melusine

Something a lot of people don't realize though, is the difference between assigning your own (filthy/sexual/whatever) interpretation to a text and reading it from a diachronic perspective that takes into account its origins/time of production/original intent and designated readership.
Fact is a lot of today's "Disney" fairy-tales were written by 18th century noblewomen to explain their futures as married women to their unmarried (and thus virgin) daughters.
Beauty and the Beast is one of those, written by Madame Leprince de Beaumont (not Perrault, as many people seem to assume) to instruct the younger ladies of the court that an older grumpy husband can actually be quite tender. While the rose-as-vagina may seem to us somewhat far-fetched, it was in fact an already existing and relatively self-evident trope in courtly literature at the time... Consider it the delicate 18th century equivalent to today's euphemistic promise rings or whatnot.

Folk tales (as opposed to literary tales penned by one author) like the ones recorded by the Grimms are sometimes even more explicitly sexual. Rapunzel, for instance, is teeming with allegoric representations of intercourse and is basically a giant metaphor of losing your virginity.

Sorry to get all lecture-y on you. I just wrote a cool couple papers on this.

"interdiciplinarity" is definitely not right and looking at it bugs me. Excuse me for thinking that an English major and "literature nerd" would want to correct the spelling in her signature.

February is the drunkest month.

girl who wears glasses: interdisciplinarity is spelled wrong in your signature. 

Thin-skinned and deeply insensitive to sarcasm?

Why did everyone assume I was looking for an ego boost when I posted my "what are my chances?" thread? I don't think of myself as some sort of stellar candidate. Seriously, the reactions were kind of bizarre. Is everyone else in such a different position from me? I took a few years off after undergrad, I didn't immediately have everything figured out, I changed disciplines, I went through excruciating bouts of uncertainty (and still do, all the time). I worked really hard over the past year to acquire the skills I felt were essential to my academic life. Where is all the misunderstanding coming from? Is it really my elitism that's the issue here, or maybe something closer to the populism of an angry mob?

I'm not trying to insult any professors you've had in the past. I'm saying that the mindset of "I want to become an okay professor, not a superstar" just sounds like a sad way of thinking about yourself. I doubt any of your great profs of the past woke up in the morning and said this to themselves in the mirror. I think ambition is a beautiful thing, and it's what we all need to harness in order to achieve any level of success. Becoming a prof at a SLAC is an achievement. It's not a secondary goal, or a fallback plan for people who undersell themselves, or feel unworthy of Harvard, and angrily belittle anyone choosing to apply to Harvard or to accurately state the merits of a Harvard education. If you really want to survive in academia, I suggest you all become a bit more comfortable with what you're calling "elitism," but what I would describe as a bit of realism.

And you know what? I am an elitist, in the sense that I feel certain people are more qualified than others, more talented than others. I believe in a meritocracy. I also believe that everyone probably has something that they are very good at. It's not always the thing they want it to be.

Charisma, for example, is a necessity to great teaching. It doesn't mean that you have to be Rico Suave to be a great teacher, but you do need to somehow hold the attention of a room. Your ideas need to be compelling in form, as well as content. Looks and speaking voice play a big part in hiring professors. Is that fair? Maybe not, but it's true.

Actually, you can work your way around that too!
My bf and I have been living for two years without a TV, just internet.
Sports-wise, he's pretty much as bad as it gets (I get everything from the NBA playoffs, to the NHL, to the champions league, to the Copa Sudamericana playoffs, to every single game Colo Colo ever plays.. ). He has a bunch of websites bookmarked that are usually pretty good at streaming the games you want to watch, in decent quality.
If not, we also have a list of all the sports bars in our area with satellite programming: once you're on adequate terms with the bartenders, it's relatively easy to call or just walk in and request one of the TVs to be changed to the channel you want to watch. You just need to check which channel televises the game in advance.
So yeah, as long as you have the internet, there's a solution to everything!

Something a lot of people don't realize though, is the difference between assigning your own (filthy/sexual/whatever) interpretation to a text and reading it from a diachronic perspective that takes into account its origins/time of production/original intent and designated readership.
Fact is a lot of today's "Disney" fairy-tales were written by 18th century noblewomen to explain their futures as married women to their unmarried (and thus virgin) daughters.
Beauty and the Beast is one of those, written by Madame Leprince de Beaumont (not Perrault, as many people seem to assume) to instruct the younger ladies of the court that an older grumpy husband can actually be quite tender. While the rose-as-vagina may seem to us somewhat far-fetched, it was in fact an already existing and relatively self-evident trope in courtly literature at the time... Consider it the delicate 18th century equivalent to today's euphemistic promise rings or whatnot.

Folk tales (as opposed to literary tales penned by one author) like the ones recorded by the Grimms are sometimes even more explicitly sexual. Rapunzel, for instance, is teeming with allegoric representations of intercourse and is basically a giant metaphor of losing your virginity.

Sorry to get all lecture-y on you. I just wrote a cool couple papers on this.

Well, I'm 100% Russian (nationality, not necessarily ethnicity-wise but anyway) and our anthem is one of my least favorite for a combination of reasons- tho i'm not a big fan of anthems in general, or any other para-military nationalistic manifestation of patriotic sentimentalism.. lol

But to add to the random fun fact discussion (sorry for the digression): Sergey Mikhalkov is also the father (or grandfather, i have a sudden doubt..) of actor/director Nikita Mikhalkov whom you may know from Burnt by the sun- a movie about the stalin purges which won the Academy Award forf best Intl film in the nineties..

Ha! I've already said it somewhere before, but the conversation's usually along the lines of either:


Random Person: So.. What would you do in a Comparative Literature program? ... Compare books?
Me: ... Yeah. Pretty much.
RP: Oh. ........ And you need a degree for that?


Random Angry Person: So.. What would you do in a Comparative Literature grad program? Just read books?
Me: I..
RAP: I can't believe they offer a phd in that! What's next? A degree in Ipod listening? Tv-browsing??
Me: Well..
RAP: *disgusted shudder* I can't believe that's where *my* tax money's going.

Dear School.

I know you've told me not to write or call, that you needed time to think things over...
What happened? School.. Where did we go wrong??
Even before I met you, you wooed me with your promises of happy futures together. Do you remember, school? Do you?
I do. You used to make it sound so easy. You even set up an online system for me to apply, so you could receive my letters faster. Like you couldn't wait to read them! Was it all a lie?
And then... Then, you started making demands. Asking me for more transcripts, more test scores. Money even!! I spent all I had on you. School. ... I LIVE IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!
But did I ever blame you? Did I ever say anything hurt you?
Yes. Yes, I might have written other schools. But at least I was honest. I told you! I told you as soon as you asked if there was someone else! I gave you a list, School.
And now, this silence. Where are you now, School? What are you doing? Are you reading someone else's SOPs? Letting yourself be charmed by their heavily revised writing style, their overblown rec letters, their stellar scores? Can't you see that none of it matters?!?? Because I'm THE ONE. I'm the one, School. And you know it.
And I know it too. That's why I sit here, night after night, waiting for you to call and tell me you want me, like I know you do.
You have cost me my rent, my friends and my dignity, School. While you are out ogling other applicants, I could be doing the same with other schools, but I don't! I don't because I WANT YOU!
And you may think I'm needy, and weird, and obsessed.. And you might even call me a creep if you knew that I spend most of my time on your website, looking at pictures of your exes, and trying to picture my head on their bodies, mentally photoshopping myself into pictures of us together... But that's just because I know we're meant to be, School.
So please. Pick up the phone and call.
I'll be waiting.

Yours.

m

OK, I'm on a Mac, so I'm really just interested in Apple software, but I didn't want to deprive you PeeCee's from offering your own insights (plus, a lot of software is cross-platform).

So, here are the "rules"...
1. What's your degree "level" (i.e. masters, doctoral, etc)
2. What do you use the software for (be as brief as you want)
3. Free or $? ("$" < $30, "$$" <$50, "$$$" > $50)
4. Heard of anything cool that you haven't tried yet?

