Sparky
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Posts posted by Sparky
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So, to translate:
"We give you so much work that you don't have time to do your own research. The problem, of course, is that you are not working hard enough. Moreover, we do not trust that you are actually working all the time when you are at home, so you need to be spending 16-hour days in the lab. Every day. Every week. Never you mind that everyone exaggerates how much work they do/how little sleep they get in retrospect, because we live in an effed-up culture where it's cool not to sleep, to be a workoholic, to brag about how horrid your life is, to brag about how horrid the weather in your city is, etc. And fat chance we will raise your stipend! Also, we have entirely forgotten that when you are a graduate student, the stress level of any interaction with a faculty member at your school is multipled times a GAZILLION. We have forgotten what it is like to be smooth and confident with people you may never see again or who have no power over your immediate or intermediate-term fate, but feel like the gum on the bottom of the shoe of the people who hold the power of life and death and doctorate over you."
I am suspicious in general of "you must be miserable because we were miserable" arguments. As a medievalist, I see very very many reasons universities should adapt to new ideas and knowledge about stuff like, oh, how much sleep the human brain needs to function semi-properly, instead of doing what has always been done. Or perhaps you physical science people would like to begin your graduate careers by teaching Bible study?
On the other hand, I think a lot of the points *could* actually be quite good ones, but the method of delivery (a mass letter to all the students in the dept? the Voice From On High?) sort of shifts it from the well-intentioned mentor voice that I assume its author thinks s/he was assuming, to the patronizing "kids these days" tone that yields my 'translation.'
- newpsyche, emmm, RunnerGrad and 7 others
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BTW, any Missourians know about proper way to colloquially call University of Missouri Columbia? I figure probably just University of Missouri is just about right, but since I have lots of acquaintances at UMKC, it just doesn't sound correct. I follow sports, so I tend to just spill out Mizzou, but I don't know if anybody calls it that in everyday life!
Colloquially, everyone in the state says Mizzou (perhaps because the state can't decide how to pronounce its own name?). In fact, the only place I've ever seen or heard the school referred to as "Missouri" is in the context of national-level NCAA journalism. I don't think you could go wrong either way in your SOP. Another thing to do, though, might be to check the department website and see what they use (like, do faculty bios talk about "Z came to Mizzou in 1967..." or whatnot).
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Actually, my MA is in (historical) theology! It became very apparent VERY quickly (in the first semester, even) that I am a historian, rather than a theologian. It's just how I think, how I interact with the sources. I have from time to time thought I could find a place in a more religious studies-oriented dept, but my particular school is very classic (and hardcore, and wonderful) Theology with a capital T, so I really wouldn't fit. I did not go to grad school until I was certain that I want to teach. For me, teaching private high school or teaching college are equally desirable. There is absolutely NO guarantee that I will be able to find sustainable employment in either, even with PhD in hand. There is also absolutely no guarantee that I will make it that far.
A PhD is, essentially, a leap of faith. Yes, you know where you want to end up, but there is absolutely no guarantee that you will get there (among other things, only something like 50% of entering students will actually end up going all the way to the PhD!). EVERYONE has what's called "impostor syndrome," that is, an entrenched belief that we are not good enough, our work sucks, everyone else is better, clearly they are deluded in thinking we could possibly be part of their number and when they find out the truth they'll never talk to us again.
It goes with the territory.The only reservations I have had, ever, are this year as I read for exams. My dept is very, very old school in their approach to doctoral exams, and it is hell. It is pointless, time devouring, mind numbing, energy sapping, and INSANELY terrifying because what if I fail. There is a certain edge (in my mind) of "it would be better to quit so they don't have a chance to fail me" that is hard to shake. YMMV; not everyone has test anxiety as badly as I do, and most programs have comps setups that contain at least a *shred* of sanity.
You didn't ask about this, but just something you mentioned--pet therapy. You know, this is something you can get involved with as a volunteer, as long as you have a suitable animal. No, it's not a career, but if your dog has the temperment and you've got the time and patience for training, it could still be a good way to brush up against social work-ish stuff in your private life.
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Well, what do you want to do with your degree? Grad school (any program) is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Do you want to do lab-based neuroscience research? Teach? Be a social worker? Think about what you want to DO, how you want to spend the days of your life--then worry about how to get there. You "want a PhD". What for? What doors will the degree open for you that you are dying to walk through?
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In religion, it's pretty rare to jump straight into a PhD, though it can happen in some subfields at some programs. Many programs require a M*, straight-up; at others it is a de facto requirement ("Three students in the last ten years that I can think of, and all of them had to spend extra years in coursework anyway to catch up." -UNC grad admission liason). Do your LOR writers have experience with graduate-level religious studies?
