rainbowpink

Yay! I feel like things have been slow in the past few days, but looking at the results from last year I can see that it's still too early for almost every school I applied to (minus McGill, which seems to be a bit quicker this year). Also my school's winter break seems to be longer than most schools' so I'm still sitting around not doing much this week. My days will go by more quickly once the semester starts again.

Nice to meet you too, and good luck! Thanks I think I just gotta get out of this lazy winter break mode. I actually have been doing work, but I'd wake up at 10am or something every day, which is really late for me. The application process drives you crazy, but I appreciate how it made me really think about what I want to do, like what my research interests are and what linguistics means to me. Last semester I took five courses because I wanted a solid background in all the theoretical subfields, and I didn't really know what I wanted to study for sure because I just like so many things. I spent almost all my time on school work or departmental stuff (reading groups and whatnot). I'd wake up thinking about all the readings and stuff I have to do, reciting my to-do list in my head even before I realize I'm awake. Sounds like it should have been stressful, but for most of it I honestly felt like it was some of the best few months of my life because I love linguistics so much and would actually read and work on my research projects rather than go out or watch a movie or something.

I didn't expect there to be anything during the weekend, but I got an email about a Skype interview with McGill! I'm so nervous because it's probably my #1 choice. The writing sample I submitted (which also reflects one of my major research interests) is related to some research there, and coincidentally another class project I did last semester was also based on something different that's done there. The "fit" paragraph in my SOP was probably the most genuine among all my SOPs because my experiences with these research projects really influenced me as an aspiring linguist. Basically, I don't want to screw this up. Any advice for McGill would be appreciated!

Hmm, I didn't get any email from Berkeley But the writing sample question wouldn't pertain to me though because I talked about that paper/project in my SOP and it's completely related to my main research interests.

I don't think it's that uncommon. The interest is definitely there, at least. I studied neuroscience in my undergrad (didn't do much with language, unfortunately), and my experience with talking to people in related fields is that they're really intrigued by neuroscience (some were shocked when I switched to linguistics). It's just that the necessary facilities for the research are expensive and not readily accessible, so neurolinguistics can't be easily done just anywhere. It's not like phonetics where anyone can download Praat. Anyway, that's not really what I'm going into even though I find neurolinguistics to be interesting. I'm primarily a phonologist now, although I'm mostly interested in the interface between phonology and other aspects of theoretical linguistics.

Been lurking this forum for a while because I'm also waiting to hear back from PhD programs. Definitely going crazy from all this I have research work to do, and I teach so I'm trying to prepare for the upcoming semester, but I've been spending so much of my days thinking about hearing back from schools, haha...