Sigaba

Arguably the most important skill you will need as a graduate student in history is the ability to say "While I think A, B, and C are good ideas, I prefer to pursue X, Y, and Z."

You may find the bespoke support you seek in the following forum. https://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/23-education/

A way to square the circle is to present yourself as an Americanist who is going to contribute to an established historiographical trajectory--the Greek / Latin world's influence on American civilization -- by looking at how food behavior at the turn of the century was informed by Roman practices. (Assuming that there are primary source materials to make the case.) Or, more generally, you can look at how the history of imperial Rome was used to justify or to oppose a variety of cultural practices, political beliefs, or policy preferences. The Greek and Latin language skills will come into play when you tease out consistencies, tensions, and conflicts between what was quoted/referenced in turn of the century America with what was actually written. The present day relevance of any variation of the projects sketched out above is high. Right of center conservatives frequently use the fall of imperial Rome as a metaphor for their perception of the decline of American civilization. It (the decay) is used as a rallying point in electoral political discourse and the rambling conversations about domestic policies. If you have aspirations of being a highly visible public intellectual (which I don't recommend), you could take a look at how Victor Davis Hanson has parlayed his expertise into a certain level of celebrity.

That's not what @JamesPratt wrote. Did you go to Cal or UCLA?

I don't know if doubling down on your attack on someone doing his level best to make a good decision makes your post any more credible. IME at Cal, most of the instruction of upper division courses was done by graduate students. It was my understanding that this practice was common throughout the College of Letters and Sciences. If your experience was different, please share that information. Also, if one were to spend an appreciable amount of time reading on this BB, one will find myriad examples in which aspiring graduate students learn that professors view their responsibilities differently.

A way to answer your question is to look at the CVs of academics who work where you want to work. Can you find a pattern that indicates graduates of Cal--the crown jewel of the University of California system, and premier public university in all the known multiverse--get better jobs than graduates of the lowly second rate school in Los Angeles? (I say "jobs" rather than admission to graduate programs because ultimately it is about getting a job.) FWIW, in my experience, the cache of graduating from Cal can be breathtaking. Professors have sat up in their chars upon learning I went there. (Of course, I started talking and they went back to doodling.)

The difference seems to be that you told a story about your journey to the House of Klio centered around personal growth and developing interests rather than offering a narrative that could be interpreted as defensive. Also, from what you've previously posted, your personal history is compelling.

The Bronx ranks fifth and third among American counties for COVID-19 confirmed case and deaths, respectively. Fordham, like other schools in New York is in limbo -- trying to prepare for the next term without knowing if in person instruction will be allowed. While I can understand the frustration of not knowing one's status, I think it is important to keep things in perspective. The challenge you face is figuring out where you'll be going to grad school. The challenge people who work and live in the Bronx face is staying healthy.

Seen by whom? IMO, generally accepted practices are not automatically best practices.

Another possibility is that the recipient of your initial email has, in fact, answered your question by passing your query along to the DGS,

I recommend that you develop a compelling narrative of your journey to the craft of academic history that is significantly different than what you presented in the OP. Candidly, I don't think that you will do yourself any favors by saying that you have lost your interest in something you've been doing for a while and now you want to study history. The signs indicate that the 2021 application season will be ferociously competitive. What can you write that will draw attention to your potential that can set you apart from applicants who have have been majoring in history since middle school? What are your research interests? I think that writing about what you are going to do will serve you better than what you would like to do. What kinds of scholarly works do you envision writing? What types of source materials will you use? How will your work help to bridge the gaps and strengthen the bonds among social, cultural, and women's history? Is it accurate (much less wise) to refer to women's history (or, for that matter, any other field) as "traditionally stuffy"? Will the gate keepers of the profession find sustainable your balance between your goals and the needs of the profession?

Welcome to the GradCafe I recommend that you hold still on the reaching out for at least sixty days. COVID-19 has turned the Ivory Tower upside down, especially at public institutions. During the interval, see what you can find about the institution's financial position and plans for the coming term. Can you find program guides / schedules of classes / other materials that may allow you to sketch out a plan of action in terms of your course work? Can you identify a handful of "must read" books and start reading them? A second recommendation for immediate implementation is that you change your username to something that allows a very high degree of separation between any future posts you may make here and your personal professional self. Changing your username now is easier than having to remember not to vent when it is time to vent in the venting thread.

