Sigaba

ALCON-- When picking a screen name at the Grad Cafe, please consider the value of NOT using the same name that you use on social media. For some members, especially newer ones, finding out who you are is as easy as highlight ===> right click ===> search google for <username> in less time than it takes to read this sentence. While it may be highly unlikely that a member of an admissions committee will come here looking for a specific person, the Grad Cafe is a known location, and the contents of the fora turn up in Google searches. While you may think that your personal interest in X is no big deal, you will never know if that interest is a deal breaker for departments that have been burned by aficionados of X.

@matt99 I work in the planning department of boutique architectural/structural engineering consultancy that is globally prominent. In my experience, project time tables and budgets trump creativity almost every time. This dynamic increasingly impacts the performance metrics of team mates who handle projects related to management and operations consulting. Moreover, if you end up at a firm that is dominated by engineers either contemporaneously or historically, silos can be everywhere, "creative" can come across as "weirdo," and opportunities for upward advancement can be limited. However, based upon the way things are going with "big data," you may have ample opportunities to show your creativity via data visualization. Your linguistic skills may help you get a job and a subsequent assignment to a regional office abroad. If such is the case, you will want to make sure you understand how business is done in that country so that you can manage your expectations and not get blindsided by cultural sensibilities. I recommend that you do additional research on firms that do the kind of work you imagine, offer the types of jobs you'd want, and have offices near schools you'd like to attend. Then, you'd be in a good position to apply for summer internships. Please note that competition for such internships has greatly intensified. Before the recession our interns were generally collegians entering their junior or senior years. Now, most interns have a master's degree. HTH.

IMO, placement should be a consideration, but not the top one. Factors that enable you to maximize your potential as an academic historian are more important: research interests of faculty, departmental commitment to teaching and mentoring (will you be invited to sit in on job talks), level of departmental collegiality, library system, archives, and financial support. My $0.02

MOO, I would not disclose the information during the application/interview process, especially since the ferocity of the current political season has raised American misogyny and intolerance to truly toxic levels. Professors/administrators may interpret the disclosure as a signal that you're going to bring a focus on identity politics that may compete with your focus on your field of study. The politics of your department may be such that even those professors who are committed to embracing diversity may want the incoming class of graduate students to be focused on their work. IRT @fuzzylogician's guidance, I respectfully offer a slight variation: do your due diligence as part of the application process. Try to get a sense of each school's policies and culture. Does Happyland State have multiple student organizations that may help you? What policies/programs are in place to encourage diversity? Are their departments/majors that speak to your concerns? Have there been issues on campus that indicate a broader hostility towards members of the LGBTQ community? IMO, even if the evidence suggests that Happyland State does not welcome women such as yourself, I recommend applying anyways and seriously consider accepting an offer. America is at a crossroads. One road is well paved and leads backwards, not to the 1950s, but the 1850s. The other road leads to a more perfect union. That road is still but a path. That road needs trailblazers like you.

Given the many unknowns as well as the toxicity of the political season, it may not hurt to figure out how you might answer "What do you think?" type questions. Don't over rehearse potential responses, just have some ideas on how you'd deal with gossipy graduate students and professors looking for chew toys.

The situation might be a "wheels within wheels" type of thing that can end up crushing people further down the food chain. Stay as clean and as clear as you can. Keep your ears and eyes open but offer no opinions and form as few conclusions as possible regarding why your POI is on leave. Stay away from the gossip, even to the point where you remember that you needed to be somewhere else five minutes ago. If the DGS or the department chair read you in--IMO they shouldn't--and then remind you to keep the conversation in confidence, say "What conversation?" If such a conversation takes place, understand that you're being trusted and you're also being tested. In that moment, you may need to figure out what kind of a professional academic, if not person, you want to be. If you think there's a certain appeal to knowing where the bodies are buried, understand that there may be a time when you're handed a shovel and a sodden burlap sack. IRT @fuzzylogician's guidance, there's another possible outcome. The PI is completely exonerated, the PI's relationships and professional stature are untainted, the department wants the PI to stay and the PI does, too. But the PI is now very angry. What then?

