Sigaba

@AliasName FWIW, in the social sciences and humanities, graduate students can (but not always) qualify for a master's degree by banging out the required classes and/or preparing a thesis or a report and/or passing qualifying exams. If such options are available to you, you could earn your masters and then consider your options (stay and continue on or go elsewhere and start again). If you get a master's where you currently are, you may have the opportunity to get LoRs from professors at your current institution. (This is to say you could have LoRs from professors who can write on your ability to do work at the graduate level.) Who knows...a professor or two may decide to lean in and understand why you want to leave and maybe give you additional information. Examples may include opportunities to take classes at a sister school and/or have professors at that school sit on your committees. What ever you decide to do, please consider the benefits of providing updates in this thread. Each season, newly admitted graduate students as well as first and second year graduate students ask these kinds of questions. How you navigate your dilemma may help others down the line.

It may be worth your while to spend some time studying why quantitative methods are not in favor, especially among Americanists. (R. W. Fogel, The Slavery Debates, 1952-1990, a retrospective isn't too terrible a place to start.) I also urge you to consider the potential benefits and challenges of a "big data" approach to a discipline that straddles the boundaries between the social sciences and the humanities. You don't want to end up being the House of Klio's version of Miles Dyson. (Or maybe you do! What's the worst that could happen? ?)

FWIW, I satisfied my second language with statistics. Would you be interested in developing a stat-related skill set so you could crunch some data and make tables/charts/graphs for your research papers and (perhaps) your dissertation? Developing fluency in Spanish to the point where you could use it for both field and archival research is potentially ambitious, if not also perilous. If your primary area of specialization is going to be reproductive health, you could use a narrower approach as a graduate student then widen your reach (to include Spanish) down the line.

IME, solving ambiguous problems under duress, completing projects on time and under budget, getting along with others, seeing the big picture while paying attention to detail have been relevant skills in jobs in three different industries over ten plus years. YMMV.

I don't know that we're in disagreement, @Bumblebea and @merry night wanderer. The skills I described are cross transferable. However, IRT to forecasting the future of the workplace, there are data from the U.S BLS while some newspapers like The Economist have spent years and years projecting "the future of work." IRT the financial peril of the Ivory Tower, IME, it's the uncounted billions of deferred maintenance of certain components of the physical plant, especially public institutions. YMMV.

Three very slight wrinkles to this outstanding post. First, if you seek work experience before going to graduate school, find a job that will teach you skills that will be relevant five or ten years from now. AI and ASI are raising the bar on technical jobs while simultaneously pushing many roles towards obsolescence. As an example, during and after the Great Recession, there was demand for "medical coding." Now, it seems that insurance company platforms have it all figured out. Knowing how to do more with ever less, how to manage projects and budgets and risk, how to get along swimmingly with everyone from the C-Suite to the mail room, how to solve ambiguous problems under pressure, and how to do a job with minimal training are have been consistently sought on job listings since the Great Recession. Second, at least in history, the internal outsourcing of academic jobs started started in the early 1990s. My two cents are the outsourcing is the byproduct of the end of the Cold War, the unending "culture wars," America's unceasing anti-intellectualism, and, to be fair, ongoing mistakes made within the Ivory Tower. The pendulum may swing back eventually but will it in the lifetime of anyone on this BB is anyone's guess. Third, the pandemic exposed the impoverished status of financial and strategic planning in the Ivory Tower and has accelerated the impact of lessons unlearned from the Great Recession. Some institutions have thrived and will recover while others may end up failing utterly. The point here is that if you're a current or aspiring graduate student trying to figure out how "marketable" your expertise may be by the time you graduate, there is so much going on in the background that even if you're a rockstar who is going to put asses in seats, publish game changing works, and appear on nightly news shows, you still may not find a job because the bean counters are measuring completely different key performance indicators. And down the line, the job market @Bumblebea forecasts may include newly minted holders of Ph.Ds competing against displaced professors with proven track records of publishing, committee work, and teaching.