I am not sure that I agree with your argument that a professor or other person with power is bound by your past when it comes to making decisions about their future. IME, decision makers form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions notwithstanding the previous work or recognition of a person under consideration. I have witnessed a department pulling the plug on a plan to offer an endowed chair to a MacArthur fellow,. That was followed by pulling the plug on another MacArthur fellow. In both cases, the individuals stepped on toes in very subtle ways. I can think of two historians who were denied promotion. An assistant professor was fired because she appeared to pick family over "publish or perish." This decision would not have been made without the advocacy of the department chair and other women in the department. An associate professor was denied promotion because the decision makers determined that his most important work looked like a coffee table book even though it was an entry in one of his field's most prominent series. His community rallied to him to no avail. Not historians, Don Nakanishi was initially denied tenure at UCLA in 1987 and Lorgia García Peña was denied tenure at Harvard last year. Ultimately, every person of color must decide which tools of accommodation and resistance to use. What I find controversial is that you're offering guidance in absolute terms ("always"). And while that guidance is experience based, you are much closer to the start of your journey than the midpoint. IMO, graduate school in history transforms people in two ways. First, one goes from being a novice to someone who can create new knowledge. Second, one receives information on how to be a professional academic. It has been my observation that it is rare for professors to stand on someone's head and then train a graduate student on how to differentiate among what is desired, what is needed, and what is necessary. Instead, the information is communicated with increased subtlety -- an ethereal remark in the margin of an assignment or draft, a slow nod delivered with a slight smile and a glimmer in the eyes. After that, it can appear one is getting what one wants when something else may be happening. Sometimes, it is years later over dinner and drinks that one can throw back one's head and laugh "Oh, so that's what you meant..." But before then, one can spend time stepping on toes when, sometimes, an "Excuse me, may I..." followed by a closed door conversation (or two) can turn an obstacle into a stepping stone or an opponent into an ally. $0.02/YMMV

Did your analysis of the cons include the possibility of members of your committees writing less than stellar letters of recommendation for you when you're on the job market? Or, even getting PNGed? I disagree with this overly broad statement. How can one know beforehand what wants from an experience when that experience is designed to transform an individual in at least two ways?

It will depend upon the industry, the firm, and your role. If the criteria for hiring center around the ability to do the job, does a third master's send a better message than experience that demonstrates the ability to handle projects and responsibilities that are more complex over time? Are you seeking employment at a firm that has a critical mass of true believers? If so, a third degree could be used as a razor to shred you. Are there professional certifications that you could get instead of a third master's degree? Can you take courses / gain experience that expand your skills on a personal professional level? The pivots themselves could be problematic if they take you to different industries and/or vastly different career paths. Can you point to the pivots as part of a broader plan to provide maximum value to your employers?

The answer to your question can be found elsewhere on this BB.

At the risk of belaboring the point, your reasoning might easily be rephrased so that the focus is on your personal professional development rather than taking steps that will benefit you personally, especially since the cost of joining this organization is, in the grand scheme of things, minimal. Something along the lines of Membership in X and Y provides me with greater opportunities to do A, B, and C. My larger point is that as you start to craft your personal professional identity, now is a good time to decide if you want to be known as a scholar who is wise for picking opportunities to help others and the profession while always looking for opportunities to grow as a person and a scholar, or as someone who is known a "what's in it for me?" perspective?

A carefully selected mandatory outside field could help. Especially if that outside field dovetails with a primary field. As an example, an outside field that presents opportunities to develop ArcGIS skills that will (ostensibly) used to make maps for one's research projects. Another possibility is to do an outside field in finance with the intent (wink wink, nudge nudge) to develop a skill set that will be valuable when you're a professor sitting on various committees. I would run the risk assessment on being upfront IRT asking questions about non academic careers especially because of COVID-19. The coming years are going to be especially competitive for anyone seeking funding and support. If two candidates are equally qualified but one is not as committed to the profession as the other, it is not unreasonable to assume that the gate keepers will look more favorably on the true believer will get the nod over someone who is ambivalent. (Disclosure: As a former true believer, I generally had a competitive advantage when it came to admissions, support [including/especially when I screwed up], and, with one critical exception, rapport with professors. Not bitter, though.) In the event you decide to ask direct questions about non academic jobs, please develop great questions and practice how you will ask those questions as well as the follow up questions. There is a generational divide in the Ivory Tower and it s expanding. This divide can serve as a filter that alters the way questions are heard, if not also how they're asked. Do your best to ask questions that are in your self interest without sounding selfish. One can find numerous threads on the GradCafe that center around how to phrase tough questions. If the existing threads do not provide adequate support, please consider the benefits of asking your questions in this thread.

