Sigaba

@EndlessAshley, I am sorry that you have to experience such disrespect. In the future, and with your professor's permission, design the section syllabus so that a significant percentage of their grade is based upon team assignments. Make clear that you will select the team leaders and the teams about halfway through the term. Group like minded students together. Name/number the teams sequentially with the jackasses being last. Appoint the biggest s-bird among them as captain. Assign tasks that will really make them work together. Have the groups work together towards the end of the class for a few weeks in a row so you can observe and offer support. By the time its their turn to present, the bad apples will know why they're getting the marks they've earned so far. (Or they will have learned the difference between self-esteem and self-respect and they will present very good work.) What follows is a recommendation that may run counter to who you want to be as a person but may help prevent challenges to your authority in the classroom. Consider the value of never apologizing to students. In some circles, apologizing is a sign of weakness.

I am going to offer a different perspective than TakeruK with whom I've disagreed many times on topics related to the workplace. This perspective and my disagreement with him are offered from a place of respect. I worked at the now defunct R&D lab of a multinational consumer/business electronics firm. (The one that pioneered one.word.sentences.) IME, a lot of time, money, hard work, and care are invested in R&D. While fortunes may rise if products come to market, people--your peers--may lose their jobs if projects are not completed on time and under budget. Reading between the lines of your post, your leaving under any circumstances is going to cause a void that is going to take a lot of work, sacrifice, and maybe even heartache to fill. Yes, you can give minimum notice and walk away unscathed professionally. Yes, you may get fired (as in get out now) the moment you let your supervisor know that you're leaving. Yes, you may be the guest of honor at a party thrown after you've spent your remaining time documenting what you know and making sure your team has a full grasp of your work and be taken to lunch on your last full day. But given the objective you've stated ("I'd like to maintain some integrity") what is the right thing for you and your wife to do? IRT the diabetes. For several years, I was a housemate to a RN who has Type I diabetes.One of the things I learned from her as she worked towards becoming a CDE was the degree to which the disease can impact one's frame of mind. Managing diabetes is not just about having the medicine and the equipment one needs, but also the spirit to keep fighting each and every day against a disease that seeks to turn one's own body into one's assassin. What choices can you make now that will equip you and your wife to fight? (FWIW, I got the job because the incumbent was upfront with the boss about the job offer she received in an entirely different industry and because she offered to help find and to train her replacement.)

I recommend that interested parties should not use this thread as a catch to share titles and tips about rising stars. Instead, I respectfully suggest that individuals seriously interested in the study of professional academic military/naval/aerospace history do what professional academic historians generally do: define the boundaries of debate over time (the forest) while simultaneously, discuss how specific scholars and their works (the trees) change the debates over time, and connect the forest to larger landscapes being explored in other fields of history. What follows are a few questions that may be of us to readers interested in the approach proposed in this post. Please consider the questions as a group--the overlap is intentional. What is military history (broadly conceived to include naval and aerospace history) and how does it differ from other types of historical study? What was "new" about the "new" military history? In what ways are the study of military history relevant today? Are military historians at a disadvantage in the academic job market and, if so, what can be done to address the disadvantages? Four suggested works A Guide to the Use and Study of Military History Proceedings of the Symposium on "The History of War as Part of General History" at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, New Jersey as published in Journal of Military History 57:5 The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession Rethinking Military History #HTH

I recommend the following course of action before initiating a conversation with your advisor. Spend time figuring out why your advisor finds your approach to a topic that overlaps hers significantly uninteresting. Specifically, double check to make sure that your approach is relevant to established debates in the field of study. Is your approach behind the times, out in left field, or miles ahead? Develop a compelling but concise argument as to how you see your work advancing the established debates in your field. If you're behind the times, then make the point that something has been missed. If you're out in left field, show how a different perspective can offer new insights. If you're miles ahead, then figure out how to sketch a map. If you are miles ahead, you might give thought to using the map to position yourself a bit closer to the established debates and then go into trailblazer mode later. Your mission is to expand incrementally the frontiers of existing knowledge, not to go boldly where no academic has gone before. When you're formulating this argument, you might benefit from having a refined understanding of her/his scholarship (if not also her/his mentor's and his/her mentor's as well as those who have offered the most determined opposition). Take a step back from your own circumstances and take a hard look at yourself in the mirror. Be gentle with yourself as you ask tough questions. What preconceived notions of yourself, of her, and the process do you have that might be getting in your way? Does your MA really set you ahead of your peers at your current school? Are you as receptive to guidance as you believe? As you're new to your program, I disagree with the guidance offered by SAL for two reasons. First, as of right now, your confidence and communications skills are not where they need to be to ask the right people the right questions the right way. Second, while the information may be relevant, actively seeking it without knowing more about your department could backfire in unforeseen ways. The worst answer may not be that your advisor is terrible at teaching. Instead, I recommend that you put in your best efforts to earn the trust of the faculty. If they want you to know and you earn their trust, they will tell you. If they don't tell you, you will have to figure out other ways to get the answer (e.g. asking ABDs). HTH

