Postbib Yeshuist

Yes you are too gud to admit .. in any university.
now, happy?

To correct the record, I was referring to having cited certain of these schools' professors in my actual writing sample, not my SoP. That is, I read their articles, built an essay around them, and cited that work as a means of demonstrating my commitment to the school. True, anyone can name-drop a couple of professors in their SoP, but this was a significantly greater and more deliberate effort. Your snide dismissal of this work was based on your own erroneous reading of my post.

Maybe, maybe not, but it's certainly true. I think you got a good answer and discounted it outright because it didn't fit with your preconceived notions of reality. I also wonder if some of the schools saw that in your application. Believe it or not, the Top 20's tend to be pretty oblivious sometimes, with the lower schools being a bit more astute because they attract a different type of "talent."

Friend of mine on Drew's wait list just got an acceptance letter. Of course, another friend of mine declined Drew's offer last week. Not sure if this was just a one-for-one or what. Just FYI.

PS Brite Divinity School, FTW! We've had 7 PhD acceptances for 4 applicants (2 Drew, 1 SMU, 1 Syracuse, 1 Brite, 2 Iliff)!

Friend of mine on Drew's wait list just got an acceptance letter. Of course, another friend of mine declined Drew's offer last week. Not sure if this was just a one-for-one or what. Just FYI.

PS Brite Divinity School, FTW! We've had 7 PhD acceptances for 4 applicants (2 Drew, 1 SMU, 1 Syracuse, 1 Brite, 2 Iliff)!

Maybe, maybe not, but it's certainly true. I think you got a good answer and discounted it outright because it didn't fit with your preconceived notions of reality. I also wonder if some of the schools saw that in your application. Believe it or not, the Top 20's tend to be pretty oblivious sometimes, with the lower schools being a bit more astute because they attract a different type of "talent."

I made a post on a similar topic in the Religion forum, but it was suggested I'd get more help here. But, before I begin, PLEASE go easy on me. I may or may not have any idea of what I'm speaking about...

I will begin a PhD in Religion and Culture at Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX) this Fall. I am expected to have demonstrated reading proficiency (academic level) in two languages by my second year. Preferably, they should be appropriate to my topic (see my signature), but I will most certainly be falling back on my BA in French to get the first out of the way. The second becomes the "trick"...

Given my topic, either Modern Hebrew or Modern Standard Arabic (which I understand is the "common" written language for publication, etc in the MIddle East) would be quite useful. Since I had a bad experience in Biblical Hebrew in seminary (dropped out three weeks in), and since MSA is ?considered a critical language by the US Gov't?, it seems like Modern Standard Arabic will be right up my alley. Of course, here's where the fun begins: I can't find a school within a reasonable radius of SMU that offers anything other than conversational Arabic and I don't think I have the money to cover travel expenses & tuition to a summer program. As such, I'm thinking I might try to talk the program into allowing me two years before testing on my second language and then attempt to learn MSA.

Now, before I open up for questions: yes, I am crazy. That being said, is it even remotely realistic to self-teach MSA over the course of two years? I would obviously seek help online, and if a course opportunity came along, I'd be all over it, but I need to prepared for doing it alone so I know if it's reasonable.

Thanks in advance (and again, go easy)

It really depends on how motivated you are. Are you able to make a commitment to work on learning it every day? Will you get a textbook/workbook and work your way through it on a regular basis? The thing about learning a language on your own is that you, and only you, are responsible for making sure you do it. You won't have a teacher correcting your homework or a tutor pushing you to practice. You will be solely responsible for your progress.

That said, if you really can make that commitment, it shouldn't be any more difficult to learn to read/translate MSA than any other language (although I definitely would not recommend the self-taught approach for learning to speak!). Once you teach yourself the alphabet (which honestly isn't too hard, despite its initial intimidating appearance), the written language is not that bad. MSA is SVO like English, has noun-adjective order like Spanish, and, other than a bit of funkiness with determining specificity, shouldn't be that confusing for a native English speaker. MSA does have a consonantal root system, which can be either a blessing or a curse - a blessing, in that you will be easily able to identify new words with the same root as words you know, and a curse, in that you will have to memorize vowel sequences that correspond to each meaning. I have found that the pros outweigh the cons on that front.

