Academicat

Ohio State has a funded MA/PhD, but students do sometimes go to another institution upon completion of the masters. Good luck!

Last year, I didn't get into one program, which was a huge blow to my ego. After dusting myself off, I regrouped, and it seems to have made a difference this season. Here's what I did:
 
1. Over the summer, I started a writing group. I invited widely, so we ended up with compositionists, TT librarians, and literature scholars, both faculty and graduate student. We used the Wendy Laura Belcher book "Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Success" as a guide. The value of the group was twofold: I got some feedback on my writing sample, allowing me to revise, but I also got to see my colleagues' writing processes. Seeing what they write and how they write helped me refine my approach. Helping people with their writing helps me write better.
 
2. I collected Statements of Purpose from my friends who had successfully gotten into fully funded graduate programs, spread them all out on the table, and looked for patterns. This is a strategy that has worked well for me when writing cover letters, and it helped me take a completely new approach to my SOP.
 
3. I reconsidered my recommendation writers and swapped out one very busy colleague for a former professor from my MA program. This particular colleague had forgotten about writing my letter last year, and though we worked closely, she showed me that the letter she eventually did submit was just a form letter, so I knew I needed someone else. Even though I had been out of graduate school and working for four years, my former professor was happy to write me a letter, and moreover, he has been a great resource for advice this application season. To make it easier on him, I sent him the papers I'd written for his class, my current CV, and a link to my website.
 
4. I built a professional website. The advice of one of my mentors was, "give them as many opportunities to see you as possible," so even though the website is fairly simple (my CV, a statement of research interest, a teaching statement, and a blog), I didn't think it would hurt my chances.
 
5. I felt a little silly about this one. Last year, when I submitted my applications, I treated my SOP as a cover letter, and I didn't use letterhead. When I was at the CWPA conference in Savannah, I had a conversation with some colleagues about what they look for in an applicant, and they both talked about both the cover letter and the SOP. For some reason, I had assumed that they could be the same document. This year, I wrote a separate cover letter that discusses my work experience and what I would bring to the department as a TA. I put it on department letterhead, which gives it some gravitas. If you are currently a graduate student, you should have access to departmental letterhead. Just ask.
 
6. I asked lots of people lots of questions, and I took their advice. We are all resources to one another, and people who are further ahead in the field may be busy, but they also want to help you succeed because, chances are, they are successful due in part to the support of their mentors.
 
If you don't get in, it's not the end of the world, and it's not a reflection on you as a person. It's just that your application packet didn't showcase you as well as it could, and you can work with that. Spend your year out of grad school developing yourself professionally in whatever ways make sense to you. One option is to pick up a course adjuncting at a university that offers free classes to their part-timers. With your free class credit, take a course that would allow you to create a new writing sample, and then throw yourself into making it as awesome as possible. Take advantage of all the resources you have available to you on campus to revise the rest of your packet.
 
Go out for lots of coffee dates with people who have succeeded. Ask their advice. It's worth the investment.

Also,
 
howabout: I'm very sorry you're feeling this way. Good on you for acknowledging that you're not happy and make the moves to become so.
 
Chadillac: You're the best. Just, the best. 

SLP is professional school, like medical, business, and law school. It follows different norms than most programs discussed here.

I wouldn't be able to go to grad school if I didn't get departmental funding. I can't imagine paying that kind of money out of pocket or acruing that much debt unless the field were an especially lucrative one. Because jobs are so scarce in my field (English), out of a sense of ethics, many departments only admit students if they can afford to give them an assistantship with a tuition waiver. Have you considered applying for programs that offer assistantships so you don't saddle yourself with debt?

If the GAship is something like research or academic related, then I would say to go for it! But I know sometimes Masters students have less ideal GAships that are administrative work (e.g. filing at the Registrar's office or giving campus tours). In these cases, if you don't need the money, then spend this time working on you instead! 
 
I guess if it's something in between (e.g. tutor at the Writing Center, staff writer for the Media Relations office etc.) then it might be still helpful or it might be a waste of time (if you don't need the income). Since it sounds like you won't be doing a GAship to support yourself, you can be choosy and apply to positions that will help you in some way (or meet some interest of yours).

The experience is valuable, and coursework is only a small portion of the value of graduate school. You have little work experience, so do take advantage of the GA position. Additionally, get involved in other activities as they arise: symposiums, conferences, leadership opportunities. Look at it this way: everyone with a master's degree has gone through course work. What will distinguish you as a PhD candidate and on the job market is all the other stuff you did (and how you did it).

