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I'm trying to find what poster you mean in your first sentence, and I can't--do you mean heliogabalus? If so, unless I'm very much misreading the context of their post--or misunderstanding the rhetorical thrust of your mention of it--they meant to criticize that idea, right? An aside to the aside: I'm as much of a public school booster as the next guy--I turned down elite private schools to attend a third state school for my PhD in large part because I feel much more comfortable in that setting, and certainly did experience (or felt I experienced, if that distinction holds) the odd moment of pretension on my visits. But I'm also not a huge fan of some of the casual thrashing of "elite, private schools" that is, in its own way, just as snobbish as the image of an Ivy League professor in tweeds curling his nose under his monocle because he doesn't like where you've put your paraphs. Absolutely all of my prior education has been at large, state, land grant institutions with strong (and very strong) rhet comp presences: the University of Minnesota, and Ohio State. And all that instruction has also emphasized that style and message are not discontinuous, and that graduate level research papers are expected to be grammatically correct and largely free of mechanical errors. Surely it does students a disservice to require that, but simultaneously deemphasize its instruction? I think Proflorax's point about the need for grammar not to be fetishized or taught in isolation, but also not overlooked, is well-taken. Edited to add: I see I cross posted with mollifiedmolloy; the schoolmarmish medievalists are out in our full crotchety (and crocheted?) force.

Hah! I was wondering if someone was going to bring that up! I didn't at the time, because Chicago (which is what I use) says the apostrophe is used only when giving the plural of lower-case letters (there are many As, and many a's), so to my mind telkanuru's correction of B's would still be appropriate. But: this is an especially fine hair. I only even have any experience with it because I've run into the issue when writing about paleography, but admittedly it's a long time since I've looked. And note that I originally learned the rule (which is not trivial, since it's very necessary when writing about letterforms--is "as" the word, or more than one minuscule "a"?) because an advisor took the time to meticulously correct my copyediting errors in a paper, including that one--complete with a numbered reference to the appropriate paragraph of the CMS. I like seeing red on my papers, including the correction of stray grammatical errors that, yes, are head-slappers once I see them and that I should have caught. It means I'm being trained; it means I'm being made better at what it is I want to do.

Is mustard the only condiment you have back there, ComeBackZinc? 'Cause I could really use some butter for all this popcorn.

Agreed. And setting aside everything else, there's been some very good advice here on writing research papers, from many quarters. That's a conversation worth continuing, for the OP and for others! And while I also get really tired of "I'm a bitter graduate student sent here from the future to save you," can't we all agree it'd make a hella good movie?

I'm out of up votes (again), but that is in fact exactly where I was coming from. I understand the desire to restrict ourselves to the warrant in the original post, which is why I framed my initial response in terms of finding research topics that the OP finds interesting, that, by virtue of their own inherent fascination, drive the OP to explore them and then write about them. I'd never say not to pursue graduate study, period, full stop--who the hell am I, and what the hell do I know? (My username means "bad advice," and I chose it for a reason.) But I also think it'd be disingenuous not to acknowledge that the OP has made it clear in the past that while they're very passionate about French as a language, literary study (which is the purpose of most national language PhD programs unless they have a linguistics track) might not really be something they care about or enjoy, and that that might then have some bearing on why they're not producing the research/writing they might like.

For the last time: I'M NOT SMUGGLING IN GYPSY MOTHS, CALIFORNIA.

Goddammit; I run out of upvotes just before I need them for Patsy.

Excellent! I appreciate your rushing in on your charger, especially since it seems to be the second sort of class--our written assignments are two book reviews, followed by a paper where we apply "core readings to a small set of supplementary readings." Definitely more lit review than not. That's lovely to hear; thanks much!

Both ExponentialDecay and telkanuru did offer you advice, though. To telkanuru, you said you "don't need anyone to tell me how to write emails or short paragraphs that ask for advice," but that's not really what he was doing. While he used your initial post as an object lesson, he was telling you how to write, period, including academic prose. His bulleted list is excellent, constructive, and frankly very sympathetic (note how careful he was to talk about advice he's gotten and issues he's had) counsel. Red is never fun to see, but red makes us better scholars. The reason I asked about finding topics you're interested in actually relates to ExponentialDecay's point, which, while you found unhelpful, is something to consider. I was trying to be a bit more roundabout, but the broader question of why it is you want to do a PhD program and the question of why your papers' arguments fall flat at that level could be, in some ways, the same question. I know you've had other people here, as you've been through the first year of your program and considered a wide range of future disciplines and specialties, tell you that maybe you're too unfocused for graduate study; I'm not going to say that, because it doesn't matter what I think and it's not the question you asked. But this is why I first brought up whether or not you're researching things that really and truly interest you: the more you have a clear idea of what it is you want to study, why it is it needs to be studied, and why you need to be the person to study it, the better you'll be at producing strong arguments about it.

I have indeed considered it! There are a couple of reasons for taking the history course immediately in the fall (which the faculty I've spoken to also think I should definitely do), when otherwise I might wait to take it next year. One is precisely the fact that this version of the course is the most "general" of the medieval offerings at the graduate level; my program requires a graduate course in medieval history, and I'd rather take it when it's the broad historiographical survey than when it's on a narrow, focused topic that may not have a ton to do with my research interests. (In part precisely because I don't have that background--everyone says this is a really, really useful version of the course.) Another reason is that this fall it's being taught by the department's early medievalist, whom (just because of my own period) I'd rather take the course with than the department's late medievalist. Neither of those things will be true about the course in my second year of coursework, and I really don't want to carry the req over into the third year. I've had this talk with some of the English students in the program, and they say the same thing about talking with the professor and talking with the prof and tailoring the final paper to my strengths--thanks!

I went back and forth about whether or not to post this in the History sub forum, or here--I eventually decided on here, but just by a hair. I really wish I could cross post it, but since I can't, any historians about who'd like to share their thoughts and opinions are very, very welcome! I'll be beginning my PhD program in English and Medieval Studies in the fall, and one of the classes I'm probably going to be taking is a history seminar that's meant to act as a general overview of the historiography of the Middle Ages for history PhD students who have medieval history as one of their exam fields. I'm a bit nervous--let's not say quite "terrified"--about the class, because my historical/historiographical knowledge isn't probably what it really should be, because I've heard about how very hardcore graduate seminars in history are (which also, I should add, makes me very excited to take it!), and also because I'm a bit concerned about differences in methodology. While the nature of my field means I read a fair bit of historical scholarship and some of the papers I've written have been, in some ways, more historical than they were strictly literary, I've never taken an advanced history course and worry a bit about being a fish entirely out of his water. Maybe I'm worried for no good reason; maybe this is just proleptic Impostor Syndrome. Still, a series of questions, in no particular order, for current or past graduate students: What has your experience been taking high level courses outside of your discipline? For people with experience in history and/or lit, what are some differences in methodology or approach I should be cognizant of? Any advice/thoughts/things I should consider doing or keeping in mind? Thanks all in advance!

Are there commonalities to the things your professors are identifying? If so, are they more issues with the nitty-gritty mechanics of your writing, or broader things having more to do with what sort of argument you're making, and how you're making it? Either way, rising_star's advice is really excellent. Exchanging works-in-progress with colleagues is, sure, often a humbling experience, but it's also a little thrilling--I've found it really helpful! I would also, though, ask if in these papers you're researching topics that interest you? That's certainly an issue I've had in writing research papers. It can be extraordinarily difficult to come up with interesting, compelling, argumentative theses for things you don't care about, and it's even harder to then fill the twenty-five pages of that seminar paper with trenchant argument when you could really just sum up your thoughts with "meh." Yes, there are writers out there who are talented enough to be able keep you wanting to turn the page (which is still what a good piece of academic writing should do) while forcefully arguing for something they don't care one whit about; I know I'm not one of them.

I'm torn; I can see the merits of both sets of advice. (Meaning that I had planned to read two articles and work on my languages yesterday, and streamed an entire season of Downton Abbey instead.)

Same here, but I think it is just my confirmation bias. I would have sworn to the skies that "advisor" was both more commonly used and older, and was shocked to find that neither was the case.

Or advizier, and that you're in a 10th century 'Abbasid court.

I tend to make the exact same distinction, which is interesting--there's no real basis for it ("adviser" is older) aside from the fact that the "-or" spelling looks more distinct from the usual way we form agent nouns in English, so I think I read it as fancy and special and Title-y whereas the other one seems like, as you say, just someone who advises. But I'd love to hear from some of the linguists on the board! (Personally, I'd like to see "advicer" enter the language. Yeah, it's duplicative, same root, etc etc etc, but calling someone who gives you advice--especially of the "what should I do about the schmuckball I'm dating?" kind--an "adviser/-or" seems weirdly formal, like you're drawing up white papers and memoranda instead of grabbing a cup of coffee.)

I like "advisor," because you can secretly pronounce it like "advizoar" in your head--which makes them sound like a crusading, world-defending robot. But different strokes, right?

Yeah, I often get uncomfortable--as is clear from my posts here--with the language of "utility" in relation to education, but while I'd passionately make the case that everyone's life would be better with Virgil (or the poet of your choice), that's an argument that few people who don't already buy into the idea of the humanistic project think has merit, unfortunately. Just to put on my pedantic hat since I'm an Anglo-Saxonist, and the number of times I tell people I study Old English and they say "you mean like Chaucer?" (or even worse, Shakespeare) makes me want to hit things: Old English is actually really, really different from modern English, and is further from Chaucer's language (Middle English) than ours is from his--and certainly much further from Modern English than Cervantes' Spanish is from Modern Spanish. (I agree with Heliogabalus that Early Modern English is a better comparison.) Just for shits and giggles, here's an example of pretty bog standard late Old English prose (Wulfstan, writing around the turn of the millennium): "And riht is, þæt ænige wæpnmen on mynecena beodderne ne etan ne ne drincan ne læwede men on muneca, buton hit mid urum hlaforde sy oððon ells hwylc, þe maran godes ege habbe, þæt hit for his næweste þe betere beo for gode and for worulde, and hyra regol huru ne sy a þe awyrdra." To be sure, there's a lot of similarity there to the modern language in both vocabulary and syntax, but I think an English speaker today would have a much harder time with that than a modern Spanish speaker would have with Cervantes. It's another detour, but I'm also really interested in the Latin to Modern Spanish and Old English to Modern English comparisons. My gut would be to say that our language is closer to Old English than Spanish is to Latin, but I suppose it depends a lot on what criteria we use for closeness!

