PizzaFox

Holy cow, that's going to be quite the weekend! Good for you, dude! Stay hydrated. XD

You guys are great! You're teachers who cannot stop finding opportunities to teach. I hope you find yourselves standing in the positions where you deserve to be. I am older and not necessarily wiser, but I respect you so much. Thank you for starting this thread and being who you are. Good luck to all of you!

And thanks Wyatt's Torch and unræd for your replies! You both gave excellent advice, and I look forward to getting to know y'all better!
 
Shaun, I'm so glad to hear I'm not the only one! Your approach is similar to mine, so you've given me great confidence! Good luck with all of your prep as well!

And thanks Wyatt's Torch and unræd for your replies! You both gave excellent advice, and I look forward to getting to know y'all better!
 
Shaun, I'm so glad to hear I'm not the only one! Your approach is similar to mine, so you've given me great confidence! Good luck with all of your prep as well!

I know exactly what you mean about even just posting about it making it seem real and concrete--which is an odd thing, when you think about it--in a way that all my prior discussion about it hadn't.
 
I'm not making two packets, but I briefly considered it. I am (probably, we'll see what my profs say) considering having two general 'tones' for my SOP, to try to make myself attractive to both the most hidebound and modern of programs--so not two wildly divergent applications, but maybe a slight shift in emphasis between the two.

Welcome! About your two interests, how about combining them? Most DH faculty in my program (UMD, which has a huge emphasis on all things digital thanks to MITH) have a literary area of speciality as well. For example, Martha Nell Smith, founding director of MITH, works on digital humanities and poetry, leading to really interesting digital projects on Emily Dickinson. I'm sure lots of digital work is being done on early modern texts! 

Welcome, PizzaFox...and good luck to you over the next eight months of preparation-application-rejection-acceptance-jubilation!
 
It sounds like you have some interesting and diverse interests there. That's probably a good thing though! I'll be making two, if not three different kinds of applications. One of them will be focused primarily on transhistoric formalist poetry and poetics, another will be on late 19th - mid 20th century transatlantic literature, and I may put out one or two in the English Renaissance / Shakespeare direction. But honestly, I've been on GradCafe for a mere month and have already altered my potential focus a few times (but I'm certain about the poetics path now!)
 
My only "advice" in this regard is to simply do as much research as you can to find the best fitting schools of each discipline. I've narrowed down poetics programs to five or so institutions where I believe I'd be a great fit (and vice versa). I'm still figuring out the best fit for the other two areas, but will get there eventually. I'll be writing distinct SOPs (statements of purpose in Grad Cafe lingo) and will have two distinct WS (writing samples) to use. It's a bit more work, of course, but considering that grad school is most likely the last educational step before a long career in the industry, it's almost certainly worth a few more days / weeks of toil at this stage.
 
Either way, best of fortunes to you as you start your prep! I found going through the last thirty pages or so of Grad Cafe was time well spent...lots of great advice here.
 
Welcome again!
 
Shaun / Wyatt's Torch