C_C Did you look at the responses to the exam questions for patterns? You might be able to narrow down the issues to a topic or a problem solving technique so you can fix what needs fixing rather than doing a complete overhaul. Along the same lines, holding additional and/or mandatory office hours for students who did poorly may help you to develop better rapport and to figure out how to zero in on the students' learning styles. Also, a tactic I picked up from a professor was to distribute after every section an evaluation form that can be useful for figuring out where to improve. You'll not get many responses, some will be snarky, and a handful will give you the information you need to teach more effectively. More generally, keep in mind that teaching is a skill that some believe is independent of the domain of knowledge one is teaching. I am mentioning this point so that your confidence in your teaching skills doesn't seep into other skill sets that are further along in their development. STUDENT EVALUATION FORM.pdf

I think you need to reread what I actually wrote. Throughout my post, which, in fact, came after a substantial period of reflection, consistently suggests what may have happened and what opportunities may have been missed. I also made the distinction between the activities the OP mentioned; the grant and the work related email as opposed to the fact checking. By referring to how a professor might react, you're missing a key point-- the OP is a graduate student, not a professor. The fact that you decided time and again to overlook such modifiers, qualifications, and distinctions is on you. IRT dismissing an email because it is anonymous is, IMO, a reason but not an excuse for not taking a student's concerns seriously. In the Ivory Tower, a lot of attention is paid to disparities of power. Why is it okay to talk about such disparities in some instances but not others when we don't like the content? Might it be that the person who wrote the email was lashing out because he/she was too intimidated to have a quick face to face during office hours? IRT the "real world," if you want to go that route, that's your decision. I do know that a lot of non academic types don't think that the Ivory Tower is a part of the "real world." They are increasingly involved in where their kids go to college, and what they study. They believe that academics are indoctrinating their kids rather than teaching them. If you want to feed into that dynamic, that's your choice. Ultimately, there's more of them than there are academics, if the terms of debate are real versus not real, they're going to win and those making a living in the Ivory Tower in the social sciences and the humanities are going to lose.And if you're going to teach students about the "real world," one should note that customer service (which is sometimes telling people "no, you can't do things that way) and risk management are big slices of the pie. In regards to the conversation, the invitation, if carefully worded, can go one of two ways. It can be phrased to call out the person in such a way that they're shamed into silence. Or it can be phrased in a way that the student would come to the OP's office hours and say, "yeah, that was me," and then some teaching/mentoring might follow. You never know when the most defiant undergraduate is actually a highly motivated student who is considering following the same path as the OP. If one were to go the route of "If the message isn't phrased just so, the message is going to be ignored," an opportunity to find out will be left on the table. In regards to the not apologizing, that would be part of the lesson. In my experience, which includes managing Teamsters, being face to face with drunks who mistake me for a cop, things can go a lot better when one listens, even if one doesn't agree or if one doesn't apologize. To paraphrase William G. Bowen, listening to others carefully and responding thoughtfully is a sign of respect. For me, things go better when I keep this concept in mind. YMMV. One last point. I think you should check your tone. I addressed the topic, the OP, and the other responses--including yours--from a place from respect. I would like to continue to do so. How about you?

IMO, bhr's point about knowing the relationship is vital. I would add that one can do an advisor a great service by managing one's expectations carefully. One's advisor is going to have bad days for reasons that have nothing to do with you. One's advisor is going to have bad days for reasons mostly having to do with you. (If you don't screw something up along the way, you're probably doing it wrong.) One's advisor may make a decision that seems a 180 from what you thought it would be. One's advisor may end up bouncing you off every wall in the office and then standing on your head because you have missed a key point...or maybe just for laughs. Under such circumstances, an established practice of managing one's expectations will allow you roll with it, mend the fence that needs mending, and move on to the next task.

