Eli-Why?

Thanks, everybody. And thanks, strokeofmidnight, for your reassurance/correction!

If you've been accepted/waitlisted, would you post your subfield here? Thanks!

Yep. I do it. Absolutely doable.

I'm in my third year of grad school at UCI, and I've been living in Los Angeles for the past year (instead of on campus in grad housing, which was killing my soul). MUCH happier, even given the commute.

AND, good luck to everyone, and fuck all the neuroscience applicants whose plans for the fall have already been titrated, or whatever.

Oh, and books.... Things I've read recently and liked: Walker Percy's "The Last Gentleman" Lorrie Moore's short stories (incredibly entertaining -anyone read her novels?) Moby Dick (finally got around to this, and it's the most hilarious thing I've read since Infinite Jest, back in ought-two) Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road" (I mean...it's good...in a specific way) Almost done with Doris Lessing's trenchant "The Fifth Child" - good Also in the midst of Nabokov's last (I think?) novel, "Ada" - so funny you have to think about it, and it gets funnier when you do.

"Is anyone still in school?" - Yes, I am. Or, rather, I was in school, out of it, and am now back in it. I'm in the MFA program in writing at UC-Irvine, and this June I shall be christened Master of the Flatulent Arts. Also, I guess I asked, but didn't share: I'm applying to NYU, Duke, Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard (that's right, five prospective eggs nestled in one hell of a hell-bound elitist handbasket). I'd be happy living in any of these places, and all of them have faculty interested in what I want to study, which has to do with narrative theory/poetics and the later 20th-c. American novel. Now that application season has slumped to its unspectacular finish, I lie alone at night with my fears that 1) I WON'T GET IN ANYWHERE; 2) I will get in somewhere dreamy but for some obscure eugenics-related reason I'll be denied any (or enough) funds from their silvery fund-font; 3) I WON'T GET IN ANYWHERE; 4) My GRE quantitative score, which is lower and more obscene than a ninety-year-old postfeminist's decolletage, will keep me from getting in anywhere, so that 5) I WON'T GET IN ANYWHERE. 6) Also, I have a(n irrational?) fear that admissions committees will see the letters "MFA" and toss my junk away immediately, thinking that all I'll be capable of producing are minimalist short stories about hummingbirds that vibrate with their own painful sincerity. If I don't get in, I'll try again next year with lowered expectations. In the meantime, I suppose I'll try to keep overhead low and (writing) output high. (Is there anyone out there with an extra attic? Basement? Garage? Tent?)

Oh, hell. Of the 5 PhD programs in English Literature to which I'm applying, -New York University will accept me. -Columbia will accept me, but ditheringly, late in the game. -Duke will waitlist me, but won't come through. -Harvard and Chicago won't think twice about shredding my application. If I correctly anticipate affirmation of my own paper-based mediocrity, I think I will find that oddly comforting.

A "diversity statement"? I've heard the term, but haven't written one. What's it for?

Let's talk: Who's applying? Where? Why? Your biggest fear about the application process? Best/worst scenario if you don't get in anywhere? BOOKS great enough to DISTRACT us from this b.s.?

Done as of yesterday. Anyone know how to induce amnesia?