will show a lot of maturity if YOU tell THEM what you are doing to refine your project idea and/or strengthen your application for next cycle. Then, after you have showed that you are committed to the work of making YOUR application better, you can indirectly ask if they have any additional suggestions. Forming a relationship with a POI is more important in terms of your admissions prospects than getting them to divulge exactly how/whre your application fell short-- many departments can't and won't share this detailed information.
Some examples:
NO: Hey prof X! I wasn't admitted to your program and am really disappointed, so can you divulge private admissions information about why I wasn't selected? This may involve digging up my application, writing me an e-mail, and otherwise spending tons of time telling me what I can do to get in your program next year?
YES: Hey prof X! I did not find a good fit in terms of program and funding packages last admissions cycle, so I have decided to try again this year. In the meantime, I am working on / continuing to read on / presenting my previous work at ___ in order to strengthen my application. I am writing because I continue to be interested in your program for XYZ reasons. Over the past months, I have been doing ___ work, which is really preparing me for graduate research because ____. I have become especially interested in ___, so am planning to foreground that in my statement this year. I just wanted to let you know that I continue to be interested in your PhD program, particularly your strengths in ___.   -----> And then maybe if you have a pleasant exchange you can add: I was wondering if you had any suggestions or advice as I prepare my proposal and application materials for this cycle? I thought perhaps I could strengthen ___, but do let me know if anything else stands out. 
 

just wanted to update everyone as an applicant last year who didn't do well. last year i applied right out of undergrad and only got one unfunded offer. i decided to work abroad and it was an amazing experience! also, i got interviews at the (only) 2 PhD programs I applied to for this round. 
some lessons: not going straight to a PhD isn't the end of the world-it can actually help a ton in terms of personal growth
a year can make a huge difference in terms of acceptances! and keep in touch with POIs always
 

I assure you, the snakes are very real...:D so funny

I have a cold and I have to teach.  Ugh.
Also, can we talk about pet adoption for a second. Completely unrelated to academia, but hey, so are a lot of things.
 I am a conservationist and have three rescue pets and think it is important to take care of our environment and the animals we bring into the world.   However, I think the adoption scene has gotten ridiculous.  They have lost sight of the goal.  And the adopt don't shop rhetoric is great, until you think of the ramifications.  The end goal is not to get everyone to adopt pets.  The end goal is to not have a need to have an animal shelter because pets are being kept by responsible pet owners.  In which case, we will need responsible breeders who care about the health and well-being of their dogs to breed puppies.  But currently, it is seen as morally reprehensible to even consider buying a puppy from a breeder rather than a shelter, and breeders are looked down on as worse than Trump supporters.  And the only thing in our shelters is pit bulls and Chihuahuas because for whatever reason irresponsible people keep breeding these two breeds of dogs.  We can't even have pit bulls in an apartment so you can't adopt them.  So, what if you want a dog of a specific breed?  "Go to a breed specific rescue" people will say.  Well, my friend did just that.  She is looking for a mini poodle and the poodle rescue in our area actually had one that would be perfect for her.  She is a single woman with no kids or other pets and plenty of time to spend looking after a dog.  But, the rescue only adopts to people who have had prior experience with poodle hair.  So, how could she get experience without owning a dog like that beforehand?  She can't.  So, she has to buy a dog from a breeder in order to gain that experience so that she can adopt some day down the line.  Well, that is convoluted.  They should offer classes in poodle hair care or something, but just disallowing the adoption is crazy, imo.
That rant probably didn't make sense.  All I am saying is that I see problems down the line for pet ownership if we continue to go down the road we are going down, and while it is important to shut down puppy mills and the like who torture dogs for money, we need to focus more on responsible pet *ownership* rather than just where you get your pet from.
Also, since I am already pissing off everyone who owns pets... I like purebreds as much as the next person, and I think we should keep breeding purebreds because you can get an idea of temperament and stuff from a specific breed, but the people who are mixing the dogs to make "Chi-weenies" and "Shi-poos" are probably doing us a service, as most purebreds are inbred and have health problems. 
I don't mind if you argue with me.  I just see these problems and I don't see anyone even talking about them, and I want answers, haha.

I have a snacking problem, especially while studying. Have you tried getting low carb, high protein snacks? Less fatty nuts, hummus (with cucumbers, carrots and celery rather than pita), and fruit have helped me. Also tea. Tea was a lifesaver when caffeine was starting to wreck my whole system in ways that legitimately interfered with my work, plus it was a much healthier addiction than ginger ale/sugar-loaded lattes/juice/hard cider.
My primary concern with a juice fast would be its impact on stress and energy levels, which could make it more difficult to think critically, articulate ideas, complete tasks, or not snap at colleagues. Don't make school any more miserable than it has to be with extreme dieting.