Software I use (Advanced Masters, soon to be doctoral)
The usual (MS Office, iWorks '08) plus...
Bookends- Citation software for Mac ($$)
Evernote- note organizer, stored online (cross-platform) (Free)
MacJournal- Mac journalling software (for notes, etc) ($)
Mellel- Word processor (Mac, handles large documents (i.e. 60,70+ pages) better than Word/Pages) ($)
Omnifocus- Mac task organizer ($$)
Papers- PDF organizer for Mac ($$)
Scrivener- Word processor with a creative system for arranging papers & thoughts ($$)
World of Warcraft- (How else would I keep my sanity?)


I'm interested in DEVONthink, but at a going price of $60, I'm waiting for a Macheist to get me the hookup.
I'm also interested in something that's tailor-made for research notes, etc (especially at the dissertation level)

Hi all,

I'm currently a first-year MA student in Islamic Studies, and will be applying next year to Ph.D. work to several top programs -- Chicago and Yale in Political Science, Duke, Princeton and Harvard in Near Eastern Studies/Religion, and Michigan in History/Anthropology. I've got a strong undergraduate record (4.0 GPA and multiple majors), decent GRE scores (660V, 730Q, 6 writing), and a pretty strong publishing record this early in the game -- several articles, several conference papers, and I'm working on my first book as we speak. The thing is, in my first year as an MA student this past year, I took a bit of a ding, getting two A minuses (on account of taking on waaay too much this year).

I know graduate GPA is expected to be higher than undergrad, so I'm wondering, is an A minus here as an MA student a deal-breaker for top Ph.D. programs? I imagine it varies across the spectrum of programs, so if anyone can comment intelligently about any of these programs all the better -- especially Michigan, as I don't specifically have an anthro background, so that one is going to be a little trickier. Will a less-than-perfect (but still strong) MA record stand in the way of admission to these top programs?

If this does stand to pose a problem, might it be worth retaking the GRE? My scores were above 90th percentile across all registers, but I know the verbal can stand to be improved. Might that be necessary in this case?

I practically had a panic attack after getting my *second* A-minus (I was borderline by half of a point, and my prof refused to budge). I just took on waaay too much this year, otherwise I don't think this would have happened. I'd really appreciate any feedback anyone can provide, as it'd go a long way to alleviate my angst. Thanks!

What were your reasons for applying to such different areas? When you chose to apply and wrote out the SOP you must have tailored them for each, yes? Go back and look at what attracted you those schools and make a list of pros and cons and work from that.

I got four admissions
One from Oregon State U, PhD electrical engineering in energy system
one from University of Kansas, Master in Electrical engineering,and continuing with PhD without reapply
one from University at Buffalo-suny, PhD electrical engineering
one from university of Florida, PhD electrical engineering

All of them are admissions, and as yu see totally different areas. OSU, UB and UFL have the energy system area, KU doesn't have; and other research areas like VISL, digital circuit etc. are much the same.
I am a girl, and can you give me some advices on choosing school? Please list the reasons.
Thanks!

I went to a low ranked school because they offered me full funding over a tier one/top ten university.

BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER.

I am surrounded by the biggest incompetents in the world. I am not trying to sound condescending. All I am saying is that surround yourself with people who challenge you. Do not settle. I did, and I am regretting it majorly. I feel like I am learning nothing.

Because I am so upset about this...I am going to reapply to get another degree and only go if I get accepted into a top tier university.


AHHHHHHHHHH

What I would say has mostly been covered. Just a few more notes from someone who got transplanted to a considerably colder climate:

When looking for thermal underwear, don't buy cotton--get a good synthetic blend or else (from what others tell me) silk. Cotton does not keep you warm at all if the weather is wet.

Also, be sure you have good wool-blend socks. I lose a lot of heat through my feet for some reason, so this is key for me. Most of my socks are wool-blend heavy-weight hikers (some Thorlo, some generic knock-offs). If the snow is deep, i.e. over the top of my boots, my socks get wet as I walk to school; thus, I like to keep an extra pair around.

