Mattie Roh

I don't believe for a moment that the ranking of the university I chose will hold me back in any capacity, and I hope no one here believes that, either

Okay, so super long delay here, but I finally read A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall  and I loved it. Even though (or maybe because?) I know nothing about water polo I found it fascinating. It's the kind of book that makes you want to befriend the author. So thank you, again, for the suggestion!

Not to be inflammatory, but this is an interesting article regarding MFAs:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/mfa-creative-writing/462483/
Some interesting stats regarding writing by MFAs vs non-MFAs (take it with a grain of salt, of course).

Rejoice in your rejection. Pray to the gods each night that you aren't having to sit through insufferable 'workshops' under fluorescent lights with the likes of HeyIowa - honestly, darling, you hand out life lessons like a pederast with effing poprocks. 
 
Go out and find interesting work. Emancipate yourself from the factories of mediocrity that are the MFA's. Go find the real Iowa, work as a farmhand nearby. Fight for working folks. Fuck it! 
 
Embrace the rejection and keep writing. Read like hell. And read what you want and who you want and when you want. Do not read for trends. Read for strength, comrade. 

Just took my name off the wait list at Minnesota (first in my subfield, 18th/19th century). I think I just died a little inside, but I had to pull the trigger sometime. Everything happens for a reason. Will be attending UConn in the fall. Hope this opens the way for someone else!

Look, I don't know what you're trying to prove, or why you're trying to make me look and feel inadequate but it's not working.
If you really must know, I study ancient DNA.  That means I go into a lab and I create a bunch of chemical mixtures (usually comprised of some sort of mix EDTA and Proteinase K) that digest the ancient tissue (be it bone or what have you).  I then take the DNA and put into a DNA library with primers and end repair adapters and a bunch of other things to amplify the fragmented and damaged DNA.  And like magic, after a few hours, I get a read out, via a BioRad PCR machine that creates a regression curve.  Anything between 90% and 110% is perfect efficiency for the PCR, anything less, there is likely some sort of inhibitor in the mix.  If it doesn't work, I go back and try again.  If it does work, I visualize the PCR products on an gel and then take them to be sequenced.  My finished and sequenced DNA I then input into any number of computer programs, including programs I have written myself in Python to help me analyze my data for what I need done.
I never said my math scores were good.  So I actually don't communicate with "real" scientists, they are so far advanced my brain can't comprehend what they say.  I usually end up having an epileptic seizure and wake up with my research all done for me and a sudden publication-worthy paper all typed up for me.  Of course, I don't have any idea what it says because my rudimentary knowledge is so far beneath all of the other people's understanding of things.  Especially those in math and engineering, they are really too smart for me. 

@rising_star told me to come on over from the Religion boards to say a bit from perspective of someone who just about finished a PhD and then decided to straight up quit.  Just about finished as in halfway through my dissertation.  I'm not going to chastise anyone here, or make vague admonishments about "you don't know what it's like" or "wait until you get where I am!"  because I don't think they are helpful.  I also don't think any of you would really listen to more of this, as you all seem to be well-knowledgeable about the grim, meathook realities of academia and everything that it involves, and don't need another white guy hanging around wagging fingers.
All that I would say is that it is ok to do something else.  You can quit your PhD at any point in the process.  Don't sit around being miserable, developing avoidance problems of various sorts while you make excuses based on the finest of all fallacies, that of the sunk cost.  It has already been said here, but you can be passionate about something and find it fulfilling and not have to do it as a job.
I don't regret my time moving towards a PhD, it gave me some nice getting paid a rela time reading and writing and thinking about interesting problems, and taught me plenty.  I don't blame my advisors, or my program, nor did I feel exploited by them.  I made the choices that I did, including to go to graduate school in the first place, and I take my excessively idealistic self to task for those.  What I will say is that I think you should look at the PhD as leading to a job.  If you don't, how the hell will anyone take you seriously enough to actually give you one when the time comes to apply?  Don't make excuses about the inherent worth of your program, or your path of study.  It isn't inherently worthy of anything, it is shit until you take it and put it through the alembic to spin gold.  I think this is where I do look strongly at my five years in a graduate program and have some regrets.  I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself and others that I didn't care if I got a job when I was done, or that the study of religion (insert your field here) was just so interesting and diverting that studying it was reward enough.  Go read through my earlier posts and you'll see me doing it left and right. 
I don't know if this is convincing, it just want to be a voice that says you can just do a job that you generally enjoy.  I'm not passionate about what I now do during the week for work, I like it, I like my co-workers, I'm good at what I do, and I get paid a lot more money than I probably could have expected to make as an academic outside of a tenured prof at a top-tier institution.  I read Derrida, Butler, and every book I own on Late Antiquity during my ample free time, I go to SBL/AAR if I want to, and I guess I could probably even give a paper if I so desired (which i don't, because I also think these are mostly for people who need CV lines, and I have no need for such).  It isn't all about money, or about pure pragmatics, but I just think we ought to be sure we're not calling skubala Shinola.
You can flame me out of here or question my motives if you would like, and as has already been done.  Who knows, maybe I'm a PhD applying for jobs a full month or so after most of them have already been offered and I'm trying to thin the herds.  I suppose if you really don't believe me, I can send you a redacted copy of my withdrawal form or something.  Anyhow, I'm glad to talk more or PM, etc.  so please do reach out.

