empress-marmot

Sincere emails about how much you want to be in the program seem like a good idea to me, if you haven't already sent them. If Ole Miss knows about your situation, you might want to tell them that you will call them with your final decision at X time on April 15th. I hope this works out for you, InHac! Good luck!

Traditionally, it's not good to rescind an enrollment confirmation. However, this is an unfunded offer (they haven't invested in you as a scholar). The rules may be different, especially since you're not asking them to release you to another school. If you're really worried, you could say that you will not be able to enroll due to an "unexpected family concern" or something. Then thank them for their time/consideration. I'm just guessing here, but I don't think you'll have much of a problem un-enrolling. Good luck!

I'm really sorry to hear about your application season. My first year out of undergrad, I applied to only one really competitive school in my field. Come April 16th, I was rejected. And even though I ended up working at a vineyard (best job ever), the gap year was draining. You made a good promise to yourself: don't go to graduate school in the humanities without funding. That's not petty or shallow; that's living within your means. I would politely turn down the offer, and start researching funded programs. The worst part of my gap year was explaining to other people why I was taking a gap year. It sucked to say that I got rejected from the only school I'd applied to, which is why I applied to ten places this year. Overkill? Perhaps. But four acceptances later, I had decisions to make. Decisions are good.

Congratulations on your acceptance! Good luck making a hard decision.

On one of my school visits, someone mentioned a professor who taught a writing bootcamp over the summer. It was an actual class, and everyone had to have a significant writing project completed by the end of the course. Perhaps your graduate program offers something similar? About the "wall of text on screen"--is that computer-only screenshock? I get that as well, but I compensate by highlighting and re-highlighting paragraphs as I read them. I got over the ideas-before-words issue (in fiction writing) by just typing out stream-of-consciousness, even if it devolved into something like: "Their journey took...well, let's say the standard country is like the size of a state--it's going to be like 200 miles across. Now a horse can cover about 25 miles per day, more if they change horses, less if they don't, so we'll go at a pace of 20 miles per day, which means they should get there in 10 days, but we'll slightly inflate that because it's a sedate pace, and they should get there in two weeks." Six pages later, and I liked writing again. Whether this is pedagogically sound advice, though, I have no idea. Sometimes it is freeing to write what you want to write, and then translate into what is appropriate to write.

Upvote to hypervodka! That's advice I wish I had in my early years of undergrad. I also want to add that Sigma Tau Delta hosts a conference for undergraduates every year, and conferences like PCA/ACA generally welcome submissions from undergraduates. University foundations (in my experience) are enthusiastic about giving undergraduates money for conferences--I was able to receive $1500 one year, and a couple other students received enough money to at least cover hotel and flight costs. This was probably the last time I ever will be fully funded (including food) to attend a conference, and I had a wonderful time exploring a different part of the country. Plus, conferences and travel grants can go on your CV. I was overwhelmed when I found this forum, too. Keep in mind that you don't have to apply to only PhD programs. You can apply to smaller funded MA programs as well. Disclosure: I had an absolutely dreadful writing sample from outside my field of study, and the worst generalist SOP imaginable. The MA programs I applied to overlooked those errors. I think they saw my GRE (163V), GPA (3.95), and wonderful letters of recommendation.

Ooh! That's really exciting. Congratulations!

Congratulations!

I just accepted an offer last night! The DGS can't rescind admission because I didn't catch a typo in the email, right? I blame it on my shaking hands. And I agree with what everyone's saying. Personally, as hard as it is to admit, I wasn't ready for some of the programs to which I applied. I think the director of my MA program recognized that, but the program is looking for scholars to brand. The professors seem interested in working with me, the cohort is small, and I'm really excited about the sort of research I'll be doing. Plus, I'm an hour away from my family. I'm tempted to laze about till August. I'm done!

I agree! I was accepted to a program but waitlisted for funding, and the DGS asked in a very roundabout way if there was any information I could give regarding other offers. I did, and I reiterated that the school was my top choice. I also told the DGS that as exciting as the program was, I could not self-fund when I already had a funded offer. I thought it was a very diplomatic email. Then again, the DGS never replied. Last night (nine days later) I went ahead and declined my acceptance, so I'll never know if it was successful or not. Good luck!

I'm working on something similar, and I ended up with about twenty pages too. As much as I dislike the format of "10 Things You Didn't Know About [insert Anything Here]," I figured that limiting myself to ten guidelines was a good idea, and I explained my reasoning for each one.The result was about a page long. I summarized below, even though I'm sure a lot of this information has been listed before. Some of the advice seems so obvious, but a lot of students at my university end up doing those online, unfunded programs. I would like that to stop. 1. Read the Chronicle, InsideHigherEd,The Professor is In, and Schuman's Slate Articles. Know what you're doing. 2. Apply to mostly MA programs. 3. Don't take out loans. 4. Take a hard, harsh look at your application before applying to the best schools in the country. 5. Create a GradCafe account. 6. Start thinking about specializations. 7. Ask for placement information at MA and PhD programs. 8. Gauge when you will get decisions back from your programs, and be ready to apply to programs with later deadlines if necessary. 9. You will have to deal with these programs again. It's a small field. Be nice. 10. Don't talk about graduate school to people who haven't been through grad school. They won't understand.

