maelia8

If you're trying to decide between 13" and 15", I'd definitely go with the 13. I have an older Macbook Pro 15" and it's a pain in the rear dragging it to and from campus. Admittedly the new models are lighter, but a 13" Pro or Air is lighter still, and it really, really makes a difference. I'm in a social science program and I still need my laptop on campus almost every day.

I went to a upper middle-tier SLAC for undergrad, and almost all of our profs in the history department went to a top ten R1 school for grad. The reputation will count for a lot, and you should still get enough teaching experience at a top tier institution.

To all of you who didn't get in this cycle but are planning on applying again next cycle, I just want to say how incredibly impressed I are by your passion, diligence, and will to succeed. Rejection feels awful no matter what the circumstances, and it can be really terrifying to contemplate putting yourself out there again next year. If I hadn't been lucky enough to be accepted in my first cycle, I'm not sure that I would have had the confidence to go for another round, so I want to let all of you know how badass and brave you are. I wish you all the best of luck next cycle

You can also get on-campus jobs that pay significantly better than $12/hour. I am a Ph.D. student and have a part-time, extremely flexible (10-12 hours per week) job in the Research IT department, where I help them with website debugging on our university website platform, and they pay me $28/hour. It's a nice little pad of extra money for travel and buying new tech when the time comes.

@aberrant concerts and campus groups are also great! At my campus, students get reduced price tickets to theater events, often by famous performers, and I often get together groups of grad students to go to such events together. I'm also a member of my schools martial arts association, and working out with people is another great way to make friends without drinking and partying late at night.

I also recommend activities like going on hikes or having board game nights or going shopping together as things that you can do with other students in your cohort besides drinking and staying out late at night. Having picnic lunches together can also be lots of fun

@attackonthedoctor the same thing was true for me. I only got accepted to one school, it was my top choice, and I came from a small semi-local SLAC. I did get waitlisted at two other equally good institutions, but considering the level of naïveté that I went in with, it's a miracle that I was so lucky. I knew a little bit about fit, but knowing what I know now, I realize I was really just shooting in the dark and got lucky by hitting the bullseye.

It's 4am, I ate too many garlic fries eight hours ago, I just woke up with a bad stomachache, and I'm all out of antacids. NOBODY IS SUPPOSED TO BE AWAKE RIGHT NOW. AGH. Sorry that this is irrelevant to grad school (except for the fact that I ate the fries at our weekly cohort bar night), but it is creepy being awake at this time, alone and in a fair amount of gastric distress.

My interest in my historical field, German colonialism and imperialism, developed over time. I'm of German heritage, so the progression went somewhat like this: Interest in German language -> Interest in history -> interest in colonialism/imperialism, with the German language interest beginning the high school, the interest in history during the first year of college, and the interest in imperialism/colonialism in the second year. The taking-off point for the latter was reading Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, interestingly enough.

I talk to my parents about what I do in grad school all the time, and even though they don't understand everything, they're always happy to listen I am dating another graduate student (in a completely different field; I'm in humanities and he's in sciences), and I find it fascinating to trade our completely different fields, as well as what he's doing in his 4th year as opposed to what I'm doing in my first year. I also love talking to my sister about what I do and often wax quite poetic, and though she's still in undergrad she seems to find it interesting. I'd go ahead and tell him about what you do at least every couple of day, but keep it broad and not too long, and let him ask questions as he pleases to see what aspects he's interested in.

THIS, so much. I really, really value my sleep, and if I get less than 8-9 hours, I just fall asleep everywhere at random times of the day and can't seem to get anything done at all. I was talking to fellow cohort members today about sleep and one guy was saying that he can get by with 5-6 hours every day and drinking tons of coffee. Why are my "excessive" sleeping and refusal to rely on caffeine indicative of lower work ethic? Ugh.

@kotov I specialize in the Imperial Period, more specifically the overseas and external European empire controlled by the Kaiserreich prior to World War I. I'm riding the wave of Empire studies and Global/Transnational history, so let's hope the hype doesn't die out any time soon.

The depressing thing is that I live in a part of California that is extremely ethnically diverse, so the minute I leave campus and go downtown, the streets are filled with black, latino, and asian americans. It makes going in to my mostly white department feel like I took a flight to another state.

