hreaðemus

Wow. Well, THAT was an experience. So, my alarm didn't go off this morning; I woke of my own accord at 7:25 (my test started at 8:30) and hurtled out of bed, swearing, to dunk my head under the faucet and bolt out the door into the pouring rain at 7:36 AM. I made it to the test site, sans coffee, with the aid of a swift and compassionate taxi driver, at 8:20 - only to wait outside in the rain with a massive crowd of other testers for TWENTY MINUTES before they let us in the building. The questions on the test were long; I am a fast reader, and I barely made it through the whole thing. Many of them were easy; many of them were, I thought, less so. I missed a few I should have known, and got lucky with one set of questions on a particular poem I had idly, randomly perused the night before. I think the test was harder than the ones I've taken in practice, and incorporated more modern and theoretical material, as zanmato4794 has said. I don't know how all this will affect my scores, but I'm guessing I fell somewhere in the 550-630 range. All in all, I wish I felt more confident - but after standing in the rain at 7:45 AM imagining what would happen if I couldn't GET to the test site, I am grateful simply to have gotten through the experience.

Oh my gosh you guys. Good luck! Get lots of sleep, and hopefully we'll all slay this beast with ease... (P.S. I am not good at .gifs, but if I was tech-savvier I would post one of those little Pusheen cat emoticons scribbling frantically in a notebook.)

Mine is a close-up of a pseudo-medieval tapestry from a little church I visited in Cornwall last summer... I don't know who she is, but most likely a local female saint. I thought she had graceful hands.

Oh, you guys, I am SO NERVOUS about this test - I know you've already taken it, and that it went well, but is there anything you wished you had brushed up on while taking it (without giving the confidentiality stuff away, of course)? Have you gotten your scores back yet? *fidgets anxiously*

If you just do a Google search for forms GR9564, GR0764, and/or GR9964, they all pop up in PDF form on the first page of the search results - I just downloaded them all! I haven't gotten the Princeton Review prep book yet, but I'm using Norton headnotes, like unræd, to make about 500,000 flash cards. I'm also using Quizlet to carry my sets with me on my phone, which is a LOT easier than dealing with paper cards. Beyond that, I'm mainly planning on reading through major works in the Norton Anthologies, and acquiring summaries of the things I don't have time to read. I'll probably skim through all my Shakespeare again, try to fit in some Chaucer... but mainly I'm worried about modern and American lit. That's my weak spot - I get bored.

I wish I could speak to the question of theory - I keep trying to post here and drawing a blank. I just really feel like every project benefits from a different angle or approach - and even if a person's angle isn't current or popular, it seems to me that asking a really good question, and creating a really exciting dialogue, is cool enough to repopularize any "stale" theoretical approach. Like, what are the "holes" in our knowledge of a particular time period or literary subfield? How can we fill those holes? An exciting theoretical stance, it seems to me, is the one that offers a new perspective on a hole in our puzzle - and if no one else is currently interested, so much the better. I may just be talking nonsense, though, so don't mind me if that's the case. I also find reading newer collections can give a good sense of work being done - for example, I'm currently mulling over Andy Orchard and Samantha Zacher's New Readings in the Vercelli Book, and that's a pretty exciting overview of current perspectives at work in Anglo-Saxon scholarship! Also, I started my Latin class!!!! We've worked through the first two noun declensions in two days, and are starting verb conjugation on Tuesday. Case is actually not as bizarre as I thought it would be... it takes some getting used to, but it's not an unreasonable way to arrange sentences. I am nervous about the workload - but Honors is mostly reading, so hopefully that will help a bit. I'm thinking about asking to join the advanced/graduate track in my OE course - it involves a longer paper (15 pages) and there's less margin for error, but we get our own smaller class section later in the semester. This is no small benefit: there are 60 students in the class. 60!!! Whoever heard of such a turnout for Old English? My mentor is just that charismatic, I guess. But it's annoying because individual in-class practice opportunities are extremely limited. What do y'all think? Am I crazy for taking on more work? (You can say so if I am.) How are classes going for everybody else so far?