If you want a simple textbook that will explain things basically clearly and hold your hand a bit towards the beginning, I can recommend Al-Kitaab as one that I've used with some success. It's a bit more focused on speech, but it also has passages excerpted from newspapers and websites that can give you some great practice reading. You might also want to pick up a copy of the Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary - in fact, it is on Scribd, if you want an online copy.

Good luck! I hope things go well for you.

I agree with ColorlessGreen - it can be done, the only question is whether you have the motivation. It takes a lot of work to develop strong reading proficiency in MSA in just two years if you're taking classes; it can take even more work if you're on your own. Since you said traveling is out of the question, I highly recommend you seek out a personal tutor. If money's tight, you can study Arabic on your own every day and then meet with a tutor once a week, once every other week, or even once a month if that's all you can afford, so that they can go over the progress you've made, answer your unanswered questions, correct your mistakes, etc. If possible, you should seek out someone with some level of teaching ability and/or a professional level of MSA (in other words, someone who was a teacher in an Arab country would be great, not just someone who learned it in school!)

There are tons of resources for learning MSA, from books and CDs to a wealth of websites and forums. I would work out curriculum with an Arabic instructor (you might email some professors at different schools, explain your situation, and ask their advice) so you know what textbooks you'll use and how much you plan to cover each week - then stick to it. Find other students at your school or nearby schools who speak and/or study Arabic, and form a club. There are some really fantastic forums for learning Arabic online where you can ask questions as you go along (I recommend unilang.com, wordreference.com, and lisanularab.org, amongst others) and you can find people who will correct your exercises and answer your questions for free on websites like livemocha.com and lang-8.com. Finally, uz-translations.net is your best source for (not exactly legal) free PDFs of just about every Arabic textbook out there (along with a million other languages).

Sorry if any of my advice was obvious, and good luck - Arabic is a tough language, but with enough dedication your goal is definitely accomplishable.

Go for it. And if it'll help you any, I'll share my situation...

I'm 36 and a full time high school teacher (which, in TX, means I actually do fairly well ($55k/yr)). I have an 18 month-old son and my wife is staying home with him as she tries to decide if she wants to continue her career (chaplaincy) or go in a new direction. I just accepted a PhD offer that pays full tuition + $16k/year (so a 2/3 paycut like you). Last night, my wife says "I might be pregnant" and then verifies it with a pee test this morning. How's that for worry? LOL! But you know what? A PhD is my dream and, by God, I'm going to at least give it a try. If I wind up having to drop out, I can at least say I tried.

So perhaps Nike has a word for both of us in our respective situations: "Just Do It."

a friend of mine just sent me this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0


very appropriate.

based off of my interviewing of others relentlessly, meaning a lot of discussions with people who have their PhDs and people in the middle of their programs and people who have quit and gone on to other things, I have come to the conclusion that there are as many reasons not to finish as there are people in PhD programs. But the primary culprits appear to be the following (in no particular order, and keeping in mind I was polling English profs and prof wannabes):

1. wrong fit, either in terms of department and or/subject matter. Most of the people who have told me this was their reason were traditional, straight-through PhD students. A lot of them indicated they wished they had taken a gap year before starting because they didn't think they would have gone into the program in the first place. Only a couple were people who had done something else first and then gone back to school.

2. burnout. A lot of people get halfway through the academic portion and just start thinking: "God, I'm so tired of being in the classroom! It's not worth it!" There are also a lot of people I have spoken to who told me they got to a point where they were sitting in their classes thinking: "I already know all of this, what's the point?" When it got to where they had to take classes, but they really felt they knew more than the professor teaching the class, they lost focus. A couple of these quit their program, most of them got to burnout part two....