@1Q84, The OP posed three specific questions. Rather than addressing those questions, you have attempted to lecture on "inter-class interaction." By doing so, you have sought to make this thread about you at the expense of helping a fellow graduate student who goes out of her way to help others. On another topic. I don't throw mud at "every single post" of yours outside of the English forum. (That you would make such a hyperbolic statement, or think that I have a "grudge" against you underscores your admission that you don't know how to call yourself on your own b.s. and that you need to grow as a writer.) Instead, I offered counterpoints to a handful of your posts that I found controversial. If you cannot handle someone disagreeing with you without turning to name calling or developing fantasies about being persecuted or attempting to be snarky, the next stage of your journey is going to be especially difficult for you-- students (undergraduates and graduates) at your next stop are very competitive.

@GeDUDE! the operative term is "less able," not "unable." A social historian who specializes in modern Germany can thumbnail the atomization of everyday life as a key factor in the rise of the Nazi dictatorship, but the attendant points about the long nineteenth century and the manifold, trans-Atlantic debates over the history of everyday life, and the geopolitical implications of those debates are going to be left out of the mix. (FWIW, the foundation of the statement is my understanding of the work of K. Anders Ericsson and his peers. YMMV.)

@1Q84, the irony is that you are telling someone that they should look inward after admitting that you don't know how to call yourself on your own b.s.

While telkanuru's point has merit, I'm going to disagree and suggest that you let them know. The bosses may be lining up projects and tasks based upon the assumption that you'll be part of the team for a while. By disclosing your intentions, you will enable them to find and to train someone else with as much time as possible. Management may not appreciate such an accommodation on your part. Indeed, they may ask you to walk on the spot. However,it is likely one or more of your coworkers will.

I think that a couple of you are dogpiling on bsharpe269 without having carefully read the OP. This dogpiling is ironic given the fact that one of you recently asked for help in another thread and received guidance, not unsolicited personal criticisms. @bsharpe269, the dilemma you face is that you are on the cutting edge of knowledge in a highly specialized field of expertise. As you learn more, you will be less able to communicate effectively what you know and why it is important to non-specialists. I recommend that you find works geared towards general audiences in which very complicated topics are made more accessible to those who are not specialists. (Henry Petroski is an example of what I mean.) With practice and patience--mostly with yourself--you will find ways to "break down" what you do so it sounds simple without being simplistic, and then to communicate that information without alienating or off putting to others unfamiliar with your discipline.

If you get a phone call from either a parent of one of your students OR from your department telling you that a parent has called to complain about the grade you gave his/her child OR a letter from an ambiguously titled staffer in the athletic department OR you have students shutting down on you because you won't tell them what they want to hear, then your views on entitled undergraduates may change.

I'm not sure what this unnamed professor means. In corporate America, which often (and incorrectly_ claims that the Ivory Tower knows nothing about the "real world," there are performance evaluations, 360 evaluations, customer/client satisfaction surveys, and other forms of subjective assessment, many of which have scores and grades attached. They go hand in hand with bottom line metrics like utilization and profitability.

They may have communicated implicitly that they want you to focus on your own work and not get too caught up in the concerns of your students and/or your concern for your students.

Were I in your situation I would go with conventional wisdom and get the thesis paper and have one less thing to worry me. Else, I would contact a sales representative at Southworth. http://www.southworth.com/contact-us/ ETA. @takeruK, I think the requirement for high quality paper is more about the durability of a thesis. IME, they get archived in the library.

I suggest that you split the difference. Revise the existing piece to include "start from scratch" elements. For example, if the existing piece is short on historiography then shore it up. Or develop another example or two to support the papers central thesis. Ultimately, you should figure out what you want to do and do it. That way, you will submit a writing sample that reflects how you view yourself as a historian.

@anonnynon MOO, I think that TakeruK's guidance is the way to go IRT finding solutions/resources on campus. Here's the thing. If you use a tactic that backfires, saying that you were trying something that you got from a third party is not going to help your cause -- even if that third party is the received wisdom at CHE. Another point. Were I in your situation, I would revisit my communications with the departmental head and your dissertation committee chair. They didn't tell you what you wanted to hear, but might they have told you what you needed to hear?

