Heimat Historian

I don't know about all of you but now that I've accepted a program and found an apartment I am ready to go already! Sure, I still have to finish my thesis and graduate, but those are just details.
 
Are any of you impatient to start your next chapter/adventure too? What are you most looking forward to?

I'm in a similar position Chiqui.  My wife is on the job market for the Iowa city area and has had some positive feedback, but nothing substantial yet.  We're also cleaned out the garage of a bunch of stuff this past weekend.  Finally, we're looking to rent the house before we move. I can't wait for August!

I get to register for classes today!  It's really happening guys. 

Thanks for all the responses!  Very interesting schedules.  My goal is to keep a work schedule that resembles that of a traditional job. I want to do this for a couple of reasons, 1) I need structure or I fall off the bandwagon very quickly, and 2) since I have a husband and a kid, I NEED my evenings to be free of school work as much as possible, which means I must do everything else during the day.  My original idea was to have classes in the morning so that I could be home with the kid once school for him ends for the day but that is not going to work out.  My classes will be in the afternoon, which means we still have to have him in after school programs.  This works out in that I'll have the mornings to do reading, writing, etc.  I am also hellbent on making time for the things that make me happy and are not work, like hobbies.
 
I hope this isn't all a pipe dream!

We had a yard sale on Sunday to get some of the excess stuff under the control.  We are donating a lot of things this week and then we'll hopefully list our house. The selling of the house is what's stressing me out!
My husband had a very promising job interview today for a position in NYC, so fingers crossed!

Hey all,
 
I am sorry for disappearing for a while. I've been catching up on all the stuff I should have done while anxiously awaiting all of my application results.  Sounds like I missed some drama while I was gone.
 
I just signed a contract to teach a course on Environmental History and Justice in the fall, and will probably also pick up a couple of Introduction to Historical Studies courses as well.

^^^ Arendt will always be relevant, I'd add The Origins of Totalitarianism for a fuller description of her thoughts regarding the development and aftermaths of the European experience in WWII

I don't think it's possible for a professor to know that this year's applicant pool is the worst "ever." Maybe I'm sensitive too. I don't want to think that I was accepted because I'm a little less shitty than the rest. And that's not the impression I got from my adviser, who told me her department has gotten more applicants than ever and is slowly decreasing the cohort size.

Honestly, when I read that a bunch of tenured profs were discussing how much better applicants were before, it reminded me of the nostalgic feelings people have when discussing the 1960s radicalism or WWII. I'm not saying that some programs might not have gotten a bunch of bad apples this year, but I find that attitude suspect when I look at sources in the archive or listen to oral histories, let alone when people today harken back to the "good ol' days" when people sucked less. There is no greatest generation y'all.

I'd say the majority of popular history books are written by journalists.  They have a completely different methodology for how they do their work.  I appreciate a good narrative, but I also want better source work. 

I know this is a bias, but I have little patience for journalist who pretend to be historians. 

I know this is a bias, but I have little patience for journalist who pretend to be historians. 

Ha!  I just got rejected off the waiting list at Michigan.

I just completed all of the documentation for UC Davis, so it's officially official. I have an email address and everything 

This thread is amazing.  I have nothing substantial to add beyond that. Also as a white, straight, middle-class man I'm baffled by this statement."I am concerned that white, straight, middle-class men have lost opportunity." Encouraging non white, straight, middle-class men to enter the academy is one the most important shifts in the last 20-30 years.  Diversity of viewpoints can only make the discipline stronger. There is opportunity enough to go around. 

see nerd comment above

I'm going to be real with you and say you should aim for the top 20, maybe even the top 10. A lot of the top tier programs place their grads at small liberal arts colleges, more so than programs lower ranked. I honestly wouldn't look at anything below 50. If you want to teach because you love it and don't care where you end up, then it doesn't matter as much--that's why I applied to a range of programs from 15-105, I simply want to teach at the college level.  
 
The less cynical side of me says to explore the placement records and placement locations of the programs you're currently looking at. If you can see yourself at any of the programs at which those departments are placing their students, then that's a good bet for you. You're going to have to do a lot of research--luckily historians are great at that!

I have to say, I'm ecstatic I won't have to move all my stuff across the country. Just imagining how I'd ship all my books gives me hives.

see nerd comment above

I'm just happy I'm not a Byzantinist.
 
I can currently read English, Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Old English. If I were to do Byzantine history, I would have to add Greek, Koine Greek, Arabic, Classical Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Old Church Slavonic, and maybe Hebrew. There's a reason why most Byz. history degrees take 8-11 years!

Just like "Americanist" is a synonym for "didn't want to do foreign language study"  

I think medievalist is a synonym for nerd...

I think medievalist is a synonym for nerd...

I think medievalist is a synonym for nerd...

I know exactly how you feel! I'm ready to put this job behind me and move on to bigger and better things. 

Thankfully, my exams are behind me. I've been spending spring break dutifully coding Virginia manumission court cases for my thesis, which really should be done by now. I feel like the last semester of my senior year in high school - I already know where I'm going in the fall, can I please to be done with the rest of this stuff now?