I'm not exactly excusing my ignorance here, but I had no idea that this stuff was going on until about...hmm, a year ago. In my defense, I come from a blue collar family, and I've always been told that education is the door to opportunity, or something like that. I suppose I'm the stereotypical sheltered child. I didn't even know what adjunct faculty were until I TA'd for them in undergrad, and even then, I unknowingly bought into the myth that they were adjuncts because they weren't good enough to get a better job. That's how my advisers treated them, anyway.    While I can't excuse my ignorance or terrible-if-uninformed thoughts about others, I can understand why the veterans on the GradCafe are tired of fielding this discussion over and over. The GradCafe is often the first step prospective applicants make towards graduate school. For people like me, it's our first wakeup call. Cue shock, denial, anger, etc.    I don't think I qualify as a forum veteran yet, but in the future, I'd like to recognize conversations like this and steer them in a more productive direction. I think it would be useful to say "Here's what the rest of us are doing--come fight for a better university with us." 

I think you'll find that most of our reasons involve learning, but aren't solely about learning. Only the very privileged and wealthy can afford to go to graduate school purely for the pursuit of knowledge without considering the practical implications of the decision. We gotta eat, dude, and this far into the game, we can't afford to be naive.

Check it: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/Catalog/static/bsm/bb/history.html
 
Also, would we call rhet/comp mainstream? I mean, we did get a Gawker article for the Sparkleponies. But I'm not sure I'd use the word mainstream. There's a relative sense of pride in the field being somewhat counter-culture, which carries over in my opinion from its resurgence and continued sense of re/defining since the mid- to late sixties.

Thanks for the correction, Academicat. I'm coming with a car, so I hadn't done tons of research into public transportation.

I've been working on postcolonial lit for three years and have recently been adding Irish lit into that mix. In fact, my thesis places Kavanagh and Walcott in conversation. I also really want to do more with comics. Between those three, I've realized more and more that what I'm already doing is pretty rhetorically heavy. As I've talked more and more with Rhet/Comp colleagues in my program, it seems as if I may have more opportunity to work in and move around between my interests if I went rhet. Particularly, I'm interested in examining comics (not necessarily graphic novels) as one of the last remaining truly serialized storytelling forms, and I'm less interested in trying to "literaturize" them as a means of valuation. I want to look at them as a compound medium, not a vehicle for text. I want to look at what they do. To me, asking what something does and how, rather than what it is leans more the rhetoric way. 
 
I've spent two years now teaching composition and so far really enjoy it. Teaching lit is second nature and very fun, but teaching comp is challenging and rewarding in that it feels more like I am making a real difference. 
 
And sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I really just want to write about the ways in which Five Nights at Freddy's evokes fear and then convinces you that it's incredibly scary, despite the scares being low-hanging fruit, just for example. I really really can't do that in lit.
 
I am moving to Louisville, KY, with my wife, and I know that UofL has a heavily multi-modal Rhet/Comp program, so I felt this transition at least earned an honest exploration.

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I'm really glad this took on a life of its own. It's more likely that this thread will be useful for people beyond myself, since my specifics weren't clogging the conversation up. Awesome!
 
 
Shout outs to ProfLorax, empress-marmot, Wonton Soup, Romanista, and ComeBackZinc so far.

Between Fields, your story is especially interesting to me, if you could expound on what you were working on in postcolonial theory and how that fed into your rhet/comp transition. 
 
And I, so far, at least, really appreciated VirtualMessage's input. Reading on some of the less pretty aspects of the conversation I've just entered into is useful. I found the responses to VM useful, as well. The controversy and high emotions are definitely something I needed to know about as I work through this. So thanks again, everyone.
 
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I do not want an administrative job. In the current climate, it would feel like enabling to me. Perhaps that's unfair, and I don't have a full understanding of WPA programs; my university does not have one connected to r/c, but does have a strong rhet/comp program. Ours is a first year English program and really does curriculum and training. Hmm. Perhaps that is administrative. It just doesn't cast itself as such, and the emphasis is on student experience. Our particular program is run by two directors, both with degrees in lit both of whom also actively teach FYE, and two graduate students who help run the program for a year in lieu of teaching. 
 
I also am seeing things about other programs that just are not true in mine, despite being at a major state school. There's no real stratification, and all of the professors, tenured to adjunct, teach undergrad classes. Graduate classes are pitched and accepted, but no one teaches strictly grad classes. That's an interesting thing to watch out for as I investigate programs. The lack of true stratification in this way (there's still the hierarchy of titles and permanence) lends itself to a department-wide collegiality. There are rooting interests, but no real rivals, even between sub-departments.
 
This conversation is awesome, even if it felt painful while you guys were having it. These are concerns beyond my experience and I'd not have thought of them myself. I don't begrudge the little backbites, since I recognize that there is a lot of baggage coming along with these issues. You're all pretty darn good at supporting your points and I'm not convinced any of you are wrong (as of the 18th post).
 
