ashiepoo72

You might want to look for internships at museums if you're comfortable with art history. I don't know where you live, but a friend applied for internships at several small museums and the Smithsonian. As to short-term RA positions, you should consult with your BA professors or department admin. If you don't live near your BA institution anymore, I'd go to the local university and talk to the history department admin or whoever coordinates stuff for the division of social sciences and humanities and ask what opportunities they know of in the area.

I'd talk to your adviser. I don't have anything to present at my subfield's conference, but my adviser told me I should attend because it's in CA and is "more manageable" than the AHA.

I'm a 1st year PhD in history but had comps for my MA, so take this with a grain of salt. Professors expected us to gut books. I was told not to spend more than 3 hours on a book for comps and to only read the intro, conclusion, bibliography/footnotes closely, then skim the rest and supplement with scholarly book reviews (I read 2-3 per book). I empathize with people who enjoy reading the entire book, but I'd recommend saving a closer reading until after comps so you can get through everything. Good luck!

Also, Rachel St. John is coming to Davis in the fall. There's a lot of work on borderlands and transnational history being done here.

I'm sorry for not listing out all the people who have given well-meant warnings in my earlier post. In the process of writing an informal post on a semi-anonymous forum, I didn't think my oversight would be read as a critique of other grad students and their intentions. I should've said well-intentioned warnings by professors, adjuncts, administrators, graduate students, family, friends, my friends' friends and significant others, strangers on the street who ask what I do, among others. My point was that most grad students get the speech from professors when they're asking for recommendations, then professors when they're contacting potential POIs, then more professors when they're in their PhD. If students here are anything like me and my MA and PhD cohorts, they talk about the job market with each other too. They tell their families that the job market is rough, that even if their hope is for a TT job they're looking at or open to other things because of the shitty job market. They ask their advisers what minors to do that'll be most marketable, what external fellowships to aim for in order to have a good looking CV. So excuse me for being sick of people with only 5 posts, all relating to how shit the job market is, coming on here, dropping a flaming pile and vanishing from the face of the universe. If any history PhDs or applicants don't know how hard it is, they're living under a rock. Now let's talk about alternative careers, how to boost CVs, how to be a competitive applicant for prestigious fellowships, how to write a dissertation with the publishable book in mind, what non-academic connections we should be making, how to find postdocs, or something that's actually useful. I'm just going to add--all these "omg the job market" posts symbolize to me a fundamental issue in our thinking. That this is new, that it's a radical change and we are still coming to grips with it. We should be over this hump by now and focusing on how to live with the new normal. I refuse to sit here and stew in my own juices, waiting for my second round of rejection letters post-PhD. We should be supporting each other by building a network that helps all of us survive this reality, and the first part of that is accepting it IS reality then figuring out how to navigate it. The job market stinks. That area of the timeline has long passed us, now let's try to catch up.

I don't know what exactly constitutes a medium tier MA program, but in California SF State has a very well-respected terminal MA. Honestly, the rank of your MA matters less than what you do while you're there. I went to a program at a CSU (not SF) that hadn't sent anyone to a PhD in the several years before I went on to mine in 2015, and this year one of my dear friends got into a top 10. What you should be focusing on more is finding a program that'll fund you for all or at least part of your degree. Also, one that actually has coverage in your area. For example, as awesome as the faculty is where I got my MA, I would only recommend the program to Americanists because coverage is spotty in other fields. Upper tier PhD is rather vague, you should be exploring the literature in your field and figuring out where the top people seem to congregate. Some subfields have a completely different set of top schools than US News would have you believe. There may be a rockstar scholar at mediocre ranked program X that'll boost your academic cred just as much as or more than prestigious university Y. Since you're in the process of thinking about MAs, you have plenty of time to research scholars in your field and have a more nuanced application come PhD time.

Just gonna say, we also don't know what specialties will be out of fashion in the next decade, which will make it harder for some to get jobs. I'm more concerned about the trend toward adjuncting and less BAs in history, because these don't show signs of improvement and they directly affect the number of TT jobs. My old department recently hired a medievalist and received near 100 applications. For an East Asianist, it was the same. Some schools and areas will always be more competitive, regardless of the field. But @mvlchicago is right, US generally, but especially modern US, is more impacted than anything. We can spend all our time freaking out about the job market, or we can be aware of all the disheartening info but spend our time doing what we can to make ourselves as competitive as possible while preparing for the (likely) possibility of other employment. FWIW, one of my profs (hired as ABD, FYI), told me the people they knows who did best on the job market were the ones who learned cool skills applicable to jobs outside academia as well.

