Dr. Old Bill

Yep, I'm 36 and only just got my Bachelor's in May. I started off in a community college at 32, got my A.A. in Liberal Arts, and was able to transfer to a very reputable undergraduate institution for my B.A. in English, and am now working on an M.A. in a great English program as well. But again...I didn't even have an A.A. at the age of 32. Sure, I had a couple of vocational degrees in Canada, but "late starter" would be an understatement for me. As Greenmt says above, it's never too late. Or, as Pete Hornberger says, "it's never too late for now!"

I do think it's a bit odd that you're not seeing a C.V. request more often. Thinking back to last year, I know I submitted a C.V. to many, if not most of the programs I applied to. It may be that it's just a part of the application field itself, and simply not overtly stated in the requirements you've looked at? Either way, you should have one prepared, just in case.

Yes, you really have to go through program by program and faculty list by faculty list to find professors with interests that seem to overlap with your own. That, or go back to some key articles / essays etc. you have read, and find out where those authors are teaching. There are surely other ways of finding appropriate programs, but I suspect that the standard practice of finding faculty members with similar interests, then researching a bit of their work, is the most comprehensive and productive approach.

Just spitballing here, but one of the possible alt-ac benefits of UMD is that Washington D.C., which is just a hop, skip, and a jump away, is pretty much the national mecca of non-profits and think-tanks -- prime avenues for alt-ac careers for those with advanced degrees in English. A quick search on Idealist.org shows countless jobs that are open to folks with M.A.s and Ph.D.s. Pay scales vary, of course, but the location is one of those intangible considerations.

As long as no one else is in the room where it happens...the room where it happens... Seriously though, it's a date! I saw it in August, and I've got tickets to see it again in January. It's just that good.

Oh! I'm in Jerry Passannante's seminar "On Thinking in Images: Metaphor and Analogy as Critical Context." The course is great, and so is Jerry! I bumped into him in the hall earlier this morning and chit-chatted for a few minutes. I quasi-apologized for not being as articulate as normal in the last session, and he assured me that that was not the case at all. More generally, Jerry has that great combination of being extremely smart (I know the same can be said of any professor, but he is particularly heady) and extremely kind. He's a deep thinker, but he's also able to drop a pop culture reference here and there, which grounds him somewhat. He's also fairly "young," being in his late thirties, which makes him easy to relate to (I'm personally only a year younger than him, but that statement seems to hold true for the younger folks in the class). All told, I think he's pretty great. You can feel free to PM me with any specific questions about him / his scholarship / his style etc.

Hi there! Yes, as Prof Lorax said, I'm a first-year MA at UMD. While I obviously have nothing to compare the program to (i.e., this is my first grad school experience), I'm very happy with the program, and feel supported etc. All three of my current courses are enjoyable, and while the workload is high, that's to be expected anywhere. Part of that is because I also work a full GAship, which eats up a lot of hours. The workload would be much more manageable for a Ph.D. candidate without the 20 - 25 hour per week work commitment. My cohort is quite friendly, and there have been many opportunities for socialization, even though I haven't personally been able to attend many of them. Everyone at all stages seems to be cheerful and pleasant, however, and at least one current Ph.D. candidate has been known to come into my office raving excitedly about the Hamilton musical... I can't really speak to alt-ac options at this point, though I'm not sure that such things can be determined on a program-by-program level anyhow. Having said that, as with Prof Lorax, I'm happy to talk more in this thread or via PM about any questions / concerns / thoughts / comments etc. you might have.

It really is an important distinction, and one that probably doesn't get mentioned here as often as it should. It's one of those "if I were to do it all over again, I would..." observations for me.

Which program, if you don't mind me asking? There has been a gradual decline in the number of programs that require the GRE subject test, and it's always good to know when another one drops off the list...

At the risk of sounding unnecessarily alarmist, my (very humble) opinion is that you should get as many eyes on your WS as possible. The only reason I say this is because I was very confident in my writing sample as well -- so much so that I considered it the strongest part of my application, not requiring extensive feedback. As it turns out, I know from at least two sources on graduate admissions committees that my writing sample was lacking. That is to say, the writing itself was good (thankfully), but since it didn't engage contemporary critical research, it wasn't as competitive. It was well-researched, comprehensive, and even "beautifully written" according to one adcomm member...but it missed the boat when it comes to demonstrating potential to do cutting edge investigation. I also recently learned that one term I used heavily throughout (even in the title, as I recall) actually has a deeper, meaning-laden significance in academic writing. Mea culpa. Your writing sample might be close to perfect, and my comments might be needless. Yet I feel I should mention it regardless, just in case.

