gr8pumpkin

Oh, I just HOPE it goes on for another epic thirty pages.

Exactly.

You can't be serious. For one thing, I'd bet a certain amount of folding-money that your SO watches porn behind your back, just based on the numbers.

Yes. By masturbating. I'm not joking.

No, but there is on the whole plenty of statistical evidence that "bad evaluations on the whole" = "students getting bad grades on the whole." I'm too lazy to look up actual studies, but this is a known thing, discussed endlessly on Chronicle, etc. The only other known factor a prof/TA can control is how well he or she does on the first day. First impressions also translate directly into evals. So make that first day the best day of your teaching life.

This, this, a thousand times this. A world of this.

Believe what you want. I've been around the block more than once, you whippersnapper. Now get off my lawn!

Regarding the first part, you say "very cynical" like it's a bad thing. Regarding the second part, well, loathe though I am to make an argument by authority, I've been in academia for 23 years on both sides of desk as student and faculty and then student again, but you believe what you want. Faculty idealistically want to think they want challenging and stimulating innovators as students in their department, but at the end of the day, they want *less work* more than they want challenging and stimulating innovators. CASIs create *more work* because they are, well, challenging, stimulating, and innovative. They also have an annoying tendency to show up faculty, which faculty never smiles upon. The game of "fit" is striking the right balance: making it *sound* like you're a CASI but assuring the faculty with a wink and a nod that you won't actually be too much trouble. There is, if not an art to it, at least a craft to it.

I feel your pain.

Let me add my agreement to emphasize how right everyone else is: apply to your own program but apply to others too, get in somewhere else, then pull the switcheroo when you get in somewhere. Don't burn your current house down until you have another house built somewhere else.

"Fit" more often than not means that you're not going to rock the boat, challenge prevailing orthodoxies and cause trouble (which usually means "more work") for people. It also often means the ability to be a grinning blank slate that faculty can reproduce their own ideas upon rather than showing an annoying proclivity for thinking for yourself. ETA: I didn't see this was a history thread, but I think these short observations about "fit" are normative for most departments.

God, I just wish I would have stuck with Plan A. That's all.

Klumpenhouwer Network. I think it's fun to say and impressive sounding; but not everyone can spell Klumpenhouwer off the top of their head like I can, so it is sometimes called a K-net. Not to be confused with K-Tel, a record label that specialized in one-hit wonders of the 70s and disco.

+2, though I love the smell of pipe smoke and could be tempted eventually. Also never been drunk. Caffeine and overeating are my vices.

Well, this happened to me. I'm pretty devastated and depressed. I'm really quite shocked because I thought the interview went well overall, and they more-or-less intimated that I was overqualified for the program. I got into Safety School and will go, but it's not Top Choice. I believe in reality. Top Choice is Northeastern Establishment. Safety School is Regional Powerhouse. The ultimate goal for me is teach music theory on the tenure track. Top Choice would have made that a vastly easier proposition. It's going to be incredibly, incredibly more difficult to do that coming out of Regional Powerhouse. I doubt it can really be done, unless Regional Powerhouse itself hire me in. In the beginning, I was only going to apply to Regional Powerhouse for various reasons (my wife is a schoolteacher and she is credentialed in the same state as Regional Powerhouse--- going anywhere else would have meant having to get credentialed again or at least going through a lot of hassle to get the credentials recognized). But I got talked into going for Top Choice by a mentor who said he'd write the strongest letter possible. But, it obviously wasn't enough. And now, instead of just going to Regional Powerhouse as I planned in the first place full of enthusiasm, I instead feel like a Top Choice cast-off. It has completely robbed me of any enthusiasm I have for where I'm actually going to be going. I feel that the rejection has branded me with the imprimatur of inferiority. I'm not good enough for the big leagues, for the Northeastern Establishment, which is very real. This would be starting my second doctorate. My first doctorate didn't amount to a hill of beans. There are no jobs in the field of my first doctorate. I'm obviously not the shiny new penny blank slate that Northeastern Establishment wants, and I can't do anything to change that. I feel absolutely helpless and like a complete and utter failure. I'm going to limp into my new mediocre regional school and languish in obscurity. I know, people will say, but, look, you got in somewhere! Lots of people don't get in anywhere! Okay, true. I got into Mediocre Regional Powerhouse. It's not Top Choice. In some ways I wish I didn't get in anywhere, because I could give it another shot next year. Instead, I am under (a goodly amount of self-imposed) family pressure to go through with Mediocre Okay Regional Powerhouse because I got a fellowship and it would mean income for my family, which we need. If I had completely struck out, I would not be on the hook to go through with anything and I could try again next year with a clear conscience. So to answer the original question, what's worse than rejection from Top Choice? Well, there's always death and taxes, I suppose, but little else.