Hey S, If you do a Google search along the lines of "Backpack grad Cafe" you will get links to previous discussions of the topic on this BB. (I am in a bit of a rush and don't have time to get you started.) You might also check out a blog called Carryology. In any case, I do not recommend the Tom Bihn Synapse 25 and I recommend the Arcteryx Blade 21 if you can find one on eBay. The Arcteryx Blade 24 is more readily available and more stylish but one has to figure out the best way to pack it depending upon the load and one's schedule. If a casual look is your goal, I recommend the Arcteryx Mantis and the Goruck GR0. If you have a ton of stuff to haul, I recommend the Arcteryx LEAF Khard 30. #HTH

IME, acknowledgments often contain vital information about a historian's due dilligence. If a given field has ten or twelve established experts and two or three deans, and a historian has gotten insight/support from a good number of these SMEs, I am more inclined to lean forward when going through that historian's work. Conversely, there are historians like H.P. Willmott who are (increasingly) isolated from their peers. The isolation can lead to errors large and small as well as redundant arguments that don't advance the historiographical debates. IRT reading footnotes/end notes, MOO, the key is to gain an understanding of the constellation of primary source materials that are most important at a particular time. If a book in question doesn't make use of these sources, it may be suspect *unless* it is focused on a neglected group of primary source materials. When it comes to secondary works, if an academic uses out of date materials and/or the notes are a "garland of ibids," then one might be served reading a different book. (Exceptions to this rule of thumb might be made if the author is an established titan in the field or she is exceptional when producing works of historical synthesis.) Reading every note or not is a decision that should be made on a case by case basis. If a work seeks to push the cutting edge, I'm more inclined to read every note than if the work seeks to elaborate upon existing trajectories of inquiry.

Reading cover to cover is not sustainable in graduate school. You will drive yourself nuts, you will fall behind in your work, and, paradoxically, may not do as well in seminar as others. Keep in mind that the objective is to establish a "dialog" among the book you're reading and others on the same topic. As a graduate student, you should/will be able to write a five to seven page essay on a book within four or five hours. This includes the time spent with the book, doing the background historiographical and biographical research on the topic and the person who wrote the book, doing the editing to get under the page limit, an appropriate amount of proof reading, and, if necessary, putting together an outline for a presentation on the work. This practice is not necessarily the best one, but... IRT reading method, there are some older threads in this forum. For example. also (I recommend that one pays extra attention to New England Nat's posts on this and every other topic related to studying history. NEN is the bee's knees.) FWIW, I do a lot of background research on the historian, maybe find earlier iterations of the work (e.g. journal articles). I will have in hand reviews on the book, as well as the topic, and by the author on other works. Then I will read the bibliography first, and then the introduction and the acknowledgements. Then I will start jumping around, generally reading very selectively (and backwards) while paying very close attention to the foot/end notes. If a book is related to an area of specialization, you will get to the point where you will figure out a work's central arguments by reading the footnotes. When I was doing coursework, I (too often) fell into the graduate student's trap of criticizing a historian for not writing the book one thinks that she/he should have written rather than focusing on the work in its own terms. Professors would stand on my head for these lapses. I got better at not doing it, but there's still room for improvement.

You may face a more challenging transition than you realize. Many, if not most, historians do not consider IR a "slightly different" field, despite the efforts of some historians, most notably J. L. Gaddis in the summer 1987 issue of International Security, to bridge the gap. (If you've not done so already, please take a look at ISBN-13 9780521132244 and/or consult the review in Foreign Affairs.) I recommend that you start off with the assumption that you will need to work as hard as you ever have. If the transition seems to be going smoothly maybe consider taking off an occasional weekend.

Congratulations on the job offer, Mindreading. As it happens, a team member recently resigned to return to his previous employer. The head of my division put it this way in an email to the group earlier this morning: Hopefully, our loss will provide you with a suggestion on how you might frame your decision to withdraw.

Hey, Nibs, check out the following...

At the core of this statement are two of the key skills for studying history in graduate school. Knowing how to read a work for its argument, and having the confidence to stop once you have figured out that argument will help you keep your balance. (Other skills include knowing when you don't need to read a word of a particular work, and knowing when you probably should read every word. In both cases, professors will give verbal and non verbal cues.)

Academic institutions sometimes define their peer institutions based factors that are widely known among administrators and faculty members involved in various forms of strategic planning. As a hypothetical example , a private university in the Northern California bay area may pay less attention to the governing sensibilities in that region when it comes to facility and transportation planning and instead look to schools in Southern California and the Pacific Northwest because they have similar values/mission statements.

Hey, White Unicorn, Your stress is understandable however you are worrying about your situation too much. Are there ways that you can improve the draft while she's off line?

C- Unless you already have a very refined skill set as a historian, you might be in for some incredibly tough sledding if you approach what awaits you as a "traditional job" that is not as enjoyable to you as your hobbies. I very strongly recommend that you reassess your commitment to Klio. Consider the possibility that your proposed approach to history may place you at a disadvantage when it comes to competing with your fellow students, meeting the expectations of your professors, and, most of all, maximizing your potential.