Like some of the above posters, I hate hats. Most of the time I make do with the hood on my jacket, which fits loosely and doesn't bother me so much. However, at temperatures under 20 F, I find a hat to be an absolute necessity. Mine is a fleece hat that also covers my ears; I think earmuffs would drive me batty.

Mittens/gloves are also very nice. At first I tried to keep my hands in my pockets, but that doesn't work if you need your hands our for schlepping groceries, etc. My mom swears by lined leather gloves, but I can't afford those, so I just wear cheap knit gloves. Unfortunately these will get wet quickly, so, like socks, it's nice to keep a spare pair somewhere.

at the risk of sounding like i'm trying to beat people in a pissing contest ( )... I transferred undergrad from Edmonton, Alberta (Canada)!
By -35C (about -31 F), the first thing you do is forget about being fashionable or even remotely human-looking! Although people usually try to drive everywhere, if you do have to wander outside in that kind of weather: thermal underwear or some thick woolen tights under your pants are a must. Never go out without a hat. Trust me: your hair will freeze, and then slowly melt down the back of your shirt, while you sit in class. In case of snowstorms, I remember the radios and various authority-sources recommending balaclavas. Which is funny because you occasionally get a university campus full of students looking like bank-robbers!
Then again, other than the state of Alaska, I don't think there are any places in the states where it gets quite as cold, so you guys should be fine.

I'm going to graduate school where it snows and I've lived in an area where it doesn't snow for my entire life. What should I wear during the winter/snow seasons? I'm pretty sure normal sunny California winter clothing doesn't cut it.

Seconding both answers vehemently. There's a lot to be said for getting help from current grad students. When I last applied, I had friends and colleagues at almost every program on my list. Their help was absolutely instrumental: they (knowing my work) suggested professors that I would never have thought of, helped me gauge the atmosphere of the program, edited my SoP and writing sample, introduced me to other graduate students, offered suggestions on other programs, etc, etc. I don't think I can ever pay off that intellectual debt and I feel absurdly lucky. But I knew them going into this process--and in many cases, had helped them in previous years when they were applying. I'm also guilty of favoritism myself: when I find applicants that I would have to have colleagues (either at my program or in academia more generally), I go out of my way to offer feedback on their work, their potential programs, create connections (etc). But--and here's the catch--I need to have a strong and favorable impression of someone (both as a potential friend and future colleague) already before I'm willing to go to such length. It's virtually impossible to create that sort of impression "cold-calling" through an email. In short, the power dynamics and the explicit favor-asking framework doesn't facilitate forming the sort of relationship that would motivate me (and I'd suspect, most grad students) to stick my neck out for you. Like foppery, if I'm not *too* busy, I will answer out of civility and give reasonably honest responses, but I'd be doing it largely out of a sense of obligation, rather than to insure that your application is as strong as it can be and that you're fully well informed. These emails, frankly, also take forever to write.

Inafuturelife is also completely right on how "gossipy" graduate students (and faculty) are. Even if you aim your email carefully, only at the students working in your field...chances are, they're friends with each other (or at least speak to each other) and this will come up. I've seen it happen again and again, and the result is almost never positive. Of course we'll be civil (or simply not answer)...that isn't necessarily an indication that the email was successful.

Connections matter in far more subtle ways than simply influencing admissions decisions--and this is part of why I emphasize that if a professor tells you to email someone and use their name, definitely do it. Whenever a friend or colleague (and certainly, a professor) sends "someone my way," I will always take the time to see that the student's concerns are addressed. I suspect that professors adopt a similar approach (though probably with a more complicated hierarchy). But unless you have some sort of an "in"...or a genuine, compelling question that can evade this "just tryin' to get my foot in the door" framework and catch the attention of the professor in question, I wouldn't recommend cold-emailing anyone. Professors are far too busy (and from my experience, usually annoyed even if they're too polite to let you know this) to look on an unsolicited email favorably. We grad students often feel the same way.