I've met Ursula K. Le Guin at an intimate reading and book signing with 30 people. It was amazing. She is one feisty and awesome old lady and I just can't get over how lovely she was.

Since I'm a Germanist, I rely a lot on Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Jürgen Osterhammel, Sebastian Conrad, Geoff Eley, and David Blackbourn to understand the development of German studies analytical frameworks over the last thirty years. I also really like the more specific studies of Isabel V. Hull, Andrew Zimmerman, and Susanne Zantop.

In my cohort of 20, there are 4 international students, and the average in the years above me is around 3-4 per year. The majority of these come from English-speaking Commonwealth countries (Britain, Australia, Canada), although we have a few PhD students from China, India, and especially Germany. We also have several people in our cohort who are US citizens but were born and spent their childhood/teens in other countries, in this case Mexico and Morocco. I'd say the foreign diversity is pretty solid, but the domestic ethnic diversity leaves something to be desired (I think there are two Latinos and ten Asian-Americans in my entire department of 150 students, and not a single black student).

I didn't have any clear idea of what I wanted to major in when I entered undergrad, but by the end of my freshman year, it had become clear to me what I wanted to do and I stuck with that all the way through. However, I tried an awful lot of different courses before making that choice, and my freshman year transcript looks like a perfect patchwork quilt of introductory courses in different fields. My sister, on the other hand, has changed majors about five times, most significantly from arts to sciences in her junior year, and it will take her five years to graduate. She seems really happy with all of her academic adventuring, though, and I don't think it's hurt her in any way.

Just a heads-up, UCB does not offer a history MA, so if you plan on applying there, you will have to apply directly to the Ph.D. program.

I'm the sort of person for whom the following is true: no matter how cranky or tired or upset or frustrated I am, I like being with other people and find it helpful/therapeutic to talk to someone when I'm feeling negative. However, both my partner and my sister are the type who like to be alone and gets over negative feelings by unwinding in silence by themselves, and the more I reach out or chat or try to cheer them up or hug them or anything (things I would want if I were in their shoes), the more cranky and irritated they get and the more they push me away, even though it's not actually me they are upset with. I've been trying to train myself for years to leave well alone, but it's hard to get over the feeling that I'm being pushed away and that's it's my fault that I can't seem to help them except by leaving them alone, which in turn makes me feel that I've failed to comfort or help and I start to get negative. It's a vicious cycle

I want to second fuzzy concerning opportunities one is not aware of. During my first semester, I would frequently only hear about important events going on campus or deadlines for participation applications or even just practical stuff like who to tell when the grad lab printer is malfunctioning at the very last minute and then quickly stumble through applying/attending/contacting the pertinent person. I cannot stress how important it is to read the emails you get from the grad secretary and immediately add important events/deadlines to your calendar and build up a rapport with students who run events or are more senior than you and more "in the know" about the department. Now when I have questions, I know who to ask, and if I want to be kept up to date, I know where to go. Now there are some students in my cohort who are starting to come to me when they have questions or want to know what's up, and it's a gratifying feeling. Never be afraid to approach older students in your program to hear their perspective or get some advice.

I'm 25 but was 24 when the application process started.

I upvoted you to fix it

As a humanities person, I studied really hard for the GRE for a month and literally studied only math, since I knew that I could do well on the reading and writing sections without working too hard. In the end, though, all the math studying did little to help me, as the GRE gives you so little time per math problem that learning how to do equations the traditional way really isn't going to help you much. What you really need to do is learn how to solve the problems using shortcuts, going backwards, and using deduction since most of them are multiple choice. Even with all of that studying, I barely broke my absolute minimum target score in math, while I got an almost perfect score on reading and writing. It is possible to study for a long time and do the practice tests to bring up your score in the area you're weaker in, but frankly, I don't think it's worth more than a month of your life, since your humanities program isn't really looking at your math score too closely (and vice versa for someone in the sciences).

I found the price to be the most challenging aspect. I felt really guilty about spending so much money on the GRE and the application and mailing fees, especially knowing that even if I got in to one school, I'd still spend so much money applying to at least half a dozen. Getting into my top choice certainly made me feel a bit better, but I still found that aspect the hardest to grapple with.

I read everything that's available as an e-book and all articles as PDFs on my kindle paperwhite, and I love it! Saves me from carrying so much weight around, and it allows me to annotate and highlight the texts without carrying around sticky notes and markers.