Quick aside: I dislike reading pedagogy articles. I also very much see their use. Sometimes they tend too far into the personal experience realm for my rather scientific tastes, but every last one I've read gave me something useful, once my imagination and specific situation were added. Nods toward universality are troubling, but that's true in rhet and lit, too. Again, my program is flexible enough that I've never felt bossed, despite being near the bottom of the rank pile here.
 
This whole conversation was painful, but I don't think either side was trolling. Experiences vary. Mine is not yours. Being given a little window into VASTLY different experiences here is really nice. ComeBackZinc and VirtualMessage, THANK YOU. Genuinely, THANK YOU (as of the top of the second page). That had to be frustrating for both of you. You gave me, as well as the rest of the people reading this, a lot to think about and digest.
 
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That's all for now. Back to thesis formatting. Thanks, all.

VM might start by reading some of the field's response to Bousquet: Harris, O'Neill, and Waktins all have pieces in JAC 22.4. 

Regarding management science VM might check out Strickland's "The managerial Unconscious in the history of composition studies"(2011) in order to engage with the existing critique. 

As for who teaches FYW and academic freedom, VM might see Miller and Cripps (2005) who lend an interesting perspective in their defense of "The Rutgers solution" in their essay "Minimum qualifications".

Edit: I'd also recommend "Tenured Bosses Disposable Teachers" - there is a specific article but I haven't got my copy in front of me.

We moderators don't like to really police discussion unless it becomes a personal attack, a threat, or plain ol' bigotry.

But also, I don't think VM deserves any response. It's clear they feel comfortable attacking an entire field because they read one chapter about the topic (and maybe had a bad experience with a WPA?). I think there are some legit critiques to be made about rhet/comp as a field, and when someone brings them up, I'll be happy to engage. I just hope the OP returns; I'm really glad I made the switch to rhet/comp and found it mostly easy to do so.

Again: you are simply restating the basic presumption of literature for at least 40 years, which is that writing does not need to be researched and that best practices do not have to be developed in a rigorous way. Fine; you are simply opposed to the basic presumptions of this field. Which again invites the question of why you feel the need to pop in here to troll people who do believe in the need to research student writing and develop best practices for the good of students and instructors alike. It's like going to a philosophy thread and saying that philosophy doesn't need to exist anymore because we have science. A legitimate opinion, but what's the point of sharing it in that forum?

WPA work exists because institutions and stakeholders continue to value the importance of teaching college students how to write, despite the terrible assault the humanities has endured for decades. And thank god that they do, because it is the teaching of writing, above and beyond anything else, that keeps the lights on in English departments writ large. It is the teaching of writing that pays our bills. You might find the teaching of writing to be unglamorous "service" labor; I find it to be invigorating and important. But then, I'm a member of my field, and we take writing seriously. Part of taking writing seriously means acknowledging that running a writing program effectively-- developing curricula and training teachers and assessing our progress-- requires specially trained labor. That's not the only work of rhet/comp, but it's valuable work that can have a deep, meaningful impact on the lives of the students who go through our writing programs and whose future academic and professional success requires strong writing skills.
 
As far as not being able to stomach the work-- well, nobody asked you to. I don't go around medievalist threads and insult their discipline because it's none of my business. Perhaps you should consider doing the same.

I mean, among other things, this is just pure historical illiteracy. Literature departments vociferously fought against the creation of separate departments of writing, they still do, and the MLA constantly agitates against rhet/comp. One of the fiercest battles was right here at Purdue. I mean, I've seen the documentation. I've talked to Janice Lauer. She was told not to put some of her pedagogical work in her tenure file, that's how resistant lit was to treating student writing as a subject that matters. 
 
To no avail, though; even with r/c's downturn, we're on the order of 4% of English PhDs and yet 33% of annual hires. Which, you know, cuts against the whole adjunct crack; a far higher percentage of lit PhDs are out there adjuncting than r/c PhDs. But then, you knew that, didn't you?

Dear Mississippi,

The GradCafe lolopixie/datatape Appreciation Club REJECTS YOU.

Worst Regards,

Trip

Congrats OSU admits! I'll echo toasterazzi's welcome and invitation - if you want to talk about the program or the city, I'm happy to email/skype/chat.

Congrats OSU admits! I'll echo toasterazzi's welcome and invitation - if you want to talk about the program or the city, I'm happy to email/skype/chat.

Just got my Ohio State admission notice as well! 

I'm the Ohio State acceptance.

Haha I knew they'd be coming soon. Congrats to both of you and anybody else who has been accepted. Feel free to send any questions you have about OSU/Columbus my way 

Congratulations to the OSU admits!
 

 
(crossing my fingers that I hear one way or the other from them soon as well!)

Woot! Congratulations!!!