Drift on over when you get the chance... https://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/38-history/

For starters, I recommend browsing through The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era to see where its contributors and reviewers teach and also looking at the backgrounds of its editorial board. It may not be too early to start thinking about how your prioritize your interests. What is the first among equals? Are you a social historian who looks at a specific time period or are you a historian of a specific time period who uses different types of historical analysis to bring that time into sharper focus? You don't have to commit to anything for a while, but understanding how the pieces fit together may help you to develop your SOP and to refine your honor's thesis. (The professor who advised you to work in the private sector may be pleased if you show that you have grown as a historian the last three years.) It may be prudent to start looking for archival sources that are available on line and maybe even downloading what you can now. COVID-19 may not be done and there may be other pandemics in the next few years. If you see yourself at a boarding school, it may be to your advantage to get your arms around the additional responsibilities you will have, the challenges of teaching exceptionally competitive students, and the roiling scandals that have been unfolding at numerous institutions.

Congratulations on your admittance to Michigan. Please be careful with this plan of action. It can be hard to get up to pace from a full resting stop.

Yes, with a touch of self-destructiveness (hint: never name names in an open forum) and a generous dose of defensiveness. Your admission that you're still seeking "a job that doesn't drive [you] crazy and gives [you] the comfort to pay my mortgage, go on vacation (...eventually), and pursue [your] hobbies and interests" suggests that you're no nearer to knowing the answer to the question "What am I going to do with my life?" than when you were in graduate school. The statement also suggests that you may not be as familiar with the demands of working in the private sector as you would have readers believe. ("Managing a team of technical writers at a Fortune 100 company" is an ambiguous job description.) Even the most satisfying and lucrative jobs are bedeviling. Home ownership is much more than paying a mortgage -- it is also utilities, insurance, taxes, dealing with neighbors, project management, maintenance, and deferred maintenance. Vacations are more and more deferred and increasingly disrupted by work. Hobbies and interests are hard to maintain as workdays lengthen and workweeks expand. 401k's alone may not earn enough money for one's retirement. And, if you haven't discovered already, a cult of personality in corporate America can be at least as corrosively soul crushing as one in the Ivory Tower--especially if that cult has set up shop in HR. IMO, your overall argument would have been stronger had you bumped that infamous thread with a post in which you outlined the steps you took to remedy what you found wrong in your department during your time at Ohio State. What committees did you join? How did you seek to remedy bad relationships with professors? Were your experiences actually as commonplace as you allege? What kind of training did you get for going on the job market? Were you a competitive job applicant with knowledge of in-demand fields or did you have the misfortune of specializing in the wrong fields at the wrong time? Do you bear any responsibility for your sour relationships with the professors you named? I also think your comments would be less controversial if you had offered guidance on how to manage expectations and be prepared to pivot.

If your current program requires you to do an outside field and gives flexibility to the fields you're required to do in your department, you may be able to find opportunities to develop skills that will give you a competitive advantage when it's time to look for work.

Hi, @foxfire123 ! Here's a link to UCLA's Transportation organization. Here's a link to the system map for the Los Angeles metro system. The routes in red are Metro Rapid lines that run more frequently during peak times and have fewer stops. If you were to identify areas of overlap of those lines and routes in orange first and then start looking at neighborhoods served by multiple lines. Please understand that COVID-19 has turned public transportation a bit sideways. It remains unknown how things will look when L.A. reopens and things get "back to normal." Please understand that some bus and train lines are less conducive to studying than others given the stretch of road, the day of the week, and the time of day. If you are very disciplined, a viable alternative would be using the L.A. DOT Commuter Express lines that go west in the morning and east in the evening. Insofar as getting a car, unless you're going to have reserved off street parking or you're going to live in a residential parking permit district in which most residents park off street, you will likely experience intensifying competition for on street parking spaces. Were I in your situation, I'd look to live in areas served by the 780, the 704, and the 720. I would try to avoid living somewhere that would take more than one transfer to get to UCLA. I would program my transportation budget for TNCs (Lyft/Uber) with the assumption that rates are going to skyrocket sooner rather than later. As far as housing goes, you can use craigslist and apartments dot com and zillow to start seeing what $1.3k will get you. You will get significantly more bang for your buck if you find a shared living situation. I would urge you to consider the benefits of having your own room, your own bathroom, and a washer/dryer in your unit, to say nothing of gated parking.