Hi Traveler! Are there any specific forms of feedback you're looking for? In general I see a few things you could tweak, but if they're off base or not what you're looking for please feel free to ignore me. Please keep in mind that I am not an expert at all, and don't know what the Marshall people want to see in an applicant's statement. Transitional phrases like "little did I know" and "I quickly embraced changes x, y, and z" feel a bit stale here. Show, don't tell. Demonstrate the act of embracing change in your third paragraph - what did you explore? How did the exploration shift your perspective? Instead of expressing your desire to seek a professorship, maybe focus on new or expanded research directions - not all graduate degrees culminate in a professorship, and they'll want to be sure that you're putting your education to good use even if you're not on a tenure track in 5 years or whatnot. There's a section where the Marshall asks for your long-term career goals; talk about being a professor there. Your beginning anecdote is too long; can you shrink the bit about your grandfather's story to a single sentence, and expand instead upon how those stories and exposures shaped YOU? Like, mention the witch doctor - then tell us what the witch doctor represents for you. Mention the Israeli context - and then tell us how YOU were affected by that context. In essence, begin to construct a sense of your personhood for the reader; right now I feel like the beginning paragraph says a lot about your family, but not a lot about you. Is there a reason you list so many influential texts, classes, and professors by name/title? In general I have been advised to leave out names unless they're, say, the title of my own research, or a very influential person I hope to work with. If I were you I would err on the side of "a dear mentor" instead of "Dr. So-and-so." I would also talk more about your work, and less about the books you've read. Anyway, I hope these bits of feedback are helpful - and please feel free to discard what isn't! I submitted my Marshall application last night, so I know the process is nerve-wracking; I don't mean to undermine your confidence in any way. Your focus on international relationships is right up their alley! Best of luck.

Kaplan diagnostic: 162V, 137Q (ouch! I skipped half of the quant entirely, though, so the score wasn't totally accurate) Kaplan #2: 166V, 148Q Magoosh #1: 166V, 148Q Kaplan #3: 168V, 151Q Kaplan #4: 162V, 151Q PowerPrep #1: 169V, 151Q (notice a trend here?) Actual GRE scores: 170V, 153Q I practiced a lot for the quant section and only saw my score increase by a few points - but even those few points helped, and in my field the verbal counts more than the quant, so a mediocre math score is tolerable. In general I think PowerPrep was the most accurate predictor of performance - but while I've heard a lot of people criticize Kaplan's math sections, I found them to be WAY more similar to the actual test than those offered by Magoosh.

I start school on Thursday too! I'm so excited for OE and Latin!!! I feel sort of simultaneously ahead and behind in terms of applications; I'm applying for the Marshall Scholarship, so I've already asked my recommenders for LORs, and got their agreement to do the same for regular grad applications. My writing sample still needs editing, though, as does my SOP, and I'm nervous about balancing study for the GRE Subject test with classes - I just finished presenting at my undergrad research conference yesterday, so there was no way I could have started this summer! I know the research looks good on my application, but I wish I'd had the extra preparation time that some of you seem to have enjoyed this summer... *envy envy* I also need to get cracking on an abstract I need to submit in October, and make about 1000 flash cards.

May I ask why you think/feel you're less qualified than the rest of your cohort? I'm in quite a different situation than you, since I'm still in undergrad and just now applying to graduate programs, but as a non-traditional student at a top R1 university, I've had some pretty meaningful conversations about impostor syndrome with my mentors and professors. Based on those conversations, I'm going to guess that you're underestimating your own genius-ness. It's hard to get into grad school - if it wasn't, we wouldn't be standing around this forum, right? And since adcomms are specifically designed to see through BS, I suspect that means you've got something better. Maybe it isn't Latin, or a terrifyingly steely work ethic; maybe it's a fabulous research proposal, or a killer prose style, or a really warm pedagogical demeanor. But it's enough that they chose to invest in you! We're expensive little creatures, grad students. They wouldn't have picked you if you didn't have the potential to be worth it.

