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It's very unfortunate. But a couple things to check out/keep in mind: re: the situation, protests, a petition, etc. http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2015/03/we-need-your-signatures-babels-open.html And dissertation grants from the medieval academy -- not a guarantee, obviously, but definitely generous and worth applying for should the necessity arise: http://www.medievalacademy.org/?page=MAA_Grants http://mediumaevum.modhist.ox.ac.uk/society_bursaries.shtml-- small grants for smaller research projects Hopefully the situation gets better. It'd be a shame to see one of the best universities in the western hemisphere (and possibly the best place for genuinely old school medieval studies) continue on this path, but congratulations on getting in and best of luck to you as you go forward.

Also attending UChicago in the fall. And also quite excited. Anyone gonna be in Chicago this summer/considering taking and SLI course?

Agreed. I had one or two undergrad courses that were definitely close to 1,000 pages a week for stretches of time (here! read this 650 page 18th century novel for Tuesday, and a 75 page excerpt from a book on fashion and economics in England and half of another crazy long novel for Thursday) and and in grad school you get to focus more specifically on each course. In undergrad, I was taking 4-5 classes every semester and at times I would be in two or three classes with similarly heavy reading loads (isn't skimming and selective skipping kind of a skill we all learn at some point in undergrad, even if we don't apply it to all classes/texts?). It was never 3,000/week, but it wasn't exactly light either and I definitely had a few "1-2 books a week" type courses, sometimes simultaneously. The course looks pretty awesome if you ask me, even if it is intimidating. I would take it. I think the course description posted is longer than most I've seen, but it doesn't sound particularly outside the norm for a Ph.D. seminar (it's just more up front about it). I think these sorts of courses acknowledge that not everything can be absorbed and read/investigated in full; instead they provide students a basic familiarity with the myriad of cultural/theoretical contexts of a central work of 20th century theory and allow people to dive in more wherever their particular interests lie. It does makes me wonder if Cal is on a semester or quarter system, lol. Cramming that in like 2 and half months would be intense indeed. In short, I doubt the "elites" are the only schools with classes like this and if they are, I'd imagine it's because those programs have more money to throw around where they can guarantee enough financial support for students to actually have the time for courses like this.

"Take a deep breath–and then realize that, depending on how you feel at any given moment, it gets better–or worse: that is, what you’ve just read has been, incredibly enough, a very minimal listing!"

I mean, it sounds like by "deception" people are referring to polite and probably cultivated ignorance (I like lifealive's invocation of the idea of pretend, inconvenient ignorance) among the people who are the teachers and mentors of graduate students. A deception in the lack of transparency and a culture that expects you to be too passionate about your discipline and grateful to be teaching to say anything out loud about your exploitation without further damaging your career. I get that. And I can totally imagine why it would alienating. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why people encourage students to take time off between their B.A. and advanced degrees: to get used to rejection and spend some time outside of the academic bubble. I do hope I didn't come off as aggressively ignorant or crass in earlier posts (it was late at night and I've been grading high school papers and trying to keep up with an avalanche of pre-spring break grading all week, gah), though I do stand a lot of things I said, in agreement with both morristr and unraed about the sloppy comparison to laborers. But I do appreciate the comments of more experienced members urging us to prepare early and at least try and wrap our heads around things to come. I for one am hoping to do as many internships as I can over summers and do teaching in places outside of the bubble of supposedly eerily brilliant undergrads at my new institution. My new university has a wonderful program that connects the Humanities division with local underprivileged public schools, getting students and professors to teach philosophy, writing, and literacy classes to both children and adults and I'm hoping to do some work for them this summer. Given the economic climate, I'm super terrified at the idea of letting my resume going to waste, especially since most of my professional skill sets require me to get an advanced degree in order to take them anywhere further than I've taken them (I chose to get my Ph.D. rather than an MLIS or a MAT). I'm not afraid to go back to school if I my situation is really that bad after getting my doctorate, but unfortunately the decline of the academic humanities is parallel, and connected with, the decline of public education and libraries. Someone (I think it was proflorax) said in some other thread at some point that this requires us all to be scholars as well as activists, and I think that seems especially relevant given the types of conversation going on in this thread. I think lifealive has repeatedly implied this: that this rage should be directed at forces much larger than just Humanities departments. Increasingly, we have a government and economic system that simply don't care about the arts and humanities in general. The far right in this country has also, really, started attacking public education in really disturbing ways (see: Wisconsin, North Carolina). Our generation of scholars needs to be hyperaware of that. As teachers, we have the capability to educate younger people about what is going on and, even better yet, to make them give a shit about the kinds of things we devote our lives to, or at least devote some years of our lives to. As scholars and students ourselves, we have the capacity to produce work that makes it worth giving a shit about and that also influences the way people think. I dunno. I kind of think that shit matters. I also kind of think a lot of us will end up teaching and producing knowledge in some way regardless, even if it isn't in a comfortable or materially rewarding way.