Have you considered pursuing a doctorate in history with your outside field in political science, using statistics to satisfy one of your language requirements, and using one of your fields in history to focus on political science? Your coursework and your dissertation could center around ongoing efforts among some historians to bridge the gap between political science and history.

IDK if this standard is realistic. Who among us has not had those moments when we're sure that either we and/or the person who wrote a well received work doesn't know WTF history is about? @apotteba, I would suggest that you understand that it's going to take thousands of hours of work to get to the point where you understand history well enough to spend thousands of hours more work to create new knowledge. Along the way, you will face make or break tasks. Throughout, you will be competing for resources, funding, and support against other aspiring historians--some of whom will have been majoring in history since middle school. IRT your opportunity this summer, I recommend that you visit the websites of highly regarded history departments to see if you can find documents related to the preparation of an undergraduate thesis or honors thesis. (To get you started, here's a link for Happyland University's senior essay.) When it comes to developing a topic, I recommend that you ask yourself (at least) three questions simultaneously: What topic/field/area/time period do you want to write about? What primary source materials are available? [I seriously screwed up on this one when I picked my dissertation topic.] What is the state of the historiographical debates? Understanding these debates is crucial because they will help you develop the specific questions and controversies you want your paper to address. Concurrently, I recommend that you develop reading lists that help you to understand the following questions: What is history? What is historiography? Why is the study of history important today? [This is a trick question.] What is the "state of the art" of your area[s] of interest? How did the most accomplished and respected practitioners in your fields of interest develop their skills as historians? (@AfricanusCrowther's recommendations are right as rain, this post is meant to serve as a rain jacket.) At the same time: Start a journal (analog or digital) in which you start jotting down your questions / thoughts / theories about history. Use the journal to develop your writing skills as a historian. Obtain this style manual . IRT your stated interests, try to imagine questions and themes that may link them together and from there generate questions and imagine themes that may take you further along the path or towards different paths. (Just spit balling, how about a comparative study of how film was used to alter configurations of power in Russia and Columbia at either the same time or under the same conditions (examples include the efforts of the U.S. to expand its power in the Western Hemisphere and Eastern Europe. ETA: Something to keep in mind, COVID-19 has underscored the extent to which academics and other professionals in the Ivory Tower don't know how to read a balance sheet, much less decipher it. And at the same time, academic history remains a profession in crisis. How about using your accounting skills to prepare a research paper that is essentially an audit of the AHA? Your source materials would include the documents available here. You could evaluate the financial performance of the AHA against KPI identified, if not clearly defined, by the association itself. You could also compare the AHA to other professional organizations (history and/or other disciplines). You could also discuss the way the AHA and other organizations have used data the last couple of decades -- do these uses reflect the best practices of professional accountants?

FWIW, I did my outside field in educational cognitive psychology. Although the professor I studied under did not have a Ph.D or Psy. D., the professor once indicated that he had worked as a clinician. As this professor was something of a really big deal with decades of work in the private and public sectors in addition to higher education, he may done that work before standards were changed or under circumstances where qualifications were less important than outcome.