@eternallyephemeral Just FYI, most people in PhD programs in cultural studies—history, art history, regional studies, anthropology, sometimes poli sci, English literature of the non-US, etc.—will end up spending a lot of time in the region they study by the time they graduate. This does produce a classist effect for anyone lower class who wants to study a region to which they a) don't have family, regional, or cultural ties, b ) have no work experience in and c) go to unsupportive PhD programs that only provide support for a few months' of work abroad, you're right. There may be ways to ameliorate that further, but because you can't be an armchair researcher of other cultures any more (i.e. studying it without leaving your metaphorical house), somewhere between most and all cultural studies PhD programs support their students getting significant experience in whatever region they're studying. You're right that you do, in almost all cases, need experience working in that region to get an academic job...but it needs to be professional experience, which most PhD programs should be designed to give you. Personal experience often helps, but you can also acquire personal experience with a culture even if you start doing so past age 18.

@ExponentialDecay I think that's common in most fields, but I haven't seen it much in history: it and anthropology seem to be the two most lackadaisical about actual credits-in-discipline. I might have seen that requirement in one department, but most of the programs to which I applied did not have a credits-in requirement at all. I still marvel that they let me into my program when I had, depending on how you stretch the definition, either three or six credits in this discipline before I started this PhD.
That doesn't mean that you don't have to have a lot of relevant knowledge or work, but that the definition of 'relevant' is a lot broader. For the applicant, this simultaneously provides flexibility and the potential for headaches acquired trying to understand what counts as 'relevant.' The most common move into history I'm aware of, for example, is for people to go from regional (or theme)/literature studies departments: from classics, from American studies, from Chinese language and literature, etc. 
@RDG1836 The three broad areas in which you'll want to evaluate your preparation, I think, are 1) region/period familiarity, 2) language skills, and 3) background in the discipline.
First a bit of background on divisions of study, because I can't tell how familiar with the discipline you are. As far as I understand, history is divided up in professional chunks by region and period. 'Region' may be country or world region; you could say 'Russia' or 'central Asia' depending on the venue and focus, e.g.. I believe that the three divisions of period people talk about most are modern, early modern, and pre-modern (which might be subdivided into 'medieval' and 'ancient' but I may be out of date on that latter one especially). So basically all historians—although history of science jumps to mind as a possible exception—will identify in groups based on those two factors. Over at that table in the cafeteria are the historians of modern Latin America, and over there are modern Europe, and over there are early modern Europe. Of course we are all interdisciplinary and love global perspectives nowadays, but as an applicant you want to describe yourself as somebody who either fits into one of those identities—I study modern central America—or draws connections on one main dimension. (E.g., "I study the early modern Mediterranean and connections between Europe and north Africa" is very cohesive and no problem.) I worry I am over-specifying, but I mostly want to warn you away from "I study all of Asia over five hundred years." So when I talk about the region/period you want to study, this is the scale I'm talking about.
1) So, how can you get adequate familiarity with the region/period combination with which you will initially identify yourself (and probably be encouraged to break out of later)?
Lots and lots of ways! Do you have any coursework on that region/period, especially coursework that involved research papers of 5+ and ideally 15+ page papers? If yes, that's great! That's why lots of people come into history from film studies or political science, etc.: if you want to study, say, post-war Europe, a background in studying either Czech resistance cinema or the economic origins of NATO could help you out! Have you gone to any libraries and read books? That's a start! More on that later. How did you decide this interested you?
A side note: I don't suppose you've worked on any film or anything with a historical component, and gained some interest that way? I can pretty much guarantee you an acceptance to one or several master's programs if part of your story is, "my interest in the history of the incorporation of immigrant communities in the United States was piqued by having to do some research on 1960s Chinatown for that Bruce Lee movie last year, and I'm looking to come to your master's program to learn more about it professionally." Most accepted students obviously don't have this, but with all the tremendous historical work on mid-century America going on on TV this decade, I thought it was worth a mention on the off-chance.
2) Do you know the languages of the region/period you want to study? If you want to study primarily Anglophone parts of US history, you might want to lazily start doing Duolingo French or something, or brushing up on whatever high school language you had, but you don't really have to worry about it. If you study a region with a higher language barrier from English, but you know many or all of the relevant languages pretty well—whether that background is heritage, academic, or other—you might look up whether there are any other languages all the other scholars in your region/period seem to use, but otherwise don't worry about it. If you want to study China or classical Greece or something else where there are several languages and/or the language(s) are really hard, and you know them poorly or not at all, it's time to hold your own feet to the fire and start learning the relevant languages as intensely as possible.
3) You do need to become familiar with some of the academic conversations to which you'd like to contribute in history. Are you? You'll basically only be already if you have more courses in the discipline or have spent more time in the library reading academic monographs than you seem from your first post. You don't need to be a master of all your questions, but only by reading real history from the last 10, maybe 10-15, years are you going to find out what kind of questions we are all occupied with now. Luckily, this really doesn't need an academic background in it! The library and academia.edu, as well as any alumni online access you may have from college or JSTOR's three free articles are all valuable ways to get started. I am tired and have written a lot tonight, so I will not give any more advice on this, but I just wanted to say that in history's case, familiarity with the relevant history is perhaps most productively conceptualized as a question that follows familiarity with period/region.

