far_to_go

My biblio was 3 pages.

Hi blue_mango! This is going to be a bit long, but I'm going to outline exactly what happened during the notification phase for me. As always, this is only my experience and may vary significantly from that of others! Correspondence from WG is in blue. Morning of April 16: I receive the following e-mail, subject line "Wenner-Gren Application." Dear far_to_go: We are writing to you regarding your pending application for a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, which we are still in the process of reviewing. Before we can complete the review of your research proposal, we will need to have further information from you on your budget and on the status of your funding applications to other agencies. Please provide a full academic justification for the request transcription costs. The statement that you are using nVivo is not enough. Are you doing linguistic analysis? To what end? Please explain. Also, why are you requesting a full nVivo license and not a student license? Please also let us know whether you have been notified of the results of your other applications, or the date by which you expect to have this information. If you have received other awards, indicate whether there is any overlap between budget items to be covered by those sources and your budget request submitted to Wenner-Gren. If you've received another grant and there is an overlap or any change in the budget request to Wenner-Gren, you will need to submit a separate revised budget itemization, with the overlapping items removed, for the full amount requested. Please include an explanation for any changes. Be sure to inform of us of any changes in your contact information at this time. The address we have for you is noted above: please update it, if it has changed. Please note: without a correct mailing address, your notification of our final decision will be delayed. Please send your response to the above questions via e-mail as soon as possible, to this e-mail address, which is being checked frequently by our staff during the next few weeks. Alternatively, if you wish to respond by fax, our number is listed below. Your application is still pending but we expect to make final decisions in the next few weeks and have all applicants notified by May 1, 2014. If you haven't heard byMay 1, we ask that you contact us at that time. There is no need for you to reapply for the May 1 deadline. We prefer you make your response via e-mail, but if you have further questions about this request for information, please contact us at the number listed below. We look forward to receiving your response as soon as possible. Sincerely yours, Mary Beth Moss Evening of April 16: After consulting with my advisor, I e-mail them back with the requested information about why I'm asking for NVivo and transcription money. Morning of April 17: I get the following e-mail: Thank you for your quick response. We hope to be making final decisions by May 1st. If we have any further questions we’ll contact you shortly. All the best, Mark Ropelewski Afternoon of April 17: Following e-mail from WG Because the Foundation does not fund transcription costs the reviewers have asked that you remove this item from your budget. Additionally the reviewers have also asked that you remove the nVivo software from your budget as well. Once we receive your revised budget we’ll be sure to contact you to confirm receipt. Best, Mark Morning of April 18: I send them my revised budget. Took out the two categories they said they wouldn't fund and re-calculated the total. Afternoon of April 18: E-mail from them acknowledging that they've received my revised budget and will let me know if they need any other info. April 19-April 24: Agonized waiting, abrupt alternation between excitement and paranoia, desperate attempts to distract myself, etc. April 24: Letter arrives via postal mail at my mailing address in the US. Since I'm not in the US at the moment, my roommate e-mailed me to let me know that the letter arrived; she opened it to confirm that it is, in fact, an award letter. She'll scan and send it to me sometime today, I hope. I will rest much easier once I've actually seen the letter with my own eyes! Apparently there are some documents that I'll have to sign and send back, along with some documentation of things like my IRB approval and research visa.

I definitely went through a few cycles of feeling like that. Hang in there, Nrrrdgrrrl and other re-applicants! I got my comments back on my rejected NSF proposal, but I haven't read them yet - no need to increase my anxiety level before I know exactly what's up with the Wenner-Gren.

Aww thanks! I'm a bit surprised they funded me - after all the rejections I got, it was difficult to hang on to the conviction that other people might find my work valuable and interesting. Getting the Wenner-Gren is such a huge boost of external validation, it's making me giddy :-)

A practical tip for those who are revising and re-submitting: don't ask for any money for transcription in your budget, as it's likely to be denied unless you're doing a very explicitly linguistic project that absolutely cannot be done without transcription. I had to take transcription out of my budget because my project is more socio-cultural than linguistic. I also asked for funding to buy NVivo, and didn't get that either. No hard feelings, because I'm still getting plenty of money to do my project and I know the WG people are probably just trying to spread funds around to as many people as possible. I'm just letting you know that it's probably not worth it to ask for funding for either transcription or NVivo.

I don't mind sharing mine, as long as anyone who reads it is willing to promise not to send it on to anyone else (just in case I end up significantly revising my ideas or something. Nrrrdgrrrl, I sent you a PM with my e-mail address.

You guys. YOU GUYS. I got the budget clarification, no-need-to-resubmit e-mail! I'm so thrilled. I applied for 8 big grants (Fulbright IIE, Fulbright Hayes, SSRC 2x, NSF 2x, and Wenner-Gren 2x), and got rejected the first 7 times. Because I'm already doing my fieldwork and very busy with that, I wasn't planning to re-apply for any more big ones if I didn't get the Wenner-Gren this time around; I was just going to do my best to muddle through without external funding. I am so thrilled that I finally got one, though! The triumph of persistence! To everyone else who got it on this round, congrats! To everyone who will be resubmitting, I wish you the best of luck! Keep persevering!

For what it's worth, I applied for the May 1 2013 deadline, got notified that I'd passed the first round on August 1, and got the rejection e-mail on Oct 10.

I am feeling strongly ambivalent about this one. I both want to know and don't want to know whether I got it. It's like, until I get the e-mail, the Wenner-Gren is both alive and dead to me. I have Schrodinger's anxiety.

If I get an e-mail asking for budget revisions, I'm going to be like "nope, still no money coming in from other sources! Definitely still need all the money I asked for!" Ughhhh, I wish they would just get it over with! I doubt that we'll hear anything on a Friday, though.