3. burnout part two. They work themselves to death, for a pittance of a stipend and / or fellowship, and it's drudgery with no end in sight (their words, lol). They teach freshman comp class after freshman comp class, they barely have time to get their own work done, and "if this is academia then screw it!" (in my opinion, these are people who probably should be in the "wrong fit" category, but were too stubborn to say so - they like the IDEA of professorship, they just don't like the reality - which is teaching and grading a lot of poorly prepared students among the shining starts). Most of these end up getting to ABD, but then they hit burnout number three

4. ABD burnout. In this case, they've worked their butts off for two or three years taking classes and teaching classes. Now they're faced with the freakishly stressful idea of writing their own book, from scratch. They also have way less supervision. The temptation to revert to pre-PhD coursework slacking off status can be extremely hard to resist - if your first chapter's not due for three months, why not rest and take some deserved down time? The fact that they managed to get as much done as they did while teaching lures them into a false sense of security in terms of what they can get done in what amount of time. Then they freak out because the chapter is due and they haven't started researching. This leads to missed deadline after missed deadline and active engagement in trying to avoid everything having to do with the dissertation, which eventually becomes a not-written dissertation.

5. Dissertation fear - this isn't quite the same. You don't not do it because you're burned out, you don't do it because you are paralyzed at the idea that your idea might not be good enough, your dissertation isn't going to be long enough, your thesis might be debunked, your writing might show you as a fake scholar, you may never get it defended - this one is a purely psychological hangup. Apparently (based on what I've been told) people in this category "knew" they were going to have to write a dissertation "eventually" - but when "eventually" came around they felt so overwhelmed they couldn't get past that. In this case also, a lax advisor is very unhelpful - if you are already terrified, and then your dissertation advisor expects you to be a fully independent scholar and does not offer you a lot of support (i.e. handholding) this can result in an unfinished (unstarted) PhD. Some people need more coaching than others. Knowing this about yourself ahead of time can save you grief because you can then make sure you choose an advisor who is more willing to give you extra assistance/coaching through your hang ups. Alternately, (I have been told) seeking out a therapist and talking through this is a good idea.

6. family issues. This can take the form of anything from aging parents, to young children, to family members with disabilities, to your own disabilities, to divorce, death, etc. etc. etc. - but the stress of real life can absolutely, when coupled with the stress of dissertating, lead to no dissertation - if something has to give, it's often the PhD, at least temporarily...and if time runs out and you can't get an extension, then that's that.

7. Program cuts/lack of funding to finish out. This can be because there's already a lot of debt in the family or because you choose specifically not to go into debt, but finances appear to be an important reason not to finish.

These were the most often listed problems with getting the PhD...but there were several others as well. Essentially, I think you just have to stay focused and motivated - and since your PhD is a very personal and individual thing, that's sometimes really hard to do.

Hope that helps...?

I really don't see any harm in committing to a few schools. Especially if they haven't offered you funding yet. Many times once people accept their offer of admissions, schools will offer funding. Most schools know that people get offered acceptances to many schools and the process is very difficult. I don't think you're ruining your reputation with the school if you say you're going to commit and then you decide that a different school is better suited for you. Many programs have people decline all the way up till the start date and the university just pulls off the wait list. It's not like you're doing it maliciously and I'm sure when you decide to back out of one of the schools, the university completely understands. If you narrow it down to two or 3 it'll give you a chance to really decide which school is best for you. As far as the people on the wait list. I can only speak for myself...I'm currently wait listed, but seriously I don't blame an applicant for wanting to be thorough in their decision making. I'll wait as long as possible and will hold out for my number one all the way up till the starting date of grad school. I'm sure you will go all about it in a very professional way to not burn any bridges. Best of luck to you ROM!!!

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea.

I know it seems like a good, good, good idea but it's a bad, bad, bad idea in disguise. There's a reason response deadlines exist and it's not because adcomms are evil and want you to make a split-second decision that you'll later regret. It's because they want to be able to extend offers to other people. If you wait even a month, the department could effectively lose the opportunity to offer the position and/or funding to another student. Or, by the time you make your decision, a student who badly wanted to attend but actually observed the rules of the game could be committed somewhere else. It's a jerky move.

But the people who care about that kind of thing are usually people who aren't selfish bastards. If you care more about you and the me-me-me-ness of the process, then don't forget that there are serious consequences for you personally. Academia's a small world and word gets around. People working in your discipline are going to recognise your name and usually there are friendships across departments everywhere. Especially if you're fake-accepting more than one department, word is going to get around and people will find out. You may have to one day apply for a job with one of the departments you're screwing over. A reputation as a douchebag is not going to help you.