Am I a bit late? But: your (written) English is [redacted] phenomenal. You mentioned repeating the process by which you learned English with German. All I can say is that if your language learning process works even almost as well this time, you will be absolutely stone-cold fine.
I am a bit surprised by the Latin/German parallel, but after you made the point about your difficulties with grammar, I am inclined to think that they will both be about the same level of difficulty for you, given that they both have case systems and their gender systems are a bit more complicated than the one in French. Given those similarities, however, I would simultaneously whichever one you learn first will help you learn the other one more easily. 
I do second or third the idea that you should look at what kinds of sources you'd most like to read before you make the commitment to one or the other complete, though. Perhaps looking at the sources in the notes of your several favorite books or articles would be a good idea?

It might be helpful for you to identify what kinds of sources you are interested in studying and to decide on the languages you need from there. Are the 16- and 17th-century texts on prostitution, witchcraft, etc. you're interested in written in Latin or the vernacular? The language requirements exist, at least essentially, to demonstrate your ability to execute the particular kind of research you want to do.
For the intellectual history of early modern Europe, Latin is typically crucial. I imagine beginning there might be best given the scope of your interest. But perhaps your focus on social history leads you more often to German and Italian language texts, so maybe those languages would be more useful to you. I agree with xypathos that it is a good idea to reach out to a professor with this question about how best to prepare yourself for your research interests.

What @telkanuru says here is spot on. And I don't think it's meant to be accusatory or pessimistic about your life choices. It's just a reality that is the more accurate answer/reframing to your initial question.
@Janeway01 I would also gently advise against buying in too fully about what a terminal MA will provide in the way of job prospects. I had a terminal MA, and while it was not from a high prestige program, it was a traditional program from a major state school that was fully funded. I assumed that this would qualify me for more teaching jobs (with higher guaranteed pay), museum/public history jobs, federal jobs, and higher ed admin jobs. I can tell you that in my experience, it barely earned me a single interview in each of those fields, let alone a job. The state of the over-saturated academic market means that many PhDs are settling for community college jobs, and increasingly looking to break into "alt-ac" fields like the others mentioned. This means that someone with an MA must then compete with both PhDs (who have more specialized education) and BAs (who have less education but have gained a couple years full time experience and networking by being in the workforce instead of in school). Personally, I found there was little room to make my MA shine given the competition. Ultimately I ended up going back for the PhD, which I had sort of intended all along. But the fact that I struggled so much finding a solid career with my MA sped up that process a bit.
Like I said, I don't say this to be negative. I just think terminal M.A.'s really oversell their marketability, particularly those that are unfunded and are looking to make tuition money. And of course this doesn't mean that nobody with an MA will find a job. I would just caution that for as awful as the academic job market is, the market in "alt-ac" fields like those you mention are not vast improvements. It sounds like you're already working and have been assured of a raise if you get your MA, which is nice. But if you plan on changing careers, it would be helpful to do as much networking and as many internships as you possibly can while your in your MA. Chances are those will be vastly more helpful on the market than whatever title they put on your degree.
If you're interested, here's a controversial article that the Chronicle ran last year. It has it's flaws, to be sure, and I don't think it should really be taken literally. But I think it's worth a look.
Best of luck with your degree and your future plans!

First, the good news. YES, you can change your academic path. I did it and so have many others on here. The key is being able to convincingly articulate your interests in your SOP and having good recommendation letters. It also helps if you can convince a faculty member they want to work with you. 
Have you taken any undergraduate history courses? Are you able to articulate a time period and/or region/theme of interest for you in history? If the answers to both those questions is no, then it's going to be difficult for you to get into a good master's program. If that's the case, you may want to try taking a few history courses at a local institution to help you refine your interests and get good letters of rec in history.
That aside, make sure that academia is for you. Check out the forums on the Chronicle of Higher Ed's site to get a sense of what academia is like. Then, go check out VersatilePhD to see why people are leaving academia even after getting an advanced degree. It's difficult to know if you'll like academia until you're in it because, quite frankly, it is basically nothing like your undergraduate experience. I'm not sure what you dislike about the film industry but it has more in common with academia than you might be interested in.
Good luck!

I have a colleague whose writing sample and SOP each had multiple typos, and he got in to just about every school he applied to. Which is not say that noticing typos in your materials after the fact isn't anxiety producing -- seriously, don't reread your stuff after it's sent -- but just that a typo (or many!) isn't at all disqualifying.  Take heart!