Ooh. This could be a meme! Comp/Rhet is not a real field because... ...writing should only ever be about literature. Duh. ...this is English, and we have no time for Greek terms like ethos and kairos. ...you're obviously born with the ability to write perfect sentences and make compelling arguments. C'mon folks, let's keep it going!

It's not nuts at all. I applied to 17 last year. Given the low percentages of admissions, it's actually rather smart, in my view, unless you have a strong plan B. The cost is prohibitive, but if this is the path you know you want to be on, it's worth spending an extra few hundred to give yourself more potential options, so long as all of the programs you apply to are truly in the wheelhouse of your interests.

Actually, the DGS of one program I applied to later emailed me to say that my mediocre GRE subject score was effectively one of two things that kept me from making the cut (the other being that my WS didn't include any contemporary theory). I had always thought that the subject test was more of a "checklist" item, in that you have to take it, but so long as you didn't bomb it, no one really cared about the score. For some places it seems that's not actually the case. Having said all of that, there's really no reason to take it if there's only one program you'd need it for...and you're lukewarm on that school.

There are different schools of thought on this question. Even within my department, I have heard widely different perspectives. My mentor, who was also on the admissions committee last year, said that it probably doesn't matter at M.A. level -- that going to relevant conferences and networking is more important than presenting. Others have different views, and one of my co-workers insists that the wide range of conferences she presents at was a key part of her making it into a Ph.D. program. So...your mileage may vary.

*HUG* I hear you about leading discussion. I boldly (read: stupidly) chose to sign up for the first of the mandatory class demonstrations in my Teaching Composition course last week. It didn't go badly, but even though I was always extremely confident about presentations as an undergrad, I was admittedly a bit nervous at this level. I probably shouldn't have used the term "breakdown" as it was more just a bad day of stress, frustration, and wonderment over why I'm going down this path. But still, it was very out of character for me. I even snapped at my boss (and probably looked like my avatar in the process). The long and the short of it, I guess, is that you just have to get used to it and figure it all out for yourself. It's one thing to "know" how busy and stressed you'll be in advance (I really did anticipate it!), and a whole other thing to experience it.

Yeah, I had a mini-breakdown last week, as balancing work and school has been getting tougher and tougher. I've been in this building for eighteen days straight now (mainly because I find it easier to get reading done on the weekend in a quiet, academic setting), and I haven't even hit any of my big assignments yet (though a 30-item annotated bibliography is on tap for next Thursday). Fortunately, after exasperatedly going out for coffee last week at the end of my work shift, I bumped into a Ph.D. candidate here who I'm friends with, and he gave me the skinny on the reading...something I had already kind of cottoned on to, but needed to hear it anyhow: you just can't do all of the assigned reading, and work, and have any kind of social life. He said that you have to made an educated guess about what readings are going to be most important to the class, and then learn to "skim" the others -- read the introduction and conclusion, and speed through the body to find any points or concepts that seem key. Sure enough, I just didn't have time to read an essay for Monday, and no harm befell me... It was only discussed in class for about five minutes, and those five minutes probably told me all I needed to know, whereas actually reading it would have taken at least an hour and a half (since I'm painfully slow at close-reading). My mentor says she considers three courses to be a full-time job unto itself. Add on the 20 hours per week I put in for my GAship (which is really more like 25, though that's on me), and it starts getting pretty hairy. And of course, I haven't found much time for my own research, or had as much of an opportunity to attend meetings and professionalize as I would like. Having said all of that, I'm in two classes with a woman who arrives after having taught high school English all day. She doesn't seem very approachable, but I really want to ask her what her secret is to balancing it all...

This is just a general thread to post about some of the conferences coming up next year. I'll be submitting for travel funding tomorrow, and am thinking of attending (and potentially presenting) at the Comparative Drama Conference in Baltimore (March 31-April 2). Shakespeare Association of America hasn't posted the date and location for their 2016 conference yet, but last year it was in early April. Kzoo will be May 12-15th next year. I'd love to do the MLA Conference (Jan 7 - 10 in Austin), but I don't think I have anything I could present at that level at this point. Any other significant conferences coming up worth mentioning?