With no proven Arabic at time of application, your app would almost certainly be tossed on those grounds alone. One of the reasons the M* requirement persists in theo, IMHO, is that it gives you extra time to get your languages in order (see also: why medievalists are the literature people most likely to come in with separate MAs; why medievalists are the historians most likely to come in with separate MAs).
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I rounded up. Joyfully (x.x8). I am in a PhD program now.
Hope that helps!
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A lot of this will depend on your school. My school does have grad housing, with separate complexes for unmarried grad students, married with no kids, and families (Catholic uni so "married" is indeed the operative word). Health insurance is offered to families, but this is a point of some contention because it's *really* expensive to get your dependents covered. The school is taking some steps to try and make things more manageable with students for families. Unfortunately, in the process it's kind of screwing over those of us *without* kids (which is totally the administration's fault and everyone recognizes that rather than blaming each other).
People here who live in family housing tend to really like it! Apparently it's a very supportive atmosphere, people help each other out with childcare, the GSU throws lots of family-friendly events, and so forth.
Eating on campus will generally be more expensive than cooking at home. But grad housing, especially for families, would be *almost* universally apartment-style, so you'd have a kitchen!
If you think you will need a part-time job, be careful about program choice. If you are a full-time student, especially with an assistantship or fellowship and tuition remission, many programs will not allow you to hold outside employment. (Others, of course, are designed specifically around people who have full-blown careers and continue in them during studies.) There are often options for extra on-campus jobs, at least here. A prof needs a 500-source bibliography typed up. The library archives need someone to monitor the front desk 10 hours a week. And so forth. So you would want to be on the lookout for or actively seek out those as well.
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I simply gave a thank-you card the year I applied. But my first year in my current program I sent holiday cards to my three LOR writers, telling them good things about my year and how it was thanks to their help (meaning more in the classroom than LORs) that I was there in the first place. Apparently this was appreciated more than alcohol would have been. Cheaper for me and more meaningful for them!
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You're no doubt correct, but I'm irritated by the attitude that interests outside of your primary field automatically signifies being uncommitted. The atomization of history is something that I disagree with in a larger sense. I'm not convinced the future of the field is best served by professors whose only interest is labor relations between Episcopalian mill workers and their Scottish employers in New Haven from 1747-1751.
Of course it's not--and demonstrating a commitment to a single topic in your SOP doesn't mean you're not interested in other stuff, nor that professors don't expect or want you to be interested in other things. (One of the questions multiple profs asked when I interviewed at the program I'm currently in was, "What else?") BUT. The point of the SOP is that you can demonstrate a commitment to a single field. After all, your dissertation DOES have to be on a very focused topic, and being enough in love with a single thing to pursue it through dissertation frustration is not that common. THAT'S what the faculty are looking for. Commitment, and the ability to formulate (still pretty vague) historical research questions that it is possible to answer.
Give the faculty a little credit.
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I like CageFree's suggestions of mentioning it as part of your intellectual evolution. Otherwise, only discuss it if you can show how having experience in that area strengthens your ability to work in your primary subfield. Of course people's interests shift around during and after the PhD, but for purposes of applying it's about showing how you can be focused on and committed to a fairly narrow strand of scholarship/history.
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It seems bland and uncreative to me. You should probably *explain* your rocky record, but why waste time belittling yourself? The SOP is not about self-effacement; it is marketing, it is selling yourself. (It is also very hard for many academic-type people because we tend to come across as self-effacing to the point of arrogance). Just jump out there and show what makes you unique and perfect for the program.
Especially, though, don't belittle your undergrad. First, because most of us didn't go to fancy-schmance name brand Ivy. Secondly, because the profs may well see that as a predictor of how you may talk about your PhD school--and you MUST be the PINNACLE of enthusiastic about your PhD school (at least until you get a permanent job, ha!). Nobody wants to admit someone who might spend the entire time badmouthing the program.
Besides, can you imagine if one of the profs went to your alma mater--or worse, is currently sending a child there?
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I'm not in classics, but master's GPA is *really* important for PhD programs. Not in the sense that it can *make* your application, but it can absolutely break your chances. A 3.0 would be a *huge* warning sign for PhD programs, a sign that you might not be cut out for grad work. Generally in humanities you are expected to have a 4.0 or something near to it--getting mostly A's is the expectation.
If you didn't pass your thesis, how will your letters of recommendation be? Surely the profs would have to mention your struggles, which would seem to be problematic if you are going to be expected to write a doctoral dissertation. As far as assessing your own chances at being successful in a PhD program, I guess it depends on *why* you failed, why you thought it was "okay," and where the gaps are. (Perhaps also on how high the bar for passing is.)