IMO, yes, you should think this opportunity through very carefully before making a decision. Can you provide a little more information? What's the firm's overall workforce culture? Does it have a lot of "lifers" or do most people move on after a few years? Will you be eligible for pay raises based upon merit or cost of living? What does your benefits package look like (generally)? Are you eligible for performance bonuses? Does the company have a national or international presence that would allow you to transfer once or twice? What are the opportunities for career growth/advancement? Does the required commitment translate to a high level of job security? What happens if you get terminated for cause? What happens if you get laid off for circumstances beyond anyone's control? How will the $100k "loan" impact your credit? What's the vibe you get from management? Do you suspect that the $100k would be used to keep you in line if SHTF? You could run the numbers of the $100k as a zero interest loan vs loans with interest rates comparable to what you'd get as a graduate student (4.3% ish). Then figure out how you could invest the money you're not paying in interest. You can also give some thought about the opportunity costs of making regular payments on the loan versus not having that burden. On top of that, you could figure out a plan to save $100k in three, five, or seven or nine years in the event you want to leave early. For this option--and other back up plans-- you might want to hire a financial planner. [Were I in your shoes, I would program at least two ten-year budgets by month, if not pay period. One budget would assume accepting the agreement The other budget, would assume taking out loans and ending up at a firm that's a better fit. For both budgets, I'd include assumptions for pay raises, performance bonuses, vacations, and various flavors of discretionary spending. For the latter budget, I'd assume that I was going to change jobs at least once over the ten years after you earn your degree. This assumption would require projecting additional expenses -- job search, retraining, moving expenses, journey to work transportation costs, maybe even additional clothing expenses.]

@lelick1234, FWIW, ICYM here. AHA Letters of Introduction/Courtesy Requests It is sometimes difficult to gain access to institutions while doing research. This is why the American Historical Association provides Letters of Introduction to assist researchers in gaining access to foreign research facilities, special collections, and government archives. Courtesy Requests for independent historians (scholars without formal affiliation with academic institutions) seeking access to archives, colleges, or university libraries in the United States or abroad, for research purposes, are also available upon request. The only requirement for obtaining either of these letters is that one must be an AHA member. If interested, please complete the following Google Form. Please be as brief as possible.

If you use this tactic, it is crucial for you to understand which works your examiners feel fall into the category of essential / must read / "ignore at one's peril." And even then, @ashiepoo72's guidance is great. Keep in mind that quals are not just for your professional development, they are also a ritual designed to make you suffer. Do what you can to focus on the former and to compartmentalize the latter. If you've not done so already, try to talk to ABD's who have taken their exams with members of your committee. They can offer great insights. Also, if members of your committee have copies of previous exams for their undergraduate courses on file at a library, give some thought to giving them a look.

Black Women in STEM on Twitter may be of interest. Maybe also Blk + In Grad School and the accounts listed here. Also, one can not go wrong reading posts by juilletmercredi, a moderator on this BB, especially this one.

I would interpret the offer as an invitation to communicate with the person intermittently and, initially, to ask for small favors -- a recommendation for a book on a given topic, an opinion on which professional conference to attend. I would not consider the invitation to be open ended (anything/ever), especially if the offer was made by an academic historian. (Three qualifiers. If professors/departments have recently experienced a lot of "ghosting," the offer may reflect a sense of pleasant surprise over your professionalism. If the person making the offer also went to H. as an undergraduate or graduate student, there may be more to the offer. Also, if you're the go getter / figure it out when you get there / tough as nails / hell on wheels that you appear, there may be more to the offer. ) If possible, see if you can develop relationships in which established academics provide you opportunities to help them. Maybe a set of eyes on a manuscript in progress or a pair of feet that can chase down a reference or a piece of research.

Late to the dance. In circumstances like this one, I recommend asking about the parameters of the exam rather than the purpose. IME weirdness and anxiety can combine to set the stage for asking questions about purpose with an odd tone. Conversely, questions about parameters of a task provide opportunities to appear calm and engaged and to receive information that can be used to answer the "why" question.