Yeah, I'm sure it can vary within programs too, especially at well endowed schools with some "stars" (who may or may not be more snooty and who may or may not have grad students competing for their attention) in their midst. I suspect there's going to be at least little competition wherever you go -- the job market sucks and, within a program, part of "professionalizing" entails developing a kind of big ego maybe partially as a survival tactic and partially out of just becoming a "real" scholar. From people I've talked to, though, usually the thing that makes it nasty is money. Which doesn't surprise me.

I've heard funding has a lot to do with nastiness and competition. Having visited and committed to going to the University of Chicago, when I mentioned the reputation you mention, no current students knew what I was talking about. Many programs have funding structures where students compete with each other for funding from year to year. About a decade ago, Chicago had such a structure, but now they make it a point to fund all their Ph.D students equally. From what I can tell, the atmosphere is incredibly nurturing and cooperative. At least at Chicago. Reputations linger for a long time though, and I'm sure a lot of that is because of professors at other universities trying to sell their own programs.

Also, yeah. I think with our cohort of college graduates in general, it's implied across the board that if you want a job you have to hustle and can't expect your program to do it for you. My undergraduate department was absolutely useless for helping me prepare for the job market, but I also never expected them to go out of their way to help me with that: for the department, I was there to study literature; the community of the college provided resources that I could tap into if I went out of my way to seek them out. A specialized department can only prepare you for so much.

Nobody has ever told me this, at least not about academia. The closest thing to a rosy picture I've heard is that 1) PhD students tend to be creative people and figure out interesting career paths even if they don't end up in academia or 2) well, you can always go back to teaching high school. The school I ended up deciding on told me up front that the job market sucks, it's hard to calculate statistics that will give a good picture, but their grads are often competitive when there are jobs to be had. They also told me that there's something to be said for simply giving yourself a few years to really study something you love. Overly optimistic? Maybe. Deception? Not that I gather. At least in the sort of fields I have (even limited) experience with, I don't think a name alone will buy you anything. My UG college hired an OSU grad over a UCLA (I think it was UCLA, or some "more prestigious" program like that) grad for TT position partially because everyone thought the guy meshed with the department's offbeat personality. It's ridiculous how much of this shit is just being able to fit in with the knitting circle (to borrow perhaps one of the best analogies I've ever heard about getting a job in libraries, another shrinking and hyper competitive job industry). And welcome back, unraed. ETA: I like TakeruK's point. I think percentages can be really deceptive. Some schools, like Notre Dame's Medieval Studies program, say on their website that "virtually all" of their graduates get jobs -- wtf does that even mean? It would be nice if there were more transparency about what percentage of incoming students will have jobs, but it's also hard to predict. I think, though, that a lot of programs make a point to only take on one or two students in a given field though with this in mind.