I very sincerely suggest that you reconsider how you evaluate these kinds of opportunities. To paraphrase JFK, it's not what the profession does for you, it's what you do for the profession. While a ROI approach to how the Ivory Tower is financed is probably long over due, I don't know if it is sustainable for a graduate student entering a program to gain training to join a profession in which personal relationship are generally vital to one's success. (The exception would be rock stars whose (apparent) virtuosity and charisma allow them to do what they like while being s-birds.) But if one were to take a ROI approach, the initial fee is a one time payment for $50. Were you to put that into a savings account, in thirty years, your net would be about $1.37.

I am not a member. My question is why would you not join?

If they're true professionals, they'll understand that the way you handled things is the way you wanted to handle things and their opinions won't get in the way of how they treat you professionally. Even so, I recommend that you understand that even if the two professors respond in a polite and professional manner, either may see your decision making process in an unfavorable, if not unflattering light. From your perspective, the risks of fuller disclosure apparently outweighed the benefits. A potential qualifier would if both professors were aware of the personal and academic reasons you would want to move on. Tactically, I recommend that wait until you hear back from your home uni, let them know you have options, and that you're going to think things through. I would think twice about giving the professors gifts -- a brief, heartfelt thank you note will suffice. Down the line, when you're an established academic, you can pay for a round of drinks or a meal at a conference.

I would not recommend picking one's fields of interests based upon a department's areas of emphasis. In the event colleagues at different schools compare notes on new graduate students, they will understand the tactic for what it is. Similarly, if you end up in a program with classmates who are true believers, you could be eaten alive. Can you dive deeper into historiography of your areas of interest? Often, a senior historian will take a star turn in a major journal by writing an extended "state of the field" historiographical essay. (These pieces are often the lead article in an issue.) If you can find several such articles written over a span of years and you study them very closely, you can find information on which pathways need to be explored. Are there recent collections of essays that could help? Maybe relevant entries in the Oxford Handbook series? What about dissertations completed in the last five, ten, and twenty years? Another exercise that can be helpful is to pick three journals and go through ten years' worth of volumes: article by article, book review by book review. (IMO, this exercise works better with physical copies, if available.) Something else to remember is that "creating new knowledge" can be revolutionary or evolutionary, even incrementally so.

With Google Alerts, faculty, staff, and other interested parties don't need to spend much time here.

Hi, @carlycm With some digging, you will find a number of posts across various fora that discuss the benefits and challenges of discussing one's personal struggles in a statement of purpose as well as suggestions on how to discuss a GPA that is less than one would like. My recommendation would be for you not to mention any of the details of your experiences beyond an eloquent thumbnail summary of "personal setbacks and losses" with a very quick pivot towards "lessons learned" and how you will apply those lessons when you start graduate school the fall after next. In this discussion of how you will apply those lessons, you could indicate tactfully that you're fully prepared to focus on your school work despite the ongoing impacts of at least three global crises (COVID-19, a recession, and what ever else). As you consider schools and programs, please consider the benefits of doing your due diligence IRT available resources for undergraduates and graduates who have had traumatic experiences as well as the school's and program's policies and practices regarding harassment.

@MtrlHstryGrl thank you for posting your revised statement of your historical interests. What you're doing is very difficult. I encourage you to keep working on it. What follow are a few comments. You will note that the comments are general. This approach is intentional as I want to avoid any grey areas related to academic integrity. I recommend that you consider the implications of your two sentences. Your thumbnail implies a failure of an established approach. Is that a fair and accurate assessment? If so, do you want to say it so directly in your SOP? I will recommend that you do not. "cloistered women project" strikes me as awkward and undefined (from a provincial Americanst's perspective). The two gaps you intend to close aren't jumping out at me, so here's my read back. Scholarship on women's religious lives focuses on cloistered women. Scholarship on the cult of saints is not centered on women. It's unclear to me how your work will close those two gaps. The highlighted "this" is not attached to anything and can therefore refer to almost anything in the previous sentence. The rest of the sentence could be clearer, if not broken into two complete sentences. Your "anthropological" study is unclear as there are many types of anthropology. Which sub discipline do you intend to use? ("Cultural exchange" is more of a clue than a straightforward cue.) How the use of anthropology provide additional historical insight as opposed to the application of a different historical method? The sentence implies that an anthropological approach could resolve the tensions among religious, gender, and medieval history without indicating how. The where and when of your interests could be refined. Your current word count is 209. As a rule of thumb, a double spaced page with one inch margins can hold about 250 words and it takes about two minutes to read a single page aloud. Can you get the word count down to 125?