Instead, ask for an extension. Most are amenable.

The easiest fix (in my opinion) would be to set it say something like:

"Postbib Yeshuist has not set a status."

That would solve the problem quite nicely

PS I would point out that "his" was never "gender" neutral. Using one word to apply to both sexes does not mean it is neutral. It was simply used because men were seen as the pinnacle of the human race. It was applied to women, but this is not to say it was ever neutral.

My jaded, school of hard knocks, "older" grad student advice is to make the SigOth the LEAST important of your criteria. Don't dismiss, but the SigOth will either work out or not on its own, regardless of the commute. Choose the right opportunity.

Let me change that question to be what I think is the critical issue: if you go to a lower-ranked school, will you be challenged in such a way that your work will mature to the point that you're competitive with others? The answer to your question is "sure." After all, you could be the next Cornell West or Edward Said. But if you're not going to shake your field to its foundations, you're going to need a program that pushes at every turn to do better. The PhD application process is brutal and ridiculously competitive (acceptance rates are almost universally under 10% at the good schools, with 3-5% being the norm). You'll be competing against 150 others for maybe 5 spots. A poor reputation from your school only sets you back and it's likely you won't have been pushed in a way that your app stands out.

Long-winded answer, but you asked a complex question

Though I was lucky and got bumped up from the wait list at my first choice, I was 100% prepared to turn down my safety school because (1) the financial package would have been an incredible strain and (2) because the "fit" for my project would not have been ideal. I saw it this way: I could have either spent an additional year reapplying to be sure I couldn't do better (it's rare that your second round of apps are worse than your first) or I could have spent an additional year, or two, or three, or... applying for jobs with a non-competitive PhD. Like I said, I got lucky in the end, but I had decided on the first option of taking a year. Nothing would be worse than to finish and find you're unemployable...

APHI224, I'm going to dispense with the pleasantries that so many others have offered you here and say flat out that you do not get it. Of course, you're only at the Master's level, so that's to be expected. If I can get over how angry I am at your naive and condescending responses, I'll reply with the "why" later.

I was just moved up from the wait-list at SMU (my first pick) to "accepted." I'm still waiting the official confirmation by letter and a look at the financial package, but someone somewhere said "no" in a timely manner and really just made my day. Thank you whoever you are!

If you've been bumped up, share here please

Something else that occurs to me is to look into a Dropbox account (www.dropbox.com). It's basically online storage, but rather advanced (and 2Gb for free). It'll keep all your computers synced if you install the software, but I find it indispensable for grad work for two reasons: (1) It keeps versions of papers up to 30 days, which is great for going back to older revisions, and (2) you can access it from any internet-enabled computer. It basically eliminates the need for a flash drive and you can't lose it, etc. 2Gb might seems small, but there are ways to get it up to 5Gb for free pretty easily.

I know, maybe not what you were originally thinking, but I figured there's no harm in putting it out there.

APHI224, I'm going to dispense with the pleasantries that so many others have offered you here and say flat out that you do not get it. Of course, you're only at the Master's level, so that's to be expected. If I can get over how angry I am at your naive and condescending responses, I'll reply with the "why" later.

Something else that occurs to me is to look into a Dropbox account (www.dropbox.com). It's basically online storage, but rather advanced (and 2Gb for free). It'll keep all your computers synced if you install the software, but I find it indispensable for grad work for two reasons: (1) It keeps versions of papers up to 30 days, which is great for going back to older revisions, and (2) you can access it from any internet-enabled computer. It basically eliminates the need for a flash drive and you can't lose it, etc. 2Gb might seems small, but there are ways to get it up to 5Gb for free pretty easily.

I know, maybe not what you were originally thinking, but I figured there's no harm in putting it out there.

APHI224, I'm going to dispense with the pleasantries that so many others have offered you here and say flat out that you do not get it. Of course, you're only at the Master's level, so that's to be expected. If I can get over how angry I am at your naive and condescending responses, I'll reply with the "why" later.

APHI224, I'm going to dispense with the pleasantries that so many others have offered you here and say flat out that you do not get it. Of course, you're only at the Master's level, so that's to be expected. If I can get over how angry I am at your naive and condescending responses, I'll reply with the "why" later.