Yeah, I'm all for bonding between different groups that are exploited, but there isn't going to be much bonding between less-educated working class people and exploited, multiple-degree-carrying teachers and professors if the latter group is bemoaning how the quality of their work conditions are so similar to someone working in a kitchen. Teaching is enormously stressful and demanding -- I do it for a living (and yes, I feel exploited all the time, and yes, it's the most stressful job I've ever had, and yes, the only "benefits" I get as a public servant are that I earn a low enough wage to be eligible for EBT), but I will never compare it to the conditions I worked under as a corporate dishwasher, literally working until my fingers bled, soaked from head to toe in filthy water, every day and still having friends and coworkers working two or three jobs like that, working 90 hours a week to afford the rent and put some food in their kids' mouths. No. That's not fair. And that's not how you create lateral bonding. I'm sorry. That's not at all to say that adjuncting or similar teaching jobs aren't exploitative. Because they are. Completely. The situation is screwed up, but in a distinct way. I'm sorry if it's naive to say that there aren't widely applicable skills you can get from pursuing a Ph.D. and I'm sure there are all sorts of forces that attempt to keep you in a bubble, but I don't think that can possibly override the fact that we work hard to get to this and do it to pursue something we are truly passionate about, no matter how quixotic it is. I'm really glad Green mountain brought up the point s/he did about non-profits though and that really gives me something to think about as I explore how I might be creating options for myself in the non-profit sector even as I try and train for teaching in academia. I completely agree that there is a conversation worth having about how, while we are part of academia (Ph.D. students being a big part of that workforce and operating as part of the system even if there is no future for them after they get their degrees), how we can work to make the humanities more socially engaged outside of the so-called "Ivory Tower." And yes, ComeBackZinc, I know the job market within academia is way worse than most other sectors, the point I'm trying to make is that we, being intellectually ambitious people, should be able to think of ways to apply the intellectual rigor of our educations towards something that maybe isn't strictly delimited by the "hallowed halls" of the academy. I would like to think that we can be more creative and at least try to turn a shitty situation into an opportunity for thinking about changes that might be made to the way we approach this. ETA: cross posted with the posts above. Thanks, kurayamino, for sharing these links! I look forward to exploring them.

Thank you, echo449 -- though this article stays away from specifics, this is along the lines of what I'm thinking about and it's nice to see someone else describing it and affirming its basic possibility. Has anyone else been trying to keep things like this in mind? This is why I think location is kind of an underrated part of the discussion when we talk about decisions: I chose a program in a big city over a roughly equally prestigious (if not more) program in an isolated location largely because I wanted to have more diverse opportunities while in school. I'm also surprised at how little I see people talk about the overlaps between PhD and non-profit work. This was mentioned earlier, but yes, if you are at a funded program, you are likely at a big school with a bunch of resources for taking technically useful coursework on the side and getting engaged with community-oriented work. For example, my new university has a program that connects the Humanities division with local public schools by fostering educational outreach and adult education programs. This kind of work can be useful for jobs in the non-profit sector, which is growing all the time. It's also just good, I'd imagine, to just give yourself opportunities to remind yourself that there is a world outside of academia. 100% agree.

This is so true. The job market sucks everywhere. B.A.s, too, are dime a dozen nowadays. People who got their B.A.s in English made these "mistakes" a while ago. One thing, too, that I look forward to with my Ph.D. is finally having the luxury to be able to do internships over the summers instead of busting my ass at underpaid jobs to scrape together a little money to get through the next year of school. I tried to diversify my resume as much as I could during my B.A., but it was hard given my circumstances. With my Ph.D. I'll have these funded years of Ph.D. work, but also big city opportunities for things like internships and summer language immersion programs etc. that I didn't have the luxury of being able to do as an undergrad. The job market is demoralizing everywhere. I can't name a single prospective professional field for myself right now, given my work experience and skill sets, that isn't bleak. The economy sucks! Right now this Ph.D. program is offering me the best option financially that I foresee myself having right now. The town I live in has over 10% unemployment and over 30% of the people here are living at or below the poverty level and the job I work, as a long term substitute teacher, is having me live hand to mouth while I work my fucking ass off -- this program gives me a feasible way to get the hell out of here without, for the first time in a long time, needing to constantly worry about money, at least for a few years. And no, teaching public school and working as a sub is not a stable market and the prospects in that are not great. I plan on learning two more languages in graduate school. I plan on doing summer internships so I can gain skills for work in the non-profit and education sectors. While participating in a dynamic scholarly environment and working with some of the most amazing people in my field. None of us are in this for the money, but we're not stupid. I'd like to think I have as few illusions about this as one can have, given that I've already made a thoroughly irresponsible decision. Anyway, this will likely get buried amongst bitchy rants (again), but I'd still be interested in hearing about peoples' experiences preserving their resumes while in Ph.D. programs. I'm 100% enthused and happy about starting my Ph.D., but I also have a resume that I don't want to allow to get completely out of date and untouched, so I'd be interested in hearing about whether people have faced particular struggles with that. Or not. You guys can also, I guess, just keep bickering about how much the job market sucks. Everyone is fucking poor now, okay? The middle class is fucked, the humanities are fucked, we're all fucked. I'd like to hear some more from the people actually saying productive things on this thread about what we can do instead of it always devolving into the same shit over and over again. You're not going to convince anyone on these forums to say "no" to their graduate programs that they've already committed to at this point and many of us aren't just wide-eyed little snowflakes waiting for our academic princes to come swoop us away to some intellectual la la land. News flash: none of us give a shit that you could make a little more money becoming a manager at Wendy's or something like that -- why do you think we got our B.A.s and M.A.s in literature to start with? To put a more cynical twist on allplaid's observation: I see 30-somethings working at places like Wendy's all the time. Christ. You know? I walked away from a job as a building maintenance technician at a fancy Los Angeles Hilton after I graduated high school and I chose to move half way across the country on a scholarship instead where I was able to get an amazing, if technically less "valuable," education. Not one person that I've ever met would criticize me for that decision, which still put me in a good amount of debt. Now I'm going to grad school for free, getting paid, and it's this condescending conversation about how naive everyone is who goes to get a PhD? Whatever. Economically, I was never gonna be shit anyway.

I thought Ulysses was hilarious when I read it -- there are so many poop jokes and... Buck Mulligan! And getting drunk in a maternity ward! Leo Bloom wiping his ass! Leo and the dom! Oh well. I guess I can imagine that a good reader could make the humor come out more; the main thing I have trouble imagining are the parts like Sirens. Penelope I could imagine being done in some breathless narrative along the lines of Beckett's Not I. Dammit, now I kind of want to check out the audiobook version, haha. Because now that I think of it, I read a lot of that book out loud to myself. There are so many little funny sounds. New Redman sounds cool, I haven't listened to him in years so I'll have to check that out. Big fan of his dad though, I bump Ear of the Behearer in the car every now and again... I've also been revisiting the classics like the Eric Dolphy Quintet's In Europe album and late Ellington.

Yeah, it's a pain. I've avoided service and labor oriented jobs now for the past couple years and as shitty as it sounds, I feel like it would be kind of a blow to my ego to go from being a professional educator to some minimum wage job while I wait to start my frickin' PhD program. I'm looking for opportunities through universities in the area though, hoping to find something that will pay the bills while also being interesting. Nevertheless, I'm excited (even if I do end up working a register or something like that) -- I've already started making arrangements for starting a summer reading group with the medievalists at my new university, and am excited to start getting to know people in my program who will be around. Also to catch up on some much needed novel binging. That. Is. A. Dope. Job. Though the first image that comes to my mind is M. Night Shyamalan's The Village.

Congrats to Ramus and postwarfever! Really awesome programs.

Thanks for sharing! Looking into this... I actually just applied to be a teaching assistant for one of their summer programs!