I don't have much to add to 1Q84's points, other than to say that his experience mirrors my own (bearing in mind that I'm currently in situ and he has gone through the whole thing). I entered as an "early modernist" and I'm generally thought of as an early modernist. As it happens, this semester I will be deepening the work I did on the same material that formed the basis of my WS. In other words, I will be specializing even more (by happy accident, really). That isn't to say that I'm not going to change my long-term research focus -- I very well might -- but one is generally categorized upon entry to a Master's program, and by the time you are ready to apply for a Ph.D. program (if that's what you plan to do), you should have a specific research project in mind...at least for the sake of getting in to a Ph.D. program, that is. Even then, once you are in that program you can change your focus and no one is going to kick you out.

Yeah, "Renaissance" is pretty broad. I'm going to assume that you mean literature of the English Renaissance, and right off the bat, you should probably start using the term "early modern" instead. People still do use "Renaissance" in casual conversation about writers like Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Marlowe, Jonson, Bacon etc., but "early modern" is the preferred term these days. Anyhow, you will have to be a bit more specific in terms of field / era interest -- early modern / Renaissance encompasses roughly 150 - 200 years, after all, and contains a wide range of poetry, drama, and a wide variety of other investigative / philosophical writings besides. Having said that, your original comment about the "top 20 schools" is roughly on point, but you can't let that limit your search. For instance, my own program has a fairly strong early modern department. In fact, both the department chair and co-chair are early modernists (the co-chair has one foot firmly in Medieval, but she has done a lot of research and publishing on early modern interests as well). The chair just edited the forthcoming Arden Shakespeare edition of The Comedy of Errors, which is no small undertaking. I'm saying this not so much to pump the tires of my own program as to suggest that there are many options for great early modern programs outside the top 20. Notre Dame and Washington U. in St. Louis, for instance, are worth looking into. I seem to recall that University of Oregon has a fairly strong department in that area as well. What you're mainly looking for are a few professors who have research interests in the same ballpark as your own, as well as evidence of departmental support. Yes, the USNews top 20 contains a lot of programs that meet both of those criteria, but your investigation into grad schools should probably go deeper. One helpful approach is to find a few recent texts / journal articles that you like and are pertinent to your interests, and figure out where the authors teach. Sometimes you'll get a "lone wolf" at a SLAC, but sometimes you'll discover that there's a strong core of people in your field at an otherwise less obvious program.

I liken this thread to a doomsayer waving around a "The End is Nigh" sign. The end may, in fact, BE nigh, but it doesn't make the doomsayer any less annoying.

To continue the hijack sequence, I want to add that I'm in the same [hijacked] boat insofar as I have developed some interest in rhet/comp...and have been told by a few people now that "you can do both!" with regard to my interest in early modernism and rhet/comp. I suppose it could be possible, but...how? They're pretty disparate fields. I guess it's just something you have to navigate from within a given program. The issue is exacerbated slightly by the fact that my two favorite professors here so far are an early modernist and a rhet/comp person respectively. It could all be worse, of course. It's not like we're choosing between lupus and polio. But still, I definitely share your mild frustration.

Okay, this is the biggest issue I take with the anti-grad-school line of thinking. There is no truth to the assumption that getting an M.A. or a Ph.D. in English (or any of the Liberal Arts or Humanities) makes you somehow unable to go down another career path if the elusive, pie-in-the-sky, castle-in-the-air tenure track job at a R1 institution doesn't pan out. First of all, I don't think that many of us here cling to the notion of guaranteed tenure anymore. But even if one does spend a few years on the job market, hoping in vain for that eventuality, it doesn't mean that with the right perspective (i.e. willingness to look beyond academia, and willingness to adapt one's considerable skillset alt-ac environments) one will inevitably wind up as an "unemployed bum" or an eternal adjunct barely making a livable wage. The situation does suck, but some of the doomsaying about it is downright hyperbolic.

The answer is a slightly amorphous "usually not." There's typically an expectation of reconciliation of interests. I'm in a rather similar boat as you, in that I like several eras, but have had to narrow down my era at the very least. In my grad school applications last year, I tried to pitch my interest as transhistorical prosody, rooted in the early modern era, but I've ultimately come to be classified as an early modernist, as mentioned above. Sometimes you can gain traction with transhistorical / transatlantic etc. approaches, but grad school remains (again, typically) stratified by era. ETA: cross-posted with Ramus.

I'm just not sure what you expect to come out of this, VM. There have been some valid observations in this thread, and there is a legitimate issue with the structure of grad school, but bumping this thread up ad nauseam doesn't make people more aware of the issue. Internet forums -- even ones dedicated to grad school issues -- are typically sub-standard places for organizing widespread rebellions. Not to be twee, but rather than creating an actionable call to arms, you're sending out nothing more substantial than virtual messages.