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I agree with bsharpe269. Also, the clear progression of classes in languages should work in your favour. You could try for a higher grade in a more advanced class in the same language and that should balance things out a bit.

Logevall is leaving Cornell and setting up shop at HKS in the Fall. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/press-releases/logevall-westad-join-faculty.

My deep dark secret is that I've been super-enjoying The Flash recently. Yeah, the CW teenybopper one. I got hooked on it because I thought it would be a fun distraction while I was finishing coursework and couldn't pay attention to serious shows.

I am done all the coursework for my Master's! Still waiting on the grades from the last class, but elated that I can move onto working on my MA thesis primarily now. I am starting a methods workshop at the end of this month, pushing out some pubs at various stages of the journal process, and organizing a conference. I am excited for all of these things! It will be a good summer.

My department has very few PhD students and large cohorts of incoming undergrads (and a very weak union), so all MA students get TA-ships.

I think the people in the Government Affairs thread will be better able to answer your question: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/11-government-affairs/.

I live across from a massive/awesome park, so my dog and I go on "picnics" whenever possible: I read papers on my tab, while he chews on a toy or smells the air for scents undetectable to anyone but a beagle. Everything else--writing, working on R, grading, etc.-- I need the routine, controlled environment of my house, the library, or a cafe. I find ensuring that my laptop or papers are safe from accidents when I am outside too distracting.

I am so happy to see that PhD candidates actually take days off! Were you able to do this in the coursework and the dissertation stages? I've not had weekends off (except for the odd one here and there) for the last three years (the final two years of undergrad and the first year of my two-year MA). I've just gotten slower by doing this and the prospect of 5-6 more years of this is terrifying/demotivating.

Thank you for this!

Thanks for the update! Really happy to hear that things worked out for you eventually. As I am about to start writing my own thesis in a month, this is an extremely useful reminder to take breaks and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

My suggestions would be NYU and Berkeley.

I have a Samsonite Xenon laptop backpack for the days when I have to carry lots of books and papers (mostly teaching days). On other days, I carry a Solo Urban Universal Tablet Sling, which is quite nice-looking and small enough for carrying a small moleskine notebook, some pens, headphones, chargers, and my 11-inch MacAir.

I agree with lewin that it doesn't matter when you submit the paper and also that you should work your way down a chain of suitable journals, with the highest ranked first. I wouldn't be so sure that it wouldn't be accepted for publication - you might need to revise it quite a bit, but it seems like you have a good shot.

My undergrad thesis turned out to be 87 pages (I could go as high as 120, IIRC) and the hardest part was connecting the two very distinct chapters in a meaningful way. As it happened, I ended up with one publishable chapter of around 35 pages; I'm happy to leave behind the rest. My MA thesis, at 60 pages, seems like a better deal to me and should provide me with a more tightly written sample. To answer the original question, being in my MA program has been a step in the right direction. I have been able to leverage the "brand name" into some cool opportunities, to network more, and to professionalize. I have also been torn about which discipline (out of three possible) I should be part of and my time in the MA program really clarified that.

Food fight

Ring finger

I have read some of his books about Indian sufism and recently met him at a conference. His talk, based on the new book, was engrossing; he was also very generous in brainstorming sources for my MA project and telling me to contact specific scholars, etc.. I'm not surprised to hear that he was enthusiastic about your application. :-)

You probably already know this, but Nile Green's (UCLA) new book is partly about the role of South Asian Muslims in institutionalizing Islam in Japan. It's called Terrains of Exchange: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/terrains-of-exchange-9780190222536?cc=us&lang=en&/

Hi Gabe, Thank you so much for your replies! I can feel a bit less anxious now.

Hi Gabe, Thank you for your reply! None of the papers are co-authored. The humanities/history publication (on Latin America) was recently accepted by a middle-tier journal that seems to publish articles from newly minted PhDs and new professors, mostly from Britain, Canada, and Australia. I've also been told that I should publish my undergraduate honours thesis on South Asia in a history/area studies journal, which I will get ready for submission this summer. Most crucially, I hope to submit a section of my political science Master's thesis (on Southeast and South Asia) to a journal in a year as well, especially since it's a timely topic that people seem to find interesting. I worry about seeming unfocused with my divergent choices of topics, regions, and methodologies, and wonder if the publications will end up hurting rather than helping.

Hello Gabe! I might be a Foucault kid myself, so my question is how do sociology departments view publications in other fields? I will definitely have a humanities/history publication and possibly a social science publication by the time I am applying to sociology PhD programs. Do publications in anything but top-tier journals have any impact whatsoever?

I hope all of you are alright.

They are not internships per se, but jobs at NORC at UChicago may be of interest to you: http://www.norc.org/WorkingAtNORC/Pages/default.aspx.

I have stayed at the McCormick Theological Seminary near the campus and quite liked it. Utilitarian, but clean and close to the campus and relatively affordable at 60/night. They don't let everyone stay there, but I think they usually make allowances for UChicago visitors. http://mccormick.edu/content/guest-housing-facilities.

Is it always sort of dark/cloudy in Ithaca during fall and winter? Cornell seemed amazing in terms of research resources and support from faculty and cohort, but I don't know if I can handle the gloominess. Montreal is way colder but sunnier - that's been very important to me for the past year. Sorry if it comes across as a strange/superficial sort of question.