Hey y'all, I thought there was a thread along these lines somewhere already, but now I can't find it. Just wondering what some of your plans are this summer before you start your programs, thinking maybe it can be a help to those who are trying to figure things out still. I'm currently paying the bills through teaching, so this summer is a big questions mark for me. I'm moving down to Chicago this summer and looking for opportunities for summer teaching programs and paid internships with non-profits. I'm hoping to be able to take an intensive summer language class for the beginning of the summer, but that's looking less and less likely as I look at the limited job options out there. It's also hard to apply for jobs at my new university since I'm not technically a student yet, I don't think. Anyone else going through this process right now? I would love to have the luxury to just take my class and relax with some books until September (or at least take my class and then have a job for August through September), but unfortunately that's not looking like an option.

Digging Black Messiah. I'll have to check out Zorn's and Redman's new records -- thanks for the recommendations! I used to work in a library and I remember, the summer after I had taken a seminar on Ulysses, checking out a copy of that audiobook to a student while I was coming up to work on part of a cataloging project at the circulation desk and just shaking my head in awe that such a thing even exists... how's that working out for you? Anyone been listening to To Pimp A Butterfly?

The way this was described to me at the school I'm about to start attending (which is super interdisciplinary) is that specialization matters, as echo449 pointed out, but that one shouldn't get so "siloed" into one little niche that you can't be in dialogue with people of other specializations/disciplines since most of the people on a given hiring committee won't be studying the same field as you. echo449's point matters -- it's still how job postings work and people with, say, English degrees have a slightly easier time finding jobs than people with, say, Medieval or American Studies degrees, but I'm under the impression that having some flexibility matters. You need to be able to have a productive dialogue with your colleagues and also be able to teach general classes outside your field. I can also say this from having teachers of various fields -- the teachers who had super specialized educations were terrible at teaching less general, but required, classes. Even if you are a super well educated, old school medievalist, you'll still have to teach Hemingway to first years or still teach lit theory even if you don't like/understand those things. And erosanddust, I also make such plans, but intellectual itineraries can benefit from diversions and distractions in my opinion.

I agree with this assessment -- a student's critique of a program can seem unsubstantial and emotional, but that can be the result of a program that really hasn't worked for that student to the point where it causes a very emotional response. I do think that places will vary wildly in their ability to nurture certain kinds of people -- this applies to the job market too. I can think of at least one practicing scholar I've worked with who is a fantastic scholar, went to schools they loved, is well-connected, but left academia proper because of a job they had in a department that drove them crazy. I had professors at my UG school who became super dissatisfied with academia because of where they were previously (and who still teach, and love it, and are brilliant at it, but still have a negative attitude about the east coast in general). Every school has a different personality. While I don't think teaching high school is less stressful, it is something just as "worthy" as far as professions go and can certainly put a lot of things in perspective. I would caution against thinking of it as a less stressful alternative though. Teaching (in general) is something that I've heard people describe as "addictive" and it's the kind of thing I've heard many people say they can't imagine not doing. It's unfortunate that more Ph.D. programs don't value a passion for teaching in their candidates (as someone mentioned earlier), but perhaps this is part of this general feeling of always looking up the ladder and prizing this hazy ideal of being a purely research oriented scholar who spends all their time writing brilliant books and teaches when they feel like it. I do think, though, that people who teach college tend to be less jaded about teaching. For obvious reasons. Though I will add that with a Master's, one might be able to teach at a private school that values a graduate education over an actual teaching license, which I imagine is much less stressful than teaching public school (which is what I do).

Hi youngcharlie, Just chiming in to say that I'm currently teaching high school as I get ready to start a Ph.D. in the fall and you can PM me if you have questions about it, though I'm sure requirements and such are much different here than in New York. I'll also say that it's probably the most stressful job I've ever had -- underpaid and overworked, though I am kind working as the high school equivalent of an adjunct filling in for teachers on maternity leave on an emergency license. My experience will be different than some though; I work in a relatively underprivileged area with low teacher retention rates and high unemployment that lacks a lot of both the resources and downsides of a big city like New York. Still, I'd be happy to share my experiences with regard to what it's like to teach high school English. Best of luck figuring out what works best for you. Fwiw, I'm under the impression that different programs have differing levels of competitive atmospheres, often due to differences in funding packages among students and general attitudes. The program I'm enrolling in, though I haven't officially started yet, seems to be extremely cooperative and the people I'll be working with are already including me on planning projects and activities. I barely know these people, but I already feel like I'm becoming part of a family of sorts. Perhaps things will change once I start, but I really don't think every place will be the same and I don't doubt that you perhaps will be able to find a place that works for you. Both teaching high school and working in academia are immensely stressful endeavors, but if you're doing something you're passionate about it's worth it in my view. I tend to get more stressed out about things I love -- don't we all? It's hard to be overly stressed about something you don't give a shit about, and for me under-stimulation can be just as dangerous as over-stimulation when it comes to workloads.