This thread is developing slowly relative to previous years. If you're an aspiring graduate student who is submitting applications for fall 2017 and you have questions or need support or want to share information, you should consider increasing your operational tempo immediately. (Well, maybe right after the Texas/Oklahoma game.) If you're going to use this BB as a resource, I recommend that you skim the Fall 20xx threads from the last few seasons and use the search button until your mouse starts to malfunction. Yes, this BB's search functionality has had caps put on it by the Powers That Be. Yet such limitations should not slow down aspiring graduate students in history. Pay specific attention to posts by TMP and telkanuru. You may not agree with everything they have posted but no contributors in the history forum have worked harder to earn their success that those two. They are true believers. They are the kinds of graduate students that you should hope to have as classmates, especially if you find yourself disagreeing with their POVs. When you assess posts in this forum, turn the dial on your critical thinking skills all the way up. Often, the guidance you receive from experienced graduate students will be different from the guidance you receive from aspiring and new graduate students. Often, the guidance from the former will not be what you expect nor phrased as tactfully as you would prefer. You need to decide for yourself, on a case by case basis, when you're being told what you would like to hear versus what you need to hear. Under no circumstances should you let the upcoming election, or any other event short of a general war, be a distraction. Yes, the election matters and every vote counts. However, you are competing for a limited number of openings against committed applicants who have been preparing for graduate school since they were in middle school, who have impeccable academic pedigrees from prep school on, who are being mentored, and who have BTDTs writing LORs on their behalf. If you are here, you likely to do not have such competitive advantages. You do have this BB and a handful of experienced hands who will offer various levels of support in their posts.

IME, the professor will have additional copies of the assigned books for her t.a.'s. In the event she doesn't and you're going to be working with her, you may want to be careful about how you ask for a copy. Specifically, you want to make sure you're not drifting into a situation where the she hands you a copy while giving you a fleeting but critical glance that says, Well, I assumed that you already had a copy because this book is one that everyone who has majored in European history over the last forty years has read at least once.

I'm going to disagree respectfully with the other responses on two points. First, there's nothing out of line in the student's email. He/she made an observation that was partially accurate and expressed a preference. The fact that the feedback was offered anonymously is not a big deal. (Disclosure: when I T.A.-ed, I offered anonymous feedback forms.) Second, the student's observation was partially accurate. The grant and the email were relevant to your interests as a graduate student, they were irrelevant to your job as a teaching assistant. By focusing on other things, you may have missed opportunities to do your job more effectively. The lecturer may have gotten something wrong, or left the students scratching their heads in confusion, or nodded their heads in thoughtful silence, or have missed the point--all of these scenarios might have been opportunities for you to support your boss and, more importantly, your students. IMO, the facts that the student isn't one of yours, that you were in policy, and that a professor also uses his laptop do not trump the fact that you put your priorities ahead of your students'. The fact that you can do so does not mean that you should. (Your point that you'd never do in your own class what you did in the lecture is telling. [Disclosure #2: I got my B.A. from where you are now and that level of nuance...yikes...that's a can of worms you don't need to be carrying in your backpack.]) Here's the thing. Academic history is a profession in crisis. Part of the crisis is due to the growing distance between professors and their students (undergraduate and graduate). Another part is due to the fact that graduate students often treat interaction with undergraduates as an annoyance rather than as an opportunity to build public confidence in the craft and its practitioners. The following is worth exactly what you're paying to read it. Were I in your situation, I would either position myself so that no one could see what I was doing on my laptop or I would restrict my laptop use to tasks directly related to the class. (FWIW, in lectures, I generally stood in a location where I could see the lecturer and most of my students while taking notes.) Depending upon my frame of mind, I'd either offer an invitation to the student to talk it over in person or I'd not acknowledge the email. In any conversation with the student, I would acknowledge but not apologize for my laptop use. I would make no promise whatsoever or say anything that could be misconstrued as one. I'd then write a memo of the conversation and email it to my boss. (Disclosure #3: I currently work in the private sector in an industry where it is all about customer service...and risk management.) I would then treat myself to something with caffeine, vent colorfully about the whole thing, and then get back to the stacks. Where I'd do more venting.* Going forward, if you don't want to receive anonymous emails, distribute a sign up sheet on which students will put their school email addresses. Explain that you will only accept messages from accounts ending @yoursschool.edu and everything else is going into the trash. Say it's because of the latest disclosure about Yahoo! or the FBI raid. Before using this tactic, please make sure that it is permissible with your boss, your department, and in policy. If you can't make the transition this semester, see what you can do for next semester. _______________________ *A true story. Early one semester, I received some blistering criticism on an anonymous response form. Livid, I spent some time trying to figure out who wrote it. I then went to my boss's office and vented. "The worst thing about it," I sputtered, "is that it's true." He laughed, I left ...and went back to trying to figure out who wrote it. I did. And I also made the adjustment the student suggested. Live and learn. Or something.