Yeah, let me be more honest than I was before:

I'm a current grad student, too, and I'd find the email an imposition. I'd respond as thoroughly as I could, out of common courtesy, but the sheer volume of questions would overwhelm me. If MM were to read my response, she'd think the email was successful (and, if it answered her questions, I suppose it would be). But it would do her no favors with the department. I can even imagine the dialogue that might ensue between a grad student and her adviser:

GRAD STUDENT. A prospective applicant wrote to me last night. She asked me exactly 20 questions--I counted. She even asked me whether I thought you were a good professor! It was like she wanted me to go behind your back and reveal all the dirty secrets of the department. And she seemed to assume that the coursework here wouldn't be challenging. I was a little insulted.

ADVISER. Wait, who was this person? Was it __? Because she sent *me* an email that read like a statement of purpose. She listed all her interests, all her hobbies, and all her teaching experience. It was like she was trying to apply before the application season began. Essentially, she seemed to be asking me whether I thought her interests would fit in well here, but she took 700 words to do it. I was up all night answering her.

See what I mean? MM, I'll be frank: those emails will give you the reputation of "THAT student" long before the committees meet. Departments are gossipy (what else do academics have to do?), and word gets around. There is no foolproof way to get all the information you want before you're accepted. Those long, detailed emails can wait until you have acceptance in hand: that's when they'll be totally appropriate. At this stage, though, they'll only alienate you from potential professors and colleagues.

Well, as I said, the emails worked for me. I was specific in my questions to grad students and in my inquiry to professors because I wanted to make sure that the programs to which I apply are a good fit, especially after last season. By current grad students, I was complimented on being thorough in terms of my questions, and told that it was a great idea to ask them. By current professors, I was complimented on being so detailed and specific and told it was a good idea because it made it easier for them to see what I was looking for. At one program, the DEGS wrote back asking me to come visit at my earliest discretion, and other professors suggested I come visit other departments as well - so I guess the length of my email did not put off those folks - and frankly, if it did, then I would probably not be happy at that department. I want them to be enthused at my enthusiasm, if that makes sense to you. So far, I've gotten back an effort in responses that corresponds to the effort I put into my emails, and I see that as a very positive sign - it hasn't been a generic "I like Arthurian studies" "OK, go ahead and apply" kind of interface, but much more thoughtful and interactive, and I think that's because of the detail and time that went into my queries. So - I'm happy with them.

Ultimately, obviously, it's an individual thing and I just posted these as an example of emails you "could" send to a potential department, for people who hadn't thought of it or didn't know what sorts of things to ask/put in such an email. I certainly think there are multiple ways to go about it or not to go about it - in my case, I was thorough and detailed, and it worked for me; in your case maybe you don't want to go into such detail or you feel they're too long- and that's totally fine, everyone has different ideas about all aspects of this process.

and no, that's not a bitchy thing to say;). I just didn't want that line to sound as pompous or dismissive as it might, which is why I inserted it. So far, hasn't seemed to bother anyone...nobody emailed back and said, "I liked your query, except the "lol" bit." From my experience at conferences and in two graduate programs, I think grad school students or applicants occasionally forget that the professors are people, too and that often, they have a sense of humor equal to or stronger than our own. The occasional lighter moment is not going to mean immediate rejection or antipathy; certainly not in an initial query email. I certainly wouldn't write it on my SOP when it comes to application season, though!!

In the end, I think this is just a personal choice to make. My posting of the emails I sent was meant solely as one possible approach - maybe not the best, maybe even not great. I just put it there as an example of what worked for me.

There's a professor in our department who I think is going on sabbatical "next year" every year. He talks about it and then doesn't do it for whatever reasons (obligations, etc). While well intentioned, the information you received may not be accurate. It's definitely fair to ask the professor if they will be willing, interested, and available to be advisor for 2 years. Also - another scenario, depending on the prof - one of our profs, when she goes on sabbatical she still mentors her students, she just doesn't teach classes or have any official responsibilities to the school (committees, etc). Some profs do go out of state, country etc so it does vary.

This thread is very sad.

I vote for Oregon, because it''s supposed to be beautiful! Much better than Dirty Jersey, IMO