queennight

This is a brilliant paragraph! Great points. I don't really have much else to add to the conversation that hasn't already been said, but I think maybe this quote by Theodore Roosevelt can help inspire us right now. It's a favorite of mine that I often turn to when I'm feeling devastated: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Same! I went through the list and ticked off the books that I had read, and I was startled by how many gaps I had. Definitely around 2/3rds I hadn't actually read. I'm excited for the challenge of trying to catch up though!!

Also - if your reaction to this thread goes along the lines of this .gif, then that is completely acceptable and I am sorry and I will derp off now.

I know that the idea of reading for fun might be cringe-worthy at this stage in the application cycle (crunch time!) while also trying to balance exams/coursework/term papers for those enrolled in programs as well. I find that it's so easy to completely forget why we are even in this discipline at this time - and I spotted a thread like this in the Philosophy forum ages ago, so I'm hoping to bring the ~*christmas cheer*~ back to this death-zone-five forum of academic anxieties aha! I've just finished one book and one poetry anthology: Their Eyes Were Looking At God by Zora Neale Hurston, which was absolutely incredible, and The Poetry of the Taliban, which was strangely intimate. I'm planning over the winter holidays to try to start slamming through my gaps in Modern Library's 100 Best Novels (http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/) for fun and also for the challenge. What is everyone reading for fun these days?!

Wes Anderson movies.

For the record, if I was on an adcomms committee and an applicant used a lovely lavender font for their name, I would genuinely accept them on the spot. Meanwhile, if anybody used Comic Sans MS, I'd probably start screaming and running around the room before collapsing, devastated, in the corner. Which is probably why I'm not on adcomms, but still.

I wish I had more upvotes (apparently my quota is 2 today) but I agree with everything everyone has said so far. I can't wait for this purgatory to be done! No matter what happens, I feel that we've all learned so much from the stress of even just applying. As cheesy as it sounds, it's about the journey, not the destination ... right?!?

I'd assume this would be relevant! I can't think of how it wouldn't be, unless you were copywriting drafts for the Communist Party and feel it would be a better political move to leave that off.

Two of my apps are due by early next week and my last professor still hasn't replied back to my nagging email about providing a reference. Strangely enough he's provided a reference for one of my other schools already, but is just slow at uploading it to the rest of them. Or, alternately, has taken a flight to Jamaica because he's just done with academia and can't be bothered with me anymore. Also am too terrified to do another read of my SOP for fear of typos in the versions for the apps I've already submitted.

Also, all of my family and friends told me that I couldn't do it (from claims that the economy is crap so why go into it, to the idea that the discipline is useless, to the idea that I would hate it in a year and drop out). So I went ahead, became an english major, and did it myself. And it was pretty much the greatest feeling in the world.

I love this thread so much. It's easy to forget exactly why you study English when you're so bogged down in the semantics of it all. I jumped from science into the discipline (I went into first year thinking I would do a PhD in Immunology, which clearly didn't work out). It was a pretty drastic switch, after a lot of jumps all over the place; I went into science, then transferred to political science, then environmental geography, then history, and then finally stuck with english and loved it. For me, english was finally the subject where you could study the individual, rather than the collective. I enjoyed history, but I didn't enjoy military history, which was what early undergraduate courses were mainly on; I wanted to identify with the individual, and english gave me that opportunity. Also, I took a Victorian Poetry class and learned about J.S. Mill and his depression and how he pulled out of it using Romantic poetry after a childhood stunted by utilitarian learning. I really connected with that. For me, english isn't so much a potential profession as it is a completely soul-consuming lifestyle. In my multiple majors, I've never met a group of individuals more passionate about what they study. Also I'm not sure why this is, but for some reason I've always found english majors to be exceptionally kind individuals. I think it's simply because we study trauma and suffering all day long; it helps you appreciate others on an entirely different level. Cruelty won't get you far in this enterprise. So - to answer the question: why? In some way, I think all disciplines point towards the answer to 'the meaning of life.' Biology gives you a breakdown of biotic organisms, chemistry deals with the molecular, physics grapples with cosmology, business teaches you about chasing money. None of those were satisfying to me. English, in some way, bridged the spiritual; I like to think that the imagination is one of the last holy places in our secular Western world. I don't think that I'll ever fool myself towards thinking that I can understand purpose, or meaning, or whatever you might call it, but at the end of the day, I'm exceedingly proud to have chosen this discipline to try and grapple with all of life's questions. I love the inclusivity and the kindness; the simple, revolutionary idea that all stories are relevant are something that I hope becomes more and more common as the literature department ages. I sincerely believe that by studying the stories of others you can become a wiser and more well-rounded individual - you can connect. You can understand. You can relate. In a sense, literature is therapy, at its best; and I simply love watching individuals tell the truth about their lives, or fictional characters, etc. There's something so thrilling, fun, and exciting about a discipline that deals entirely with the imagination, and it's somewhere I would love to reside for the rest of my life. Is this madness? Maybe. All I know is that for me, it's been insanely worthwhile and fulfilling, and I couldn't be happier in a subject.

This is a great thread idea, I'd love to hear suggestions as well!

Never stop trying. Never. (Panda: applicants, Attendant: administration everywhere)

When schools inevitably question if I'm drunk for even trying to apply to them:

I am actually very much so surprised - and a bit frightened - I thought acceptances would be focused more around early-mid March. But I guess most schools prefer February! Jeez; talk about soon.

I'm in a similar situation - I started off in Biological Sciences and then transfered to an entirely different school and bounced around until settling on English. I emailed all the schools I'm applying to and they noted that they primarily look at your undergraduate English (or related Philosophy/Women's Studies/Sociology/etc) courses. I don't think it's something to bar you from applying; the sky is the limit! (If you have an MA in English despite that undergrad - you should be set to go.)

THE ACCEPTANCE THREAD HAS OPENED THIS OFFICIALLY MEANS THAT THERE IS HOPE

That's incredible!!! Congrats and yes, we definitely should open up an acceptances thread now!

Viktor Shklovsky, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida!

I'm not from this philosophy forum, but I'd thought I'd pop in an answer as well - currently Shaw's The Sanity of Art is sitting on my desk, amid piles of applications. Whether I get to it or not is another thing!

Yep, it's mainly these small neurotic things that are adding up for me too - I can feel my anxiety building so much that sometimes I can literally just sit in front of my computer and stare at my application for ages, rather than even being able to make any edits ... which probably is a sign of my deteriorating mental state. It's so good to hear all these tips; I'm glad that I'm not the only person experiencing all this right now! I decided to take almost all of yesterday off for a mental health day, and now I'm back in front of my material, editing away. I suppose the only way to survive all of this is to try and maintain some sort of a skewed work/life balance - smg, Buddha looks amazing, I've never been, so I'm going to try and drag a few non-grad-student friends there over the next week. Thanks for the tip!

Any tips from the more sane/calm/experienced/wise individuals on this forum for how to handle stress during this whole process? I'm applying to seven schools and on top of a graduate course load, I'm pretty much feeling like I'm about to implode. And I get the feeling that once you actually submit these apps, the waiting game can be a horribly tense stage too.

At this point, I'm debating between "Started From The Middle, Now In Debt" or maybe "Please Keep Me At The Poverty Line for Another Half Decade"

Now, in regards to writing the Subject Test: