kurayamino

I've been gone for a bit, but wanted to chime in and say I entered my PhD when I was married, and we had our first kid last year. There are quite a few people in my program who have kids, too, so we aren't unicorns. I suspect that most people who use gradcafe are younger or just entering their programs though. It's nice to meet those of you who do have kids/spouses!

To provide closure for those waiting on Rutgers, I learned today that all admissions and waitlists have been sent out. Sorry to those of you who didn't get in :(:(

Just to give you a little hope, Rutgers has POIs call over the whole weekend so don't die too much! *fingers crossed for you!*

Well, we "planned" (as much as one can plan these things) to have the kid during a summer when I don't have to work, and when I return I'll be in the midst of orals. This means, at my institution, I'll be teaching one course and taking an "independent study" to get my reading done. Essentially this means I'm only out of the house for 2 days a week. I actually think with the right supportive environment being in a PhD program means that raising a child is way easier to manage than two full time working out of the house parents. Childcare costs are significantly less, etc. If this is something you're considering, remember that a PhD is a job and that FMLA laws apply equally to you as anyone else who works. This obviously varies state by state, but if a family is something you're considering and you have multiple offers, I suggest looking that up! If needed I could take a full year off and not lose my place, for example, and some of that would even be paid. Maybe some questions to ask on your campus visits.

I just want to add that it isn't as though life stops when you're in the PhD. I was married before I started, but we're about to have our first kid. With the right department your "outside" life can continue and even flourish. It was important to me as a pretty non-traditional student (I started the PhD at 29) to find a department that supported grad students and their lives outside of academia. Also, there have been about 3 weddings since I've been here with people who met in grad school. It happens more than you think!

I heard through the grapevine that the Rutgers adcom will be meeting tomorrow to finalize and decisions will go out by Monday! Keeping my fingers crossed for those that applied and hope to see you at the open house!

When I applied I received quite a few acceptance phone calls and I was exactly the same way. So I let them all go to voicemail. They all left messages and I was able to call them back when I was more composed... lol. It also let me think about what questions I might have for a particular program rather than being "on the spot" which I'm definitely not any good at.

Congrats @Wyatt's Terps!! I echo what everyone else has said--you are such a supportive voice in this forum and you totally deserve it!

All I'll say is... Ben Carson is being considered as Secretary of Education, which may not at first affect the humanities as much as it does the sciences, but I think we could potentially see less funding at public and state universities. Private universities will likely be able to withstand the political fallout better with their higher percentage of private donors... but I do think it may begin to become a little harder to find research funding or postdocs in the next four years. Additionally, as educators-in-training, it will affect our ability to teach and where we are able to do so because Trump openly supports for-profit education. This is all not to mention the way it affects my students at a large public university with a high minority population--all of whom were devastated and, understandably, found it hard to focus.

Oh yeah, definitely! I came straight out of a BA though and it was thought that since I only had about 1 page and 1/4 of material to use that it would look better if it were 1 page.

Hey WT, So, I can't speak to the non-academic publications, but I did have some poetry prizes from undergrad that I included in my "Awards/Honors/Grants" section. My advisors suggested I leave them in because it indicated that I was committed to different areas of the humanities, was able to have academic and other achievements simultaneously, and only took up two lines of space. As for the serving on the advisory board, etc.. I ended up leaving stuff like that off my CV because it didn't add much to my CV and I needed to keep it to one page. In the end I treated my CV as a bullet list of things I didn't want to cover in my SOP, but felt like would round out my abilities as a potential PhD candidate. Since you're getting your MA now and stuff like organizing and advising are service oriented, I think your teaching skills would be more useful in that space. Hope that helps a little! I'm sure there are people on here who will have more to add about non-academic publishing.

Literally every conference I have ever been to, regional and national, have all been people reading from the page. There is a way to do it that makes it fun and enjoyable though, which some people have not yet gotten the hang of, but I personally enjoy these conferences which is why I have attended so many even though I was not presenting myself.

I bombed the test as well and did not retake it. I successfully applied to many schools who required the test. It's more just checking off a box than anything else. Don't retake it and, I second what poliscar has said. Exams and the GRE subject are nothing alike.

Lol @ anyone with "truther" in their name.

I really found that the GRE verbal flashcards were very useful, especially if you know some others who are going to be studying. There were a good number of words from the flashcards that came up on my exam that I wouldn't have learned otherwise.

Yes. I agree with both of you.**BHR's quote got lost in the shuffle** The job isn't the carrot at the end of the stick that I'm constantly walking towards because grad school IS the job right now. I make more money and have better security than I have in my entire fifteen years of working. I view what I'm doing as a six year job that pays me pretty well and which, miracle of miracles, I happen to actually like. There was not one moment that I walked into this deluded and at the end, when I get my PhD and move on to do anything else in the world, I'll have gotten an education which means something to me personally.

From the little knowledge I have on the situation as an alumna from CUNY, it seems as though every campus in the system is facing significant budget cuts and issues. Some of this will likely get filtered down to the graduate center TA budget, as I know my home campus (City College) laid off most of their English adjuncts and significantly reduced TAships through their masters program and from the grad center. That being said, if you received a funded offer that included X amount of money for Y amount of years, they've already budgeted for their shortfall. Those budgets were all made well before (August time frame usually) and so I think you'd be fine money wise. I would suspect that this would make it harder to pick up summer shifts or additional classes though if needed. Lots of CUNY students make it work though, so if you've been accepted there I'd reach out to some students. In terms of rank--it's all pretty much a crap shoot anyway. I wouldn't worry about it, but that's just my opinion.

I have both, but I'm not sure about their usefulness at the moment. On my academia profile I have the titles of my conference papers listed, but not the paper itself. I get all sorts of weird hits from google because of it, but I find that to be really amusing. When I attend other conferences I do notice my profile hits go up? So I guess people just use that to try and get a pin on who you are as a person, especially since my facebook profile is not google searchable. I definitely wouldn't post my papers there or anything. This was published in the