I wanted to ask about a couple points brought up in That Other Thread, which I also call the Thread of Doom. If you folks think that the topic of some people not liking rhet/comp is better off buried, though, I totally understand. If some people we work with (tenured or not) think "I've taught for seven years and my students loved me and you're just a soulsucking job-stealer and I don't have to listen to you," how do we change their minds? Or if we can't change minds, how can we keep this attitude from spilling into instruction? If the posts on That Other Thread are the way some people react to a WPA trying to improve composition instruction, then it signals some issues in the field. Has anyone ever encountered this kind of resentment before? How have you dealt with it?

Hey! Congratulations on your acceptance, and I hope that additional funding comes through for you. Fall class schedules should be up for most universities, so find three or four times/classes which work for you, and email the professor teaching the class. Be polite ("Dear Dr. Whoever: Dr. DGS directed me to email you regarding an informal TAship for your ENG 101-XX course...") and offer to send them a CV with your teaching experience/references. You could also see if a friendly student/professor contact within the department would be willing to make introductions. I've never dealt with asking a professor for a TAship, though. Good luck!

I'm nervous for you, Wyatt's Torch! I would hate having to make those sorts of choices. Are you saying that you can have a TAship and GAship at the same time? Full funding from a GAship sounds wonderful, but not doing a TAship as soon as possible might set you back in opportunities to teach in the writing center (less grading) or teaching classes other than freshman comp. (Note: I like teaching freshman comp, but I will be a stronger instructor if I teach different classes.) Perhaps you could engineer that GAship to be for only one semester?

I'm one of your cohort, albeit in a different specialization, in a different part of the country. I spent my week looking through some of my professors' CVs to see what accomplishments I'll need to be competitive in the field. Then I narrowed down the list to ten goals to tackle my first year. It's boring work, but I like having a "checklist" of some sort to follow. Congratulations to the other MAs!

One school which accepted me sort-of employed this idea. Their TA offer, which I could accept by April 15th, had a very low stipend. They supplemented the stipend with a scholarship, which had a deadline of April 1st. Obviously I couldn't entertain the idea of a TAship without the scholarship, so I had to decline the offer...um, five minutes ago. Still, I wouldn't encourage anyone to make a five-year decision lightly. I may want people to decline so that one university can finally, finally get back to me...but a person has to take care of him-or-herself first. Take your time.

I just keep watching the tentacles go by. They're mesmerizing.

The PhD programs I have come into contact with seem open to literature MAs. Maybe that's because there are more MA-Lit programs than MA-Rhet/Comp programs? At a campus visit yesterday, the RC program head mentioned that a lot of MFAs pursue Rhet/Comp degrees. I'm just starting my MA in Rhet/Comp, so I may be completely wrong about this, (and please tell me if I'm completely wrong about this. I like learning!) but I thought I had to learn the trends in the field before applying to MA programs. My literary interests are different from my Rhet/Comp interests, and I had to relate what I knew about to what I wanted to know about. If you decide to be a Rhet/Comp-er, that's awesome! The folks on the Rhet/Comp thread are a happy bunch. Thanks for sharing! I'll keep that in mind!

Thank you so much for sharing! As an incoming graduate student, I know I'm supposed to publish, research, and seek out administrative positions for my Rhet/Comp specialization. There's a lot of unknowing between knowing that and knowing specifics. My prospective program head all-but-makes her students take the certificate in Business/Technical Writing, and she makes her students TA those classes as well. Her students received multiple offers, so I completely agree with this.

I don't know if there are any examples on GradCafe with Lit/Rhet/Comp students, but I'm sure I remember reading topics from students who had already committed then received offers. There were a wide range of responses, and I have no idea what I would do if that happened to me. Good advice!

I've been doing some research on the post-2001 economy. From the enormous stack of books on my floor, I think it's happening in every sector, and has been for awhile. But while I'm always able to find books about the disappearance of the middle class and the exploitation of minimum wage laborers, I haven't had the same luck finding books about the exploitation of academia. If anyone has suggestions, I would be interested. Wage-education discrepancy is a topic we all need to be asking about. And thank you to everyone posting on the forum. I appreciate the forewarning.

VirtualMessage, if you are still here, I am really sorry about your job search. On one campus visit, I learned the PhD students had applied to 80 jobs apiece. By the time I go on the job market, I imagine I will have to apply to way over 100--and definitely apply outside academia as well. You are a fantastic person for making it through a PhD program, for publishing several articles, for believing in teaching and research. I agree that sometimes academia is pretentious and self-aggrandizing. I also agree that everyone should know the risks and what they're willing to give. But most of us have found that teaching and research make us better people, and that being a better person is worth the downsides. Most of us have been told "just don't go," too. Some people on the GradCafe have been accepted to fantastic schools, and no one should start their career with a cloud of doom thundering overhead. Instead of posting once, why don't you stay here? We need more people to give us smart talk and advice from the other side of a PhD.

Is it...unusual to visit a program twice? To be specific, I live about half an hour away from the school I'm about to accept, so I didn't ask for funding besides a parking pass. The first time, my prospective adviser had a family emergency, but he will be there on the official recruitment day. For those of you in graduate school, would you think someone visiting a second time was strange? I am probably overthinking this, but I really don't want the people in my program to think of me as "that weird person who came here twice." Thank you for your advice!