I strongly recommend that you avoid the practice of thinking of a component of the profession as "politics," especially in open BBs, and all the more if you're going to use your name (a practice I do not recommend). For the time being, you are reliant upon the good will of established academics who are the guardians of the historical profession. Regardless of what one thinks privately, the received wisdom is that prestige matters. When you use a word like "politics", you leave yourself vulnerable to the interpretation that you're questioning the legitimacy of the profession you seek to enter. You may also leave yourself open to the interpretation of having green eyes. That is, if you'd gotten your B.A. at the University of Happyland at Elysium, would you be decrying the role of prestige as "politics"? These two perceptions (and others) will win you few friends in a department. Down the line, when you've BTDT, and it is your turn to shape the rules of the road, you will have the opportunity to question the role prestige plays in who gets admitted to graduate programs and who gets hired. To be clear, I'm not recommending that you take a POV that's not consistent to who you are as a person. Such a practice will be sniffed out within your first month as a graduate student. I am suggesting that, at the very least, hold your POV about prestige close to your vest. Maybe wear it as a chip on your shoulder when you're in the stacks. Kick ass and take names in seminar while wearing a UIUC sweatshirt. Ultimately, I recommend that you figure out why prestige matters--for better and for worse--and then do what you can to benefit from that knowledge. (As an example of the former, consider the possibility that the level and intensity of competition at the most prestigious schools leads students to be ever more focused, skilled, and committed.) My $0.02/YMMV

Beals's post is fantastic but in the strongest possible terms, I recommend against using wikipedia entries for information. If you 'reverse engineer' entries entry for source materials that you will subsequently read/study, that's one thing. Relying on a summary that is not peer reviewed is another thing. (Also, if a professor finds out that you're using an encyclopedia aimed at a general audience, you may end up being her chew toy. Established scholars have developed their knowledge a certain way and many expect graduate students to walk the same journey--you will get a full dose of this sensibility when you're taking your doctoral qualifying exams and professors openly take pleasure in your suffering.) IRT "catching up," Use JSTOR to find journals that have devoted all or part of an issue to a specific theorist/theory. Find published collections of essays that center around a specific theorist/theory. (The Cambridge Companions series and the Oxford Handbooks are two examples.) Find interviews given of a particular theorist. Find reviews of seminal works. Featured reviews are better than short reviews, but multiple short reviews will provide different vantage points. Find works by academics (both established and up and coming) who rely heavily upon a theory and read their works. If you use any of the recommendations above, please consider the following. Be patient with yourself. You're grappling with complex theories that are communicated through difficult prose. If it takes you hours to read an essay, you're probably doing it right. If you get the sudden urge to take a nap, take a nap. Short naps are part of the learning process. (If you end up sleeping twelve hours a day, that's something else.) Practice writing summaries of different theories. A page, a paragraph, a sentence. (This is in addition to the suggestion to write bullet points.) Do the writing in the same medium as you will take your qualifying exams. Do not panic if, after reading oodles of articles, a book or two, and theoretical works that leave you pulling out your hair, you end up with a thumbnail sketch. Have fun.

IMO, your greatest challenge is your level of confidence in what you have learned and in yourself. Your current level of confidence leads you to asking the same questions over and again, and keeps you from asking yourself more important questions. Questions like: What type of historian do you want to become? Which departments have the faculty and the resources that will help you reach your objectives? What do you bring to the table that will make you a good fit in the programs where you'd like to study? Recommendations Stop second guessing your academic pedigree -- it is what it is and it's now beyond your control. Continue to develop your relationships with your professors at your UGI. If they give you advice, follow it. If you don't understand the advice they're giving you, you're likely being invited to think and to work harder. Make a commitment to exhausting every resource and every ounce of your creativity as a researcher before asking questions. I'm going to send you a PM on this point. Keep developing your skills are a writer. You write well and that skill will help you. Start spending time in the stacks ... physically going through publications relevant to your interests. Develop lists of subjects of interest and POIs. Physically, because serendipity can help one develop one's instincts as a historian. Develop a sense of the historiographical landscape of the past fifty years (or so). Understand how debates in urban history fit into larger debates within the profession. Develop your own POV on the debates, but give yourself the liberty of holding your views provisionally. Do not worry about anything at this point in time. Don't worry about debt or funding. Someone's going to the University of Happyland on a Sarah Goodwin Happlyand Memorial Fellowship...why not you? Don't worry about disappointment--there's going to be plenty of that once you're a graduate student. #HTH.

It depends upon the field, the institution, and the department doing the hiring. IME, the faculty members of a history department will figure out an applicant's politics by where she studied and with whom, areas of specialization and her unpublished and published works, and other materials. A lot of this figuring is going to be done at a glance. An applicant who focuses upon American social history during the Cold War era is going to be ASSumed to have a different set of sensibilities than a scholar focusing on the American diplomatic/naval/military history of the twentieth century. (Or, as a mentor put it to me over a cup of coffee several years ago, I might have been able to get an academic job had I been born in the 1950s...maybe.) In the event an applicant makes it through the interviews and is invited for a job talk, additional considerations of that person's politics POVs will be assessed. These considerations will extend beyond the hackneyed liberal/conservative blindfold that is increasingly used by non academics. An applicant can be all for this cause or that initiative and still blow it by using the wrong word in front of potential colleagues. An unsolicited caveat for the OP. If you're unwise enough to identify yourself as an "old school" conservative and also reference Buchanan while communicating with Classicists, you're going to end up a chew toy of your fellow graduate students, to say nothing of your professors. With very few exceptions, academics do not take intellectual cues from journalists--especially ones that masquerade as historians.

Understand that there will be a set questions you need to ask and a set of questions you will be expected to answer even though professors may never draw your attention to either set. (An example of the former is what are the books do you not need to read carefully? An of the latter is why is it not necessary to read certain books carefully?) Figuring out these these sets of questions and how to answer them will be two of the most important tasks you undertake as a graduate student. I am going to differ slightly with TMP's thoughtful reply. While being mindful of her guidance, especially the point about being self reliant, I recommend that you keep in mind what you bring to the table as a graduate student, play to your strengths, behave as a peer, and have just the right amount of swagger in your intellectual stride. This is to say that if you're the type of historian who is intellectually competitive, benchmarks herself against her professors, and keeps her head up, find ways to hone those skills in a manner that is professional, respectful, and in line with the type of academic you envision becoming. To be clear, this approach has the potential for some amazing screw ups that will lead to professors standing on your head during office hours. This approach also has the potential for developing different types of relationships with professors. Conversely, if your temperament and skill set is that of the Gray Woman (or man), understand that such an approach has a different set of risks and rewards. What ever your approach, demonstrate your swagger by finding ways to push intellectually your professors. Yes, they absolutely will know more than you 90%-99% of the time. However, since your objective is to extend the frontiers of knowledge, that 1%-10% difference can be important. In those situations, you have an obligation to confirm, fine tune, or revise your professor's understanding.