I think it's interesting that the poll results are weighted slightly towards research, while most people posting comments have expressed a strong or primary desire to teach. Do you think there's a slight stigma attached to being more interested in research? I think we have a tendency, at least in the US, to imagine teaching at a K-12 level as the "noble profession," raising the next generation up to do great things, while academia, the "ivory tower," is where professors get lost in theory, forget to clean up after themselves, and fail to contribute to society in meaningful ways. Obviously this is a stereotype, but I'm curious to know if it persists, subtly, even among those of us who want to go to grad school. I want to do research. It's as simple as that. I want to write papers, dissertations, books - I want to answer questions, explore archives, and have blisteringly brilliant conversations with other scholars. I want to offer new perspectives and ideas to my little segment of the academic community. Will I teach, if I get admitted to grad school? You bet. Will I strive to do a good job, and hopefully enjoy myself? Of course. But would I teach if there were no research involved? Absolutely not. So... there's my perspective.

I second (or third, or fourth) the "be straight-forward" advice! I have no debate experience, don't frankly know what a logical proof is, didn't use any counter-arguments, and was definitely NOT creative with my writing - but I got a 5.5 on the AW portion with very little practice, and it wasn't because of my scintillating prose. One note, however - the longer your essay, the better. I'm not sure why the GRE thinks word-per-minute is an analytical skill, but I swear to you it does. Every example on the ETS website shows an unfailing correlation between higher numbers and greater length. And when I used the ScoreItNow! service, I got a better score on my longer essay - even though otherwise I couldn't tell them apart!

While obviously "well-versed" does not apply to me, I wanted to offer a bit of comfort and say that, in some ways, OE is a very sensible choice for expanding one's linguistic understanding. While case and morphology may be complex (and not something I can speak to at the moment), there is a kind of logic to OE word and sentence structure that will seem very common-sense if you are a native English speaker. For example, in the little phrase we discussed earlier, "fot on muðe" - fot = foot, on = in, and muðe = mouth. The only complicated part of this construction lies in the fact that "on" doesn't connote the same spatial relationship in OE as in Modern English - but otherwise it's pretty straightforward, right? The same is true of the phrase from my signature: "Lytle hwile leaf beoð grene; ðonne hie eft fealewiað, feallað on eorðan." This literally translates to: "Little while the leaf be-eth (is) green; then he/it afterwards fallows (i.e. turns yellow/brown), falls on earth." If you accept that the ð symbol represents "th," the whole sentence is basically readable in modern English with only a few vocabulary hitches - it sounds super archaic and weird, but it makes logical sense. In short, the seeds of modern English are hiding in OE; you just have to look for them! So my vote is that you're not foolish at all. Also, felibus: got it! Charts it is. Do you think flash cards would help at all?

I just cracked open my books for this semester, and it looks like I've got my work cut out for me! It's so cooool though. <3 I'm such a dweeb, I get excited about verb conjugation - that was my favorite part of Spanish. Ahora no recuerdo mucho de que yo aprendi, but hopefully that won't be true with Latin because I'm going to read until my eyeballs fall out or the language is firmly ensconced in my long term memory, whichever comes first! Any study tips or suggestions?

I was told by my research advisor this summer (an anthropology 7th-year Ph.D. student) that LORs can carry more weight if they are from a well-known academic - like, a bit of a superstar - IF that superstar provides an individualized letter that really indicates a close relationship with rather than just a polite interest in the student. They DO matter - let's not sell ourselves short here - but I think they matter more when they can tell a committee something about a student that wouldn't otherwise stand out or be evident. In short, when they add to an application rather than simply repeating what is obvious.

Eep, thank you! I'm less sure, but the encouragement helps. Also I just meant mobile as in easily accessible - I don't think they have a mobile site. I just thought, since you said you were on vacation and didn't have a dictionary even though you were on the internet, that maybe you didn't know the B-T Dictionary was online! But you do, so never mind!