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Princeton, Notre Dame, possibly Yale if she wants to emphasize the Norse. WUSTL has a joint degree program in English and Comparative Literature. They have a few notable scholars in medieval literature. They also have a joint degree program in German and Comparative Literature.
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Doesn't your field or class topic have a well-known set of essays that are hilariously (or UNhilariously) mockable for some reason or other, even if it is just History Marches On? Like, a bunch of hyper-Marxist zealots writing in the 60s, or nauseatingly imperialist/colonialist stuff from the 1890s and 1900s? I have had good luck taking a class period to go through a chapter or essay along those lines with my students, taking apart the narrative, logic, and sources of the argument (discipline = history). That seems to get them more ready to be critical.
I also usually have my students work in teams for this--it seems to eliminate the sense of being out there on their own and thus feeling personally vulnerable.
As for your student who thinks that debate is bullying--it might be worth examining how you frame the class discussions, or the kid might just need a Reality Adjustment.
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1. Will your program *let* you work? If you have funding, this is a real, legal issue. Many programs won't allow students to work outside jobs. This might also be a function of being a full-time versus a part-time student, depending on the school.
2. If you pursue archaeology, won't you be working internships at least some semesters, possibly full-time? How will that work with holding down a job?
3. Investigate on-campus options. Adjuncting/TAing, obviously, but also stuff like library positions, tutoring, ResLife mentoring, working in the rec center, etc. A lot of them are probably limited to undergrad students on work-study, but not everything. There is a *lot* of informal hiring, too (at my school, in the libraries in particular).
4. No chance of going anywhere with funding? Does one of the three of you have a choice full-time job in Boston starting?
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Instead of looking for dedicated southern U.S. programs, or programs with that as a set subfield, can you expand your search to look at anywhere that has U.S. as a subfield (or no subfields at all, I guess) but has a professor you might work with? On the MA level, it seems to me that you would mostly need one prof who is familiar with the sources/archives that might be of interest to you (presumably for your thesis work), and then you would use your coursework in various classes to focus in on your interests more narrowly. (So if you do women's economic history in the rural South, write your medieval Mediterranean paper on women traders in precolonial Islamic Africa, or whatever; write your U.S. papers on southern topics).
A lot of people find themselves switching subfields during the MA (or even PhD), and while obviously there are many who *don't*, there's another reason not to be tied down by narrow subsubfield before you even start.
ETA: Observe that I am in no way suggesting you compromise on funding, haha. Oh, priorities.
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Uh. There are some older threads floating around about which schools offer funding. There are not generally hard and fast rules as to what MA programs are "top schools"--you will find a lot of debate about whether it is better to be an MA student at a High-Reputation school with a PhD program where the faculty might be more likely to pay all their attention to their own research and their PhD students, or a Medium-Reputation school where the faculty cultivate their MA students passionately. In general, good=funded. So I would look at older threads for ideas on that. (I obviously have no firsthand experience.)
One other thing to consider--a PhD application is more likely to be taken seriously if you have history profs writing your recommendation rather than theo profs. Have you taken a grad-level history class during undergrad or your current MA that you could wrangle a LOR out of, as well as a writing sample? (This again goes back to preparation--PhD programs will be looking for attestation that you can do PhD-level historical work, and history profs are really the ones in a position to judge this).
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I have a BA and MA in various permutations of theology, and switched to history for the PhD. The adjustment was a lot rougher than I had thought it was going to be, even though I'd had basic historiography training during my MA (in historical theo). While I'm not complaining about where I am, part of me thinks it would have been a really, really good idea to fill in the gaps with a history MA first. Especially my first year, my papers ended up being basically historical theo, just because I was trying to do SO MUCH ELSE that I couldn't really get down and dirty with "more historical" sources, or find creative ways of interpreting them that move solidly out of the realm of theo. (Obviously religious texts, sermons, etc are historical sources and brilliant history is done with them--but that's not what I was doing). I don't know. It's hard to articulate the difference, but there absolutely is one.
Totally apply for a few PhD programs, because why not? It's all the proverbial crapshoot, anyway. However, be aware that you *will* face an uphill battle at a lot of schools, especially if your writing sample is a theology-esque paper and not stemming from a history class. So I would apply to a few funded MAs as a backup. (Which is general advice for *all* applicants, not just historians trapped in theology.)
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Fascism is several centuries beyond me, but the writing sample you submit should be based mainly on original research of primary sources, as should a history thesis-level project of any sort (IMHO on the latter; TGC wisdom on the former). Why not make one group (a "case study" as you call it) the focus of your paper, and use what you discover about them to situate yourself in the historiography on fascism? That way, original research is your focus and your way into the topic. Maybe it will, maybe it won't have something to do with the modernity/fascism conversation...let your sources be your guide.