Same here, medler. Sympathies. Hoping we both do better on the W-G.

Yeah, I heard about the disorganized mess that followed after the NSF August deadline. Apparently they've got their shit together now and are eliminating people with ruthless efficiency! C'mon, Wenner-Gren! Give us some good news today! I'm also waiting to hear about a small $2.5K grant and should find out this week. I'm worried that I'll find out that I didn't get the WG and then also didn't get the little one- it would be adding insult to injury!

I got an e-mail today from Deborah Winslow saying that my NSF application (Cultural Anthro, Jan 2014 deadline) has been rejected. My external review date was April 3, so it's kind of a bummer to be rejected so quickly :-/ Good luck to all who are still waiting!

Oh, I see. Mine says "external peer review began on 4/3/14." It's a bit disappointing to be knocked out so quickly :-/ Thanks for your good wishes, and best to you as well!

Interesting- I just checked Fastlane, and my status for the NSF is still listed as "pending." The rejection e-mail came from Deborah Winslow, though, so I have no doubt that it's the real thing. I can't find the review panel date. Don't mean to derail the thread, as I know it's about Wenner-Gren- I just figured there's probably a lot of overlap between the applicants for the two grants, so this info would be relevant to at least some WG people as well!

And in other news, I just found out that I didn't get the NSF (I applied for the January round). Shit. So for people who also applied for the NSF, you may be getting news about that this week as well. Although as I understand it, their notification times are pretty staggered.

Ugh. I hate waiting. I keep telling myself that this doesn't matter, since I'm already in the field and doing my research. Yeah, I'll get to stay longer if I get the Wenner-Gren, but even without it I should be able to scrape by. But I really want it, you guys! Here's hoping we all get some good news soon!

Still waiting over here, too... nervously, nervously waiting... I've planned a full day of day-drinking with some good friends tomorrow, so that should help to distract me! Good luck to all!

I also got the email notification that I've advanced to round 2. This is a re-submission for me, so I'm hoping that I'll be luckier than I was the first time around! Good luck to everyone else!

I got the SSRC rejection in the mail a couple days ago. Still waiting to hear on the Wenner-Gren. Last year I applied for the May 1 deadline and was notified by e-mail that I had advanced to round 2 on August 1. I found out around Oct 10 that my application was rejected, but the feedback was really helpful so I revised and resubmitted for the November 1 deadline. Hoping for a better result this time around. Good luck to everyone!

In my department, grad seminars occasionally conflict with each other. I've known other students to e-mail the person in charge of scheduling the courses (called the Director of Grad Studies in our dept) to say "I'm interested in taking both class A and class B, but there's a schedule change; any chance that one of them might be rescheduled?" The DGS usually them sends out a poll to the grad students to find out how many people would be interested in taking both classes; if a few people express interest in both, then one class is rescheduled. Of course, this works best if it's done well in advance of when the semester starts! This works in my dept because grad seminars are usually quite small (on the order of 3-10 students), and we tend to be quite democratic and cooperative about stuff like this. Your mileage may vary according to your department's culture, obviously.

This past spring, I was leading a discussion section that was completely DEAD. The students were responsible for doing the week's readings and coming in with questions/comments, as always, but that day they all seemed really unprepared. I told all the students to close their eyes, except one whom I chose randomly. I also closed my eyes. Then I told the students to raise their hands if they'd done the readings, and asked the student with her eyes open to count the raised hands. As I had suspected, there were only one or two raised hands. So I chided them a bit, reminded them that the point of the discussion section is for them to critically engage with the course material rather than passively listening to me recite it for them, and sent them on their way 20 minutes before the scheduled end of class, saying "I expect better next week." They did shape up and do the readings, not only for the next week, but for the remainder of the semester. The whole close-your-eyes, raise-your-hands technique was completely off the cuff, but it worked in this case!

I don't have an e-mail signature for writing to students (or anyone else). However, when I look up my students' e-mail addresses and contact them through our university's online student info system, it automatically includes the course discipline/number in the subject line, like this: "[ANTH 101] Readings for next Tuesday". It's pretty nice, actually; it reminds students of who I am and why I'm writing to them, without me having to worry about managing a signature.

Hi folks! I just finished reading Nancy Abellman's "The Intimate University: Korean-American Students and the Problems of Segregation," which I thoroughly enjoyed. It got me to thinking: someday I'd love to teach an undergrad course on the anthropology of higher education in the US. What better way to teach students to analyze social systems than by asking them to critically examine the university system of which they are members? Anyway, I'm still at least a couple of years away from actually teaching any of my own courses, but I'd like to get started reading more about this subject. Do you have any recommendations of relevant books that you've read? Here's a few of the other books that I'm thinking of including in my future course (hey, it's fun to dream, right? Don't all grad students use their summer free time to write imaginary syllabi?) Marc Bousquet, “How the University Works: Higher Education in the Low-Wage Nation” Kevin Roose, “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University” John Flower, “Downstairs, Upstairs: The Changed Spirit and Face of College Life in America.” Frank Rhodes, “The Creation of the Future: The Role of the American University” Rebekah Nathan, “My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student”

Sorry I can't give a specific answer (didn't apply to UCLA), but here's what I'd do in your situation: if you can't find a guideline anywhere, submit an SOP that's approximately the same length as the SOPs that you send to other schools (usually 1-2 pages, 1000 words, something like that). In other words, don't take the lack of a guideline as an opportunity to write a 15-page essay telling the admissions committee everything you know and love about anthropology! Best of luck to you!