Another thing to keep in mind about recommenders is that it is literally part of a professor's JOB to write us letters if we have been good students, participated to a reasonable degree, and so on. I have been lucky enough to form really close relationships with three professors in my department, so I haven't had to make requests of people I don't already know quite well, but it can be done... one of my favorite professors said to me recently, when I was waiting to hear back from a fourth recommender about a scholarship application, that "you're not asking for anything inappropriate - you're not even asking for a favor, although of course it's always couched in those terms. Writing letters for students is a big part of a professor's job." And she's a senior professor in the department, a quite famous poet (albeit in a field so different from my own that I had no idea) - in short, she knows what she's talking about. We all have every right to ask for their support!

Yep, you're right! I just checked with the B-T online dictionary - do you know about that? It's handily mobile, for vacation and the like. Anyway, I admit I'm not terribly good with case and morphological constructions yet, but my class with my mentor in the fall should fix that!! I'm so excited for this semester, even though I'm scared too.

*raises hand* Fellow freaker-outer right here! I mentioned this in the medievalist thread already, but I am taking 20 units this coming semester - honors thesis, a grad seminar on Chaucer, Old English, and an 8-unit Latin course - and attempting to retain my 4.0 while also filling out grad apps, writing SOPs, etc, taking the GRE subject test in English (on Oct 25th), submitting scholarship applications (the Marshall is due Sept 2, AUGH), editing a paper I'm trying to polish and submit for publication with one of my professors, and composing an abstract for a professional conference at the recommendation of my mentor. Oh, and sleeping, which I suck at generally. I am TERRIFIED. You are so not alone.

Oh goodness, your foot's not in your mouth! I question my own sanity sometimes, heh, so I guess I just wouldn't have been surprised to hear someone else question it too - my (admittedly less driven) friends at school all think I'm nuts. (My professors, however, say no such thing, and it's their feedback I value most, so! Here's to us overachievers and "crazy" people.) But I do appreciate the clarification, and the support - it's nice to hear that other people have taken on similar challenges and succeeded. The only thing that really scares me is that I am literally the ONLY person I know with a 4.0 at my school; it just doesn't happen, there's always a stray A- that drags GPAs down - and of course I'm a tiny bit proud of this, since I do work hard and it's nice to feel a bit special. But I'm really not sure how I'll keep it this next semester... I considered taking my Latin class pass/no pass to protect my GPA, but it's 8 units, which would only leave me with 12 graded units, and that is ONE unit too few to get on the Dean's List, which I would really like to do. What's the point of a 4.0 if you still don't get to be on the special list? I've been excluded every semester because I've always had 12 units of classes and then 2-3 research units, which are pass/no pass... bleh. I don't know, I suppose I'm just rambling now. But! To get back on the medievalist track, I suspect the answer to your question is fot on muþ - does that seem right, Unræd? Again, I'm still just teaching myself, so I'm better at translating than composing - I know very little about word order. But that would be my best guess!

I definitely work more efficiently during the day - by 7pm my brain has essentially shut down, which means I've never been good at all-nighters. Unfortunately, I also tend towards insomnia! So... not a great combination there, heh. The combination usually means that I write from about 11 to 5, though, when I'm working on research, and do other less intellect-intensive work, like emailing and database organization, after 6. But, jhefflol, my school has a 24-hour library during the academic year! It's a nice option when necessary.

Oh dear. Like, holy crap that's a terrible plan? Or just like holy crap I feel your pain? Also, I am currently filling out a bunch of scholarship applications, and I have to say - I HATE THIS PART. Why must asking for money always entail selling oneself, as if a carefully crafted narrative, and not one's ACTUAL research and competencies, were the product being funded? I have to figure out how to make Anglo-Saxon cultural conceptions of the world relevant to US-UK relations, and really what I want to say is "I need your books, UK! I can't really do what I do without your books, and I promise I will work hard and be smart if you let me visit them!" But I can't say that. Instead I have to make myself sound like a freaking Nobel Prize winner just to enter the competition. Ugh.