If you're hunting about for a topic, why not get up to speed on the recent historiography of fascism? (Try browsing the bibliographies of recent dissertations on fascism in ProQuest, or the couple most recent books in the library; you could also search "fascism historiography" on JSTOR et al to see if anyone's done a historiography piece or section of article recently). Usually some sort of idea will pop out as a hole to be answered--a part of the debate that isn't (yet!) up for debate, the pieces that everyone just assumes while concentrating on another topic.
ETA: A Google search for "historiography fascism" turns up academic-level work from 2005+ on the first page of search results...
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1. Admitting you want to teach high school will hurt you at nearly every history PhD program. If you can find one with a strong public history track, you might be okay. But I would be very, VERY wary about mentioning it, especially without basically getting back-channel word that it *won't* hurt you in the eyes of a specific department, admissions committee, and prospective advisor.
2. The reason I do history is because of a PhD-holding high school teacher. His knowledge base and academic creativity made history--made school--come alive for me in a way no other teacher could. He went for a PhD knowing full well he wanted to come out a teacher, not a researcher, whether that ultimately meant at a high school, community college, or liberal arts school.
3. All the more power to you. Just be prepared not to admit your actual career goals at the *majority* of programs. (This is because of PhD program funding structure. Depts justify their existence based on the number of tenure track position-obtaining PhDs they produce. Ergo, despite all the talk about how PhD programs need to restructure and shift focus given the utter lack of academic jobs, it remains only talk. You can't shift culture if the economics make it impossible.)
- uhohlemonster and TMP
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Um. Transferring in grad school is not like transferring in undergrad. You don't "transfer", for the most part--you apply as a first-year student all over again, and maybe you're allowed to transfer in some credits. (My dept allows you to transfer a grand total of 3 credits, or one class). This is pragmatic--the point of a grad degree from a specific school is that you received your training from that institution. Your abilities and success as a working professional will reflect directly on the quality of your grad dept.
But poor research fit does happen. How far are you into your program? A lot of people who switch (like me! and I even switched disciplines!) do so after 2 years, leaving the first program with a terminal master's degree.
You will need letters of recommendation from your CURRENT program, not just ones from undergrad. They can attest that you are an awesome grad student and that your leaving your current school is not due to inability to handle the material but simply poor fit. You'll want to explain in your SOP how you determined the first program is in fact a poor fit--chances are you didn't think so when you agreed to attend, after all. This is actually a *great* way to frame the academic journey/how I got into my research topic section of the SOP! So be sure you are cultivating relationships with profs at your current school.
Also, be sure to talk with the DGS and your current advisor about your misgivings. Sometimes poor research fit only seems like it. Maybe the faculty would be willing to work with you to keep you? In my case, they were prepared (and did) approve me to continue on to the PhD at what turned out to be my MA school, with the understanding that my dissertation would be flexing the usual boundaries of medieval theology a little (or...a lot, as it is turning out. Thank heavens I am no longer in theology). Maybe your profs can come to a similar type of arrangement for you?
- tauren, rising_star, sareth and 1 other
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...And if it is an online application that requires you to upload the essay, assume that anything over 20 pages may very well be automatically cut off. (It might not--but you don't want to bank on that);
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A shiatsu-style massage pillow! I got one off eBay for ~$25 that is amazing for back and shoulders and *almost* rough enough for my feet (gentle massages do nothing for me). I've had it 3+ years now and it's still going strong, so I can't say enough good things about it.
It's too awkward to use it for my neck, unfortunately, so if anyone has recommendations for a good shiatsu *neck* massager, that would be much appreciated.
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The first semester is the hardest.
For short-term survival: don't read every page of every assignment. Book reviews (H-Net, JStor, Cambridge etc) are your friend. Read a couple of reviews, read the book's intro (and if it has it, conclusion), read the beginnings and ends of every chapter, skim at least one chapter to see how the author uses the evidence.
You're not supposed to be able to handle 100% of the assigned reading plus 100% of all your papers plus putting 100% into all of your own research. Grad school is the art of learning what you don't actually have to do while still getting what you need to out of the material.
Does the counseling center at your school have a grad student support group? My school runs one each semester, and it definitely saved my academic career and possibly saved my life my first year! I highly, highly recommend you check into that, especially if you are having trouble making connections in your cohort.
- virmundi, ZacharyObama, rising_star and 3 others
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Figuring Out Whether to Leave or Stay
in Officially Grads
Posted
It's pretty standard to leave a program for another after the M*, especially if you're switching fields! (I did!) However, it is absolutely imperative that you have sparkling rec letters from profs at your master's school. If you're not comfortable with the chair of the dept, is there a director of grad studies or any other prof with whom you feel comfortable talking about your options?