Some thoughts I read an article recently that most PhDs get their first TT job around 3 years after graduating, which indicates that most are working as lecturers and/or have postdocs before landing a TT job. This is way more common now than it was 20 or even 10 years ago (see: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2014/the-2013-jobs-report-number-of-aha-ads-dip-new-experiment-offers-expanded-view). This article also shows that we should be considering job ads on H-net as well as AHA, not that it'll make things rosier, because it won't, but it's more accurate. From what we can tell, around half of PhDs will get a TT job eventually (variation across fields, of course). The article you cited strongly suggests this may drop, but it's hard to tell what exactly is going to happen in the next 5-10 years and how drastic of a change it will be. I know many programs have cut their cohorts down in response to shrinking # of history undergrad majors and the crappy job market, maybe not all by half, but these shrinking cohorts are not yet reflected on the job market because this downsizing generally started around 5-6 years ago due to the recession. And I'm speculating here, but I know lots of people getting PhDs (maybe 1/3 of my cohort, for example) who are open to or actively want non-academic jobs, also in part because of the market. Neither the shrinking cohorts nor the increased number of non-academic job seekers is guaranteed to increase the number of available jobs if the number of history majors continues to decrease and TT jobs keep getting replaced by adjunct positions, of course. But it's also possible that these changes will mitigate some of what would otherwise be a drastic drop. I'm not saying all this to make a shitty situation sound better, because the market is awful and we will all likely struggle to find jobs, if we even find them. I'm just trying to suggest that we don't know what the next decade is going to look like. I have been told left and right and sideways how f-ed up the situation is and am willing to take a chance, because without the PhD I wouldn't even have one. If I end up having to do something else, so be it. At the very least, we should all expect 3-5 years of temporary appointments because that's the new(ish) normal.

It's the perfect time to consider applying for a Fulbright ETA grant. Check out the countries to which you can apply on the Fulbright website. It's a great opportunity to get teaching experience and to learn a language with the added benefit of making you a more competitive PhD applicant. Better to wait a year doing something that pays you than something that puts you in debt. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret my MA, I loved every minute of it--but if I could go back, I wouldn't take on the debt that I did, I would look for other opportunities. There're plenty of people on here who can tell you about the things they did instead of accruing a ton of debt.

I would honestly spend the year teaching abroad, getting some language training, working on an independent research project or something along those lines. There's no guarantee you'll get funding later if you come in self-funded. At this point you're looking at slim pickings of MA programs with little to no funding and no guarantee of funding later, so why not take a year off of school and bolster your app while gaining some (outside academia) perspective, which, trust me, programs love to see. That way you can apply straight to a PhD next season and maybe avoid having to pay for an MA. By all means, apply for the MAs with later deadlines if you'd like the option, but there is a lot you can do in a year off that will keep you connected to academia while also giving you space from it AND making your application stronger for PhD programs that don't involve the massive debt an unfunded MA brings (I'm speaking from experience, as I did an unfunded MA). Good luck!

You said the drop date is on Thursday, so if you want to drop the class you need to do it before the meeting with your professor. Yes, you should go to the meeting. He is taking the time out of his busy day to help you, so even if you drop the course you should meet with your professor...that is, if you really do want to improve. Why exactly are you so concerned about this paper? Did you do a poor job on it? Is there something else going on with this assignment that you're not telling us? I have never met a graduate student who had literally no idea whether or not they were passing a class, and most people I know have at least a vague idea of the grade they are going to earn on a paper, so this is highly unusual in my opinion.

You should also look for university resources for TAs. My program did a TA orientation that was required for all first years, for example. Graduate studies might have stuff you can look at, like TA handbooks. I would spend some time talking to seasoned TAs in your department before you start. From what I know, most history TAs do not lecture unless they get an instructor of record position, which is generally after advancing to candidacy. I've heard some TAs in my department do mini-lectures during section (in addition to facilitating discussion) but they aren't required to.

I would look at where professors working in the UC and CSU systems got their degrees, just as a basic indicator. Then look at people in your field (at universities beyond the UC/CSU, since you said it's a small subfield) and see where they studied as well. What's your A&M adviser's placement like? Are they offering you good funding? Do they also fund travel to conferences and for research? Do the students in the department have a good record of securing external fellowships (especially the prestigious ones like Fulbright, Ford, etc)? All of this stuff is gonna help you in the long run.

You want 5 years of funding at least, always. Because you said school A is stronger in your field, I would actually see if mentioning school B's first-year fellowship can get you better first-year funding at school A. They'll likely want to see the funding package you received and not give you additional funding because school B is only offering 3 years, but it's worth a shot.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--ask for program placement records. Additionally, if your adviser is an established, respected scholar, that'll help you too. I truly believe program placement record + adviser's network centrality (obviously + you conducting excellent work in the PhD and external fellowships, teaching experience blah blah) are more important than rank if you want a TT job. Rank is sometimes useless in tiny subfields, and US News is most problematic, IMHO, because programs rank themselves (seriously? Who does that?). There is that list of "top" 20placement programs that sometimes correlates with US News, sometimes doesn't, and it's probably the best ranking list because it says which programs actually place the most people in TT jobs.

