Sigaba

As the making of policy is a political process, you can make your voice heard if you have a dog in the fight. Otherwise, I think the restrictions are going to die by a tens of thousands of cuts--until the body count gets to the point where more people take COVID-19 seriously.

I would not put it beyond the realm of possibility that after additional number crunching the decision will be modified for the CSU system and that will flow to the pending decision for the UC system. (I am thinking that the projected impact on cancelled athletic seasons will be sobering and the argument will be made that "We cannot afford to close UCX..." and resources for mass testing will be directed there.)

The story is breaking in California. The CSU system will be "closed" for Fall 2020 with courses offered on line. No official announcement as yet -- today's Trustess's meeting is available here. https://www2.calstate.edu/csu-system/board-of-trustees/livestream/Pages/livestream.aspx

If you have the time, please consider the benefits of rewriting the sample from scratch. (The challenges may make such an exercise not worth the pain.) Something to keep in mind is that not all members of the admissions committee will read every word of every writing sample. So, as you rank your priorities and budget your time, the statement of purpose probably should be the focal point of your efforts.

Yes. Faculty and staff come to the Grad Cafe. The reception of the guidance they provide is often hostile.

I recommend getting the writing sample down to the recommended limit. Do a pass through the original document to find opportunities for shorter sentences. Do another pass looking for examples that you can cut. Set your target word count at 3,750 for principal text, cut the bibliography, keep the end notes. Put the revised version aside for weeks, if not months, and then circle back to it and do more cutting. The skill you're developing through this process is the ability to summarize complex works into one or two sentences.

These are not normal times. A housemate who is not staying at home is putting others at risk. MOO, I think that there are two sets of issues. First, your housemate not holding up her end of an agreed set of behaviors. This dynamic is troublesome since she's putting you and others at risk by not following "safer at home" recommended practices. Second, I think that you may have an unsustainable (if not also inappropriate) set of assumptions and expectations. Based upon this thread and your other posts I think that you may seek from social relationships a different type of closeness than others anticipate. I recommend that you focus building on rapport as people living in the same space. Please consider the benefits of focusing your efforts on establishing and maintaining appropriate boundaries and leaving aside permanently your aspirations for a deeper personal relationship.

Yes. Please schedule fieldwork for the hottest days of the year so far even though it was ten degrees cooler earlier at the beginning of the week and will be twenty degrees cooler next week. After all, zero access to weather forecasts...

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A good resource https://www.walkscore.com/ Additional resources https://www.fairfaxva.gov/government/public-works/transportation-division/cycling-in-the-city https://www.fairfaxva.gov/home/showdocument?id=1342 #HTH

Some of the information available here may be helpful. https://abc-insights.com/covid19-resources/

Did the email specifically say that it was the status of the writers or did the email suggest that the content of the letters wasn't particularly helpful?

I don't like the situation you're in. IME, "salary" means something different than getting paid $x/hour for irregular work. Do the terms of your employment allow you to have another job? For example, as a tutor?

Did you see the word "salary" or did you see language indicating an hourly wage that might result in $50k/year in pay?

Nicely done, @MtrlHstryGrl. I recommend that you consider the benefits and challenges of reorganizing the paragraph in bold type. That is, lead with your thumbnail of the historiographical waters in which you want to swim. I urge you to define more clearly the time period and region of interest. I ask that you clarify what you mean by religious art, object, and space. I recommend that you find a way to state your position on the relationships among feminist history, the history of gender, religious history, and European history. (A way to start this process of refinement is to ask yourself "What classes would I teach were I hired at Happyland University?") I suggest that you rework entirely the sentence that is in bold face and underlined. How can you give yourself more flexibility on your topic of research? (In my experience, words like "provisionally" work wonders.) I urge you not to take a binary approach to beliefs and social/political practice aspect of your work. Consider thinking about the interplay between belief and social/political practice as a spectrum along which religious practitioners ranged across during the course of their lives. Or consider thinking about a "constellation of motivational factors." Ultimately, you will need to indicate which of the two was more important most of the time, but if you phrase the debate in black and white terms you will expose yourself unnecessarily to withering criticism. I recommend that you take a deep dive in @telkanuru's post as well as @Sparky's . Their research interests are not apples to apples to your oranges yet their historical sensibilities may offer insights into how to develop yours. I suggest that you find a way to talk about your previous work in a way that is more about how that work has helped your understanding of the past and less about checking boxes. Please keep in mind that if you pursue my recommendations, you will likely find that the way you describe your interests and aspirations will be different almost every time you put pen to paper. And that's okay. What you are seeking to do right now (IMO) is to refine your description so that the differences between versions are increasingly minor.

FWIW, the understanding that holding classes remotely in the fall may be a deal breaker for students and a show stopper financially is expressed in this video. The short of the long of it is that schools make a significant amount of revenue directly and indirectly from people being on campus and administrators understand that this year's "we're all in this together" sensibility can quickly turn to "this isn't what I signed up for" next fall.

I recommend that you break column B into at least one additional column for degree. Maybe also for department and for program. I would add columns after "Funding" for analysis of a school's financial health, another for public/private, and maybe another for the number of major sports programs a school has. (Because the revenue generated by hosting major sporting events is a big unknown.) I would also add columns for if a school is in a red state or a blue state as the "culture wars" are likely to heat up over the next couple of years as the bills for the CARES Act come due. If you want to get into the details over the "current climate of the world" you might add one or more columns for likelihood of four categories of catastrophic events (war, pandemic, natural disasters, economic ruin) so you can figure where you want to be in the SHTF moment.

Here's where, in years past, @TakeruK and I would renew our debate over the propriety of educators belonging to unions.

Too many chefs in the kitchen for a big project for a public client. Too little knowledge of how to make the most out of threaded conversations using Microsoft Teams.

I would recommend a politely phrased email or timely phone call to one of the administrators listed here. https://polisci.osu.edu/people I recommend that you treat individual staff members with respect and an abundance of empathy. While you are rightly concerned with your funding for next year, these individuals are likely concerned about losing their jobs and all that entails.

I don't think that you're answering my question directly so I will be more direct. Are you offering complimentary GRE prep resources as a tactic to draw visits to your website so that you may sell your work?

IMO, as described, this funding is not independent. The funding will not provide a competitive advantage because it has conditions attached and it is from a private company. I respectfully disagree with the notion that the funding provides "less of a risk." Risks include the reputation of a department could suffer from the perception that a degree was bought as well as the existence of unknown NDAs. My $0.02.

HI. Could you please clarify something. Are you using that resources as a means of generating revenue for your "proofreading, copy and line editing, and developmental editing services"?

If the comments and questions on the aforementioned symposium/video call are any indication, the decision making process may allow for a rebuild that helps in the long run. As an example, if return on investment (ROI) is increasingly determined by key performance indicators (KPI), professors who put their feet on their desks for decades may be asked to retire in favor of academics who publish, teach, mentor, and, most importantly, participate in the stalled project of making academic history more relevant to everyday life.

I had in mind an adjacent field that requires less technical expertise but enough to "translate" the technology/science/social science to a more general audience. IME, decision makers are laying down serious amounts of money for "gee whiz" solutions without asking all the right questions. As an example, "How well will this system operate on the eastern seaboard in the dead of winter?" has proven to be a showstopping question we've posed to technology firms who want to put themselves on our radar.