If only! (Still #notbitter.)

MOO, any discussion of the causes of the First World War should go hand in hand with a discussion of the historiography of the causes of the First World War. Given your audience, I recommend offering a 60k foot view. Towards this end, ISBN 9780521516488 and ISBN 9780199976270 may be particularly useful. Michael Howard has written two introductory works on the war that may also be useful. For your background knowledge, in addition to some of the previous suggestions, I recommend the introductory essays by Jay Winter as well as the essays by Volker R. Bergham, and Jean-Jacques Becker and Gerd Krumeich in ISBN 9780521763851 . And also ISBN: 9780199261918 by Hew Strachan. What ever you decide to read, TMP's guidance is crucial. FWIW, it's my view that a conversation about the Great War's impact upon global history should center around the military history of the war, in particular: operations in Eastern Europe, civil-military relations, especially in Germany, and the conflict as "total war". IRT Barbara Tuchman, I recommend the highest level of caution in how one refers to The Guns of August in conversations about the First World War with professionally trained academic historians.

In the strongest possible terms, I respectfully urge new/newer graduate students in history not to make assumptions about one's advisers also being one's mentors. Professors decide if they will mentor students based upon criteria known only to themselves. A handful of professors will be generous with their guidance. Some professors are much more selective than their peers. Some do no mentoring at all. A few scoundrels will sandbag you in ways you won't realize until you figure out things for yourself. #notbitter

@easybreezy, as you're not a history major and as you have not yet begun graduate school, I think it would be prudent to hold off on giving guidance in response to discipline-specific questions. Despite your obviously good intentions, your desire to be helpful has lead you to offer advice that could lead graduate students in history astray. It may well be that @rhiannonsdreams should take a research seminar in her first semester if [1] she plans on doing more work with the professor offering the course, and/or [2] if the course is not offered every semester or every academic year. Also, as the practice of professional academic history is rooted in historiography, many research seminars (all in my experience) are going to require additional reading. IRT to contacting a POI who is an established historian, I think one is better served by developing and implementing a plan of action before asking questions. Compare the following two questions. Professor Finch, I'll be entering the program this fall, and I plan to take your course on [insert topic], what may I do to prepare? OR Professor Root, I'm an entering student who will be taking your course on [insert topic]. In preparation, I've read the course syllabi for the past [Y] years, and I've read [insert two or three books and one or two key journal articles]. While I am developing my understanding of [insert topic], I am wondering if I am on the right track with [insert subtopic]. If it's not too much trouble, could you recommend what I might read next? Which question says "I'm hungry. Feed me." and which one says "I know how to fish, at least a little. Where's the next pond?"

The following may be of interest to you. Roi Ottley's World War II: The Lost Diary of an African American Journalist

I recommend that you do some research before talking to your advisor. Get your hands on everything written by the established professor. See if you can develop a sense of how she may approach the topic. Look at her dissertation and the works of her dissertation supervisor. Does she define X differently than you? Is the difference distinctive enough to merit a competing work? Delve deeply into the historiography of the topic; focus especially upon masters theses and doctoral dissertations over the last decade, as well as ones that are in preparation. See if you can figure out how fertile the terrain is for new trees, even ones that look a lot alike. Take a broader look at how specialists in your field are handling the intermediate and big debates by checking short reviews in relevant journals. If you come across phrases like "the shelves groan under the weight of books [on this topic]," or "yet another book on [this topic]," you might have additional reasons to find a new topic. Give some thought to preparing a brief memo that summarizes your findings and giving a copy to your advisor well before the meeting.

IRC, The OP is a classicist, currently at UK.

If your thesis either supports or refutes an established interpretation in your field, I recommend that you augment/supplement text that underscores how. If your thesis establishes a new interpretation, I recommend that you augment your text with diplomatically-phrased passages that underscores how. IRT the guidance you're receiving from your advisor, trust it. As one told me "sometimes less is more." Save the version you like (without the trimming) in another folder.