This. I went to a relatively small and lesser known school with no "famous" letter writers, got 163/147 v/q, and got in to an ivy and top 10 english program. I got plenty of rejections (accepted to three PhD programs and an MA, applied to nine programs) and maybe my GRE scores and GPA (3.63) contributed to those rejections (I'll never know for certain), but looking back on it, I think the places that I got into were places that were the best fit with my stated interests, my SOP, and my WS. Looking back, I really have no idea why I cut some schools from my list and kept others -- finding good fitting programs and POIs is so time consuming and that's one of the many things I wish I had given myself more time for. I kind of stumbled into the application process at the last minute and somehow did okay. I spent very little time on my GRE studying and devoted most of my application time obsessively researching and crafting a fresh WS and finding programs that seemed like they would have the resources to continue working on the projects I'd like to do. I wouldn't recommend the way I did it, but it worked out pretty well for me and today I officially decided to enroll in my top choice. If I were doing it again, I'd give myself much more time (take GREs over the summer, study more for them), and create some sort of "piggy bank" for the application process. I made sacrifices because I hadn't set aside money for this -- I cut out schools from my list that could've been good options for me and I couldn't afford the subject test because the whole process very quickly became much more expensive than I had initially anticipated, and this also cut out a lot of possibilities. Towards the end of the process, I was simply waiting on my next paycheck to meet my next deadlines. Not a good approach. In the end, I was very fortunate and things worked out for me quite well. I could have saved myself a lot of stress though and I was definitely really lucky -- in many ways I'm starting to see that so much of my acceptance at the school I've chosen was perhaps influenced by simply good timing in terms of who was around to do the choosing -- and it takes a series of uncanny coincidences for that one person to have a role in choosing and for that one person to find YOU interesting enough to insist on you coming to the program. My grandmother had a vision that I'd have a good year though, so that's probably the only rational explanation. Call your grandmas, y'all.

This is wonderful! Thanks for sharing! This has occurred to me too, oddly enough. Maybe for different reasons -- I think I'm paranoid that such a gift at my weirdo little SLAC would come off as a little generic, but I'm most likely way overthinking it. I figure booze always is appropriate -- maybe I've been in the midwest too long though. It's too cold out here to not drink.

Yeah, that is a nice idea. As usual, I've probably been overthinking it.

Bumping this thread because I'm in the process of making my decision official and still haven't figured out appropriate gifts for the people who helped me most through this process and I feel kind of bad about that. So I'm curious if people have already done this or are about to. Right now I'm thinking of getting a book for my letter writer/UG major advisor (maybe a book by someone at the university I'll be attending? Or maybe just something of general interest I think she'd enjoy based on our conversations and work together? This woman has been a lifeline for me and I can't think of any possible way of repaying her for the intellectual, emotional, and material gifts she has given to me over the past few years), maybe a bottle of wine for my letter writer/UG minor advisor. I also want to get something for my third letter writer (who works in a very different field than me, but was a wonderful professor even as she cautioned me about why getting a Ph.D. is not a good idea) and for another professor who didn't write me a LOR but did provide me with some really helpful feedback for making my writing sample the best it could be. FWIW, letter writer #3 does Victorian lit and the professor who helped with WS is a classicist. I will of course accompany each gift with a nice card/note informing them of my official decision and thanking them for their help. Now that April is fast approaching and many people have already started making their official decisions, what are y'all doing for this? Any advice is welcome.