Hi, @cryloren. I recommend that you take two to four weeks off from thinking about graduate school so you can depressurize. When you jump back into things, I recommend that you find ways to improve your writing. I also suggest that you think about how you define yourself as a historian. In regards to the latter, you have a wide range of interests (history, politics, medicine). That wide range may have worked against you in your SOPs. Are there ways to bring them all together as potential areas of interest? @scarletwitch my two cents are that you would be well served by developing two or three sets of filters so you can get your current list of twenty schools down to five or six. That is, go from twenty to ten and then from ten to five.

As long as you've not signed any paperwork, there's no ethical conflict if you decide to go to Stanford. Anyone who would throw shade at a person picking the best option available for you isn't your friend or someone who deserves to be. Insofar as how to tell the story of your change of fortune on social media, you can either delete the OP or add a post "a funny thing happened on the way to Chapel Hill." IMO, the key to the latter option is to make it clear that it's not that UNC was your second or third choice (which would simply be a crass thing to say) but rather that Stanford is an opportunity of a lifetime that you must seize. But before you make any decisions, do what you can to understand which place is really the best for you.

@lelick1234 you are not going to get far with that chip on your shoulder. I urge you to consult the acknowledgement sections of published works grounded upon archival research. A pattern that you may notice is that researchers benefit when they approach archivists and archives from a position of respect. I urge you to put aside assumptions of the way things should be until you spend time doing work in research libraries and archives. In a research library, you move a book over three spaces or up or down a shelf, it may as well have been burned. In an archive, a document put into the wrong folder in the correct box can be lost to subsequent researchers for a generation. When you take tours of archives, you will hear bloodcurdling stories about individuals altering, defacing, or destroying documents on a whim. You will also learn that private and public figures who donate archival materials often place boundaries on how they are used. On top of that, there are often institutional policies as well as laws and regulations. (When NARA moves materials produced by a presidential administration, the level of security can be on par with that used by the Department of Energy when moving nuclear materials.) Then figure out ways you can reach out to staff via telephone at the Huntington Library to see if you can gain access based upon your research interests, understanding of archival research, and skill level. @ListlessCoffee and others have provided excellent guidance. If the answer is "no," then figure out your next steps. One step could be reach out to professional academic historians in SoCal and ask for help. If you follow this path, it is important that you check your attitude and manage your expectations. On a slightly different track, are you sure that there's no connections between your interests in American foreign relations with the Middle East and Southern California urban history? https://tinyurl.com/vlg7cm4g https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6504843

FWIW, the sensibility has been addressed by @TMP a couple of times in this thread. The ongoing COVID-19 crisis theoretically makes completing the requirements for a doctorate more difficult to complete within the accelerated timelines departments may be using because of the financial uncertainties. If you're an Americanist, you need one or two languages, one of which may be swapped for a skill. If you're not an Americanist, one has to know the languages one needs to know. If you're an Americanist, you likely find enough archival sources nearby or even on line to do a great deal of research. If you're not an Americanist, the ebb and flow of the pandemic may make necessary travel impossible. If you're an Americanist, you can work as a teaching assistant in courses that may be more popular among undergraduates without needing to sacrifice time to get up to speed on a subject. If you're not an Americanist, and a department trims back on offering courses not centered around the United States, you are going to be behind the eight ball of a learning curve. A comment. I understand that this is a period of extraordinary uncertainty for applicants and that there may be a strong sense of frustration, even disappointment, because events are not unfolding as one would like. This being said, I urge all to understand that posts at the Gradcafe don't go away, and that there are faculty and staff among this BB's members. Now is as good as a time as any to work on one's personal professional comportment. It's not what one says or what one asks that can lead to issues down the line, it's how one says something or how one asks a question that can prove to be an issue. FWIW, I have learned the hard way that professional academic historians pay very careful attention to tone and temperament. Or, as one professor with whom I subsequently became close asked himself "Who is this asshole?" The question came after I said something that was meant to be an ironic / humorous statement of respect.