I guess these posts don't bother me because this is what my colleagues and I discuss constantly. Three people left the program last year (not all from the same cohort, mind you) because of concerns about the state of academia. Also, yeah, I recognize that grad school may provide more stability for some people than others. And I 100% agree: I have major problems with narratives that describe people with PhD's on food stamps as inherently more tragic than people with GED's on food stamps.
That said, I am concerned with these echoes of grad school being a great place because of funding and stability and such. Yes, it may provide more security than other positions and fields, but it's still super problematic. Mizzou grad students just straight up lost their health insurance last year. Yes, they got it back, but it's still just the mediocre grad student plan. At the same time, grad students at Emory and Arizona State lost dependent health care. So if you're a single parent and in grad school, then you're fucked. Many stipends are below the poverty level for the geographical area. As my friend says, we are overworked and underpaid and preparing for jobs that don't exist. Because adjunctification is real, and it's devouring the academy as we know it, hurting both adjuncts and undergrad students. 
In other words, things are messed up. But my plea isn't to tell folks to get out. I'd be a hypocrite to do so, and part of me still holds onto hope that we can collectively change the direction of higher education. Instead, my question is always: what are you going to do about it? Be alert to the exploitation of academic labor, and all the unpaid labor you will be asked to do in your program. Be alert so, when an opening arises, you can organize and make your program a better place for you and for future academics. Be alert because, as stipends and tenure lines decrease, these changes will hurt the most marginalized scholars and potentially dissuade them from pursuing a career in academia. But we need a diverse professoriate! We need to make sure that our grad students can feed and house themselves. And we need to situate our labor concerns with larger criticisms of exploitation and poverty: what are the hourly workers on your campus making? At UMD, hourly workers can be paid less than the state minimum wage. How can we leverage our educational privilege and our anger about the turning tide of academia to make real institutional change?

Hey, any kind of service job can be a real pain in the rear when the people getting served are complete jerkwads. I used to be a waitress, and while I was happy to run around for my customers, give them free dessert on their birthday out of my own pocket, deliver their usual drinks without them having to order, and chat about life when it was slow, some people were just complete buttholes. I had no qualms complaining about doing extra work for them.

There's a great thread on visiting here: 
 

There's a great thread on visiting here: 
 

I swear to God the people who write for Community followed me during my community college years. That show is so dead-on it's creepy! I even had an Asian teacher who taught Spanish!

Bump!
Let's see what we get this year!

My dream is fairly specific and not realistic, ha! I would love to teach community college students at an institution with course offerings, funding, and support for research similar to an R1. And on the West Coast. And TT. I think the closest is a Cal State or a UC. I'd also be happy in a TT WPA-type role. 
Basically, I want to teach first-generation college students and also have support to research and write and raise our daughter on the West Coast. I WANT ALL THE THINGS!

Finish your finals, DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR SUBMITTED DOCUMENTS EVER AGAIN, and drink until February. 