Oh no, I also very much think it's fine--and good, and useful--for discussions to evolve! This has become, I think, I really interesting conversation; I didn't mean to suggest that we needed to restrict ourselves to the OP's question. But the two aren't unrelated. You'd said that advanced electives didn't belong in the high school curriculum, but that was in the context of your suggesting an alternate structure for it. A quick clarification, then, as we move from the ideal to the actual: given that we do unfortunately have four full required years of high school and not the targeted, shorter, "basic knowledge for a few years and then let people progress to college level work more quickly if it makes sense for them" system you proposed, and given that while you may think I would have benefited from a true early-entrance opportunity it wasn't available to me financially outside of the public schools, do you still think Latin (assuming it's not replacing a spoken language like Spanish) is categorically inappropriate at the high school level in the system we actually have now, and not in an ideal one? I guess I'm still thinking about having to take Making a Budget IV my senior year instead of German, or IB chemistry, or art history, and shuddering. For what it's worth, the The National Council of State Supervisors for Languages's paper on the rationale for foreign language study mentions more reasons for foreign language study than just the promotion of communication with target language speakers--although that is certainly one of them.

So you're advocating a reduction of the required time spent in high school and a concomitant increase in available public funding for early college programs? That's actually something that, depending on the details, I'd support! But I'm not sure what it has to do with the question at hand, which is about an existing curricular requirement in the current educational system as we have it, not as we'd like it to be. While answering "no" to that very narrow, specific question about a single requirement in the system as it stands now because you think the entire system should be radically restructured in a series of wholesale reforms that would, in the process, eliminate a whole slew of requirements is honest in terms of what that system would look like if you had your druthers, I'm not sure how productive an answer it is in the absence of those reforms.

Honey, I Shrunk the Cohort.

I'm not suggesting that the we "focus on those nuances when the basics aren't met," i.e. suggesting that Latin should be taught instead of English reading comprehension, or even that it should be taught instead of Spanish! Going back to the "entire premise of this thread," the question was just whether or not Latin fulfills the aims of a foreign language requirement for someone who's already taken the language. And while I understand the point of view (and the real, gut-level frustration that inspires it) that it's a waste of resources to teach people synchronized swimming when others are drowning, that assumes that schools and educators can only do one thing at a time, and poses its own problems of leaving sets of students' needs unmet. Since many students at my high school (an urban, inner-city public school) struggled with basic, fundamental academic skills and my family didn't have the money to send me to private schools or enrichment programs, does that mean the school shouldn't have offered advanced classes in elective subjects as options once basic requirements had been met, and I should have instead spent four years learning, among other things, just to balance a checkbook? I'm biased, obviously, but I think that'd have been a shame.

TakeruK, that makes sense. I still think we vastly overestimate the actual utility of most high school language instruction and underestimate the utility of Latin, and even more than that, I still object to workplace "utility" as the criterion for judging curricular value--but I very much appreciate the response. It seemed like in the last few posts what got lost was that no one was saying that Latin (or any other language) should be required, only that Latin should be allowed to fulfill a preexisting language requirement. You write that "learning Latin is not going to help a graduate from my high school find work," and while that's true, two years of high school German weren't going to help a graduate of my high school in Minnesota find work, either. This is a tangential point, but there's been a lot of discussion upthread about what our "public" schools should be doing. I worry about the sort of stratification that says that people in public schools get one kind of education, people who can afford private schools another, as well as the kind of thinking that says if you don't need something for your career there's no point in it being offered to you. I also do think there should be a foreign language requirement at the high school level--not because of pragmatic employment considerations, but for more general knowledge, "informed citizenry" ones. Nothing makes you realize that your own culture is not at the center of all things faster than struggling with another culture's language and/or texts, and that's something that can happen just as well with a language that was spoken fifteen hundred years ago as one that's spoken today.

And the former is what vocational schools are for. (Which I don't say to knock them! I went to a vocational school after high school, got a nice career out of it, and think we funnel way too many students into four year colleges without good reason.) But public high schools have goals other than just training people in general life skills--for example, I'd assume no one's opposed to, say, the teaching of calculus in high school, which is definitely "specialized academic knowledge" that is "mostly useful for specific careers"?

In the "consider modernists" vein, one person to have a look at would be Tom Davis at OSU. He does Marxist aesthetics, mostly, and he's big into the relationships between historical violence (including warfare), everyday life, and form.