Eep, five hours a day?? How many weeks was your class? That's some stamina right there - I'm very impressed, and a bit terrified. Mine is only one hour a day, five days a week, but it's stretched over 4 months - we also have a summer intensive Latin option that is actually 10 units (ack!), and I think that one is a bit more like what you're describing, but I couldn't take that one because of my summer research commitments. I do tend to have a knack for languages, so I'm hopeful I'll survive - but I'm also taking 20 terrifying units this coming semester because I am an idiot/masochist and I thought it would be smart to take a grad seminar on Chaucer (there aren't any OE graduate offerings this semester, so I thought I'd work on my general knowledge) IN ADDITION to Latin, OE, my departmental honors course, and grad apps. *dies* I'm genuinely nervous for my GPA - this is going to test my mettle beyond anything I've had to do so far. That said, I'm happy to babble about my research! I'm basically using a quantitative corpus-based approach to assess symbolic OE color associations by tracking color-referent relationships - so, instead of assuming that read carries the modern English associations of red, or that fealo is just a word for yellowish-brown, I'm looking at where those words get the most use, what they describe, and how these collocational elements can be used to deepen our understanding of Anglo-Saxon color concepts, as well as our analysis of passages in which those colors appear. It's kind of boring during the process - lots of translation, categorization, and percentage calculations - but really exciting when I actually get to APPLY my findings! I'm speaking on read and fealo at my conference in a couple of weeks, and plan on adding another lexemic group to my senior thesis, but I suspect analysis of the color lexicon as a whole will take years. I think it could be really useful to AS scholars in the future, though - so, grad school! Or so I hope. Right now my shortlist is Berkeley, Yale, Oxbridge, U of Toronto, Harvard, and Cornell - but it's not final yet, so we'll see. I'd like to add a few more possibilities to my list, but my mentor has been quite firm that the first five are undoubtedly the best programs for OE, and I would trust her with my life at this point... so when she says jump, I jump! I mean, unless it were off a cliff or something. But even then I might.

Thank you! I'm also pretty pleased to have a pre-1066 comrade in arms. I bought my OE textbooks for the fall earlier this semester, so I've been using those for some of my self-study - we're using Baker's Introduction to Old English and The Cambridge Old English Reader, but I've also got Mitchell and Robinson's A Guide to Old English, which my mentor recommended as a supplement. Most of my self-study has been based on my research, though - I've had to compile data sets of 800+ passages from the Online Corpus, including homilies, poetry, the leechbooks and medicinal texts, charters, etc, and because many of these don't HAVE a published translation available, I've had to do the bulk of the translation myself! It's amazing what 8 hours a day with a dictionary and a foreign language over two straight months will do for reading comprehension. I quite enjoy the "phoenix homilies" (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 198) - one of my proudest moments was translating all the way through and only needing the dictionary for three sentences! I'm afraid I don't know what our spring offering will be for Old English, but this past spring it was indeed a Beowulf translation seminar (which I sadly did not know about until its final weeks), so you're probably spot on! I do love your idea about a reading group. I'm almost positive we don't have one, but I'll ask my mentor - it would be such great practice!

First, thank you all for the warm welcome!! Gosh, well... I guess I do tend to be a perfectionist, but I didn't realize I was so far off base on this one! I AM at a state school currently, you see, and my mentor (who sits on the admissions committee) said I should try to do well on the quant section for funding purposes... since I basically think she's the best thing since sliced bread, I didn't want to let her down, but I guess you're all right... most of the places I'm applying to will be satisfied by both a cumulative 323 and a 170 verbal, regardless. It's good to know that not all programs make funding decisions in the same way. Unræd, I AM taking (sitting for? is that more correct?) the GRE subject test in English Lit - I signed up for the October 25th date, which I know is a bit foolhardy, but I really need the extra preparatory time. I've been busy with research and studying for the General GRE all summer, and I'm only now beginning to focus on subject test material. But! Hopefully in two months I'll be ready. When is your test date - or have you tested already?