This happens more often than you think, and you're making a big deal out of it for nothing. Professors are humans and forget things at home or misplace them. If he's asking for a copy of the assignment, that is not an unreasonable request and your inability to provide it probably seems extremely strange to him. There could be a variety of reasons why he would want an electronic copy (including facility of providing feedback, checking for plagiarism, wanting it for future reference, or he honest to god forgot the original at home like he said). I don't know a single graduate student who wouldn't save an assignment, even if they were working on it at school (this is an undergrad move, one I pulled several times my first year, but I was barely 18 years old). Let this be a lesson for you to always carry a USB drive or email yourself all the assignments you complete on campus.

@knp I wouldn't worry! I'm someone who started my program with an MA and still haven't published. I definitely had tons of other experience teaching and such, but the work you do in the PhD should prep you and give you the opportunities to publish and present at conferences. Also, I haven't noticed much difference between the people who came in with an MA and those with just a BA, other than most of the MA people having a clearer idea of what they want to write for their dissertation. I'm actually super impressed with my cohort members who only came in with a BA--I wasn't even close to their level when I finished mine, and they're just as smart and committed as the rest of us. Programs accepted you because you've got what it takes to succeed.

I know a bunch of people who got into top programs without publications and a bunch who did with publications. I will say this, most of those who did without publications had other experience (teaching, editing, research, etc) and some had at least presented at conferences.

Whether the plan has dental depends on the university. The UCs have medical, dental and vision coverage for graduate students. If you can get your exams done at the university health center, student insurance usually covers even more and copays are low.

Pretty sure the recommendation was to look at h-net...

I think it's very easy to have a decent diet on $100-150 a month. I buy dry beans, lentils and brown rice in bulk (spend $20 on a giant bag one month, have enough for 4-6). Go to Costco and spend $20 on 6-8 lbs of ground turkey, split and freeze it--this will last my daughter and I at least a month, usually 2. I buy tuna in bulk, but try not to eat a ton of it each week to mitigate the whole Mercury thing. Huge packs of chicken are stupid cheap at Costco too. There are plenty of websites that teach you how to freeze vegetables for cooking, so you can buy a huge pack of spinach, mushrooms or whatever and do that. Also, canned veggies in a pinch--yeah, they don't taste great, but you can get them super cheap. Baking your own bread is super inexpensive, really easy and much healthier. I generally keep tortillas and cheese in the house for quick, cheap and easy breakfasts. It's ridiculously easy to make your own tomato or white sauce, so there is a pasta dinner (oh, pasta in bulk is also cheap as hell). Am I eating like a wealthy organic food enthusiast? No. But my diet now is way better than when I had more disposable income and ate out all the time. And if I'm super broke, yes, I totally eat ramen or macaroni and cheese and I don't feel ashamed about it. How and what people eat is a very personal choice. OP--sorry your post got derailed and that I felt the need to contribute to its derailing. If you care to see it, I actually made a spreadsheet that weighted different factors when I was making my decision, so you can PM me if you'd like a copy. You can change the weight of the factors depending on what you think is most important. I should say I ended up declining the program that topped my list after going to recruitment and getting a better funding offer/impression from somewhere else.

I would spend the next year researching programs again, including the ones to which you applied, and reevaluating fit. Maybe take a grad course at open university or take on a self-directed research project that you can discuss in your statement. Reworking the SOP and fine-tuning the writing sample will also be highly important. I know I offered at the beginning of this application season, but I would be glad to look over anyone's written work. I was a writing fellow at my MA program and have lots of experience editing SOPs.

There are so many factors that go into deciding which program to choose, it usually is a tougher choice than people expect. FWIW, considering adviser fit/reputation (I took the goldilocks approach, but some people like the near-retirement superstar or unknown-quantity newbie for valid reasons), funding, cost of living (so important! I was offered a bit more funding at a program with a COL twice as high as Davis, so it cancelled out), student outcomes (placement? Time to degree? It's well and good if everyone finishes, but why is it taking most people 8-10 years? Probably lack of funding opportunities!), grad student vibe (do they hate each other and the program? Can you see yourself being happy joining their community?) and department culture (douchey? Meat grinder? Intent on "culling the weak?" No thanks) made my choice much easier. Some of these things aren't obvious before visiting and/or talking to current students though, so definitely do that!

Do not do a PhD without funding unless you are independently and ridiculously wealthy. Most people will tell you not even to do an MA without funding, and I agree, but I'd take an unfunded MA over an unfunded PhD a million times over. Spend the year bolstering your application (languages? archival research? teaching abroad or domestically? publishing? presenting?) and apply again next go-round.

I am totally in love with Davis! The history department is wonderful, and I couldn't be happier with where I ended up. I hope everyone on this forum feels the same about whatever program they choose!