That feeling when you see this thread is still a thing

Summertime entertainment, such as it is, on GradCafe.

I will die on this hill 

Is mustard the only condiment you have back there, ComeBackZinc?
 
'Cause I could really use some butter for all this popcorn.

And I will give you the opposite advice and say this: you will be reading for work for the next two years. Why not read for fun this summer? 

glad we could resurrect this oozing flesh wound one last time before everyone goes home
 

This is so true.  The job market sucks everywhere.  B.A.s, too, are dime a dozen nowadays.  People who got their B.A.s in English made these "mistakes" a while ago.  One thing, too, that I look forward to with my Ph.D. is finally having the luxury to be able to do internships over the summers instead of busting my ass at underpaid jobs to scrape together a little money to get through the next year of school.  I tried to diversify my resume as much as I could during my B.A., but it was hard given my circumstances.  With my Ph.D. I'll have these funded years of Ph.D. work, but also big city opportunities for things like internships and summer language immersion programs etc. that I didn't have the luxury of being able to do as an undergrad.
 
The job market is demoralizing everywhere.  I can't name a single prospective professional field for myself right now, given my work experience and skill sets, that isn't bleak.  The economy sucks!  Right now this Ph.D. program is offering me the best option financially that I foresee myself having right now.  The town I live in has over 10% unemployment and over 30% of the people here are living at or below the poverty level and the job I work, as a long term substitute teacher, is having me live hand to mouth while I work my fucking ass off -- this program gives me a feasible way to get the hell out of here without, for the first time in a long time, needing to constantly worry about money, at least for a few years.  And no, teaching public school and working as a sub is not a stable market and the prospects in that are not great.  I plan on learning two more languages in graduate school.  I plan on doing summer internships so I can gain skills for work in the non-profit and education sectors.  While participating in a dynamic scholarly environment and working with some of the most amazing people in my field.  None of us are in this for the money, but we're not stupid.  I'd like to think I have as few illusions about this as one can have, given that I've already made a thoroughly irresponsible decision.  
 
Anyway, this will likely get buried amongst bitchy rants (again), but I'd still be interested in hearing about peoples' experiences preserving their resumes while in Ph.D. programs.  I'm 100% enthused and happy about starting my Ph.D., but I also have a resume that I don't want to allow to get completely out of date and untouched, so I'd be interested in hearing about whether people have faced particular struggles with that.  Or not.  You guys can also, I guess, just keep bickering about how much the job market sucks.  Everyone is fucking poor now, okay?  The middle class is fucked, the humanities are fucked, we're all fucked.  I'd like to hear some more from the people actually saying productive things on this thread about what we can do instead of it always devolving into the same shit over and over again.  You're not going to convince anyone on these forums to say "no" to their graduate programs that they've already committed to at this point and many of us aren't just wide-eyed little snowflakes waiting for our academic princes to come swoop us away to some intellectual la la land.  
 
News flash: none of us give a shit that you could make a little more money becoming a manager at Wendy's or something like that -- why do you think we got our B.A.s and M.A.s in literature to start with?  To put a more cynical twist on allplaid's observation: I see 30-somethings working at places like Wendy's all the time. Christ.  You know?  I walked away from a job as a building maintenance technician at a fancy Los Angeles Hilton after I graduated high school and I chose to move half way across the country on a scholarship instead where I was able to get an amazing, if technically less "valuable," education.  Not one person that I've ever met would criticize me for that decision, which still put me in a good amount of debt.  Now I'm going to grad school for free, getting paid, and it's this condescending conversation about how naive everyone is who goes to get a PhD?  Whatever.  Economically, I was never gonna be shit anyway.

Bumping this awesome thread but changing the trajectory a bit:
 
When I was applying to programs the first time around a professor in the writing center suggested I try tie in a "hot" topic in my field into my SOP. I didn't end up doing this because I didn't feel comfortable shoehorning anything in. My questions: What are the "hot" topics in your subfield? If your work didn't naturally interact with this, did you find a way to incorporate it comfortably into your SOP? Also, do you feel the pressure to mold your research to hot topics?

How bout it! Once a year I get duped into buying one of those things because I see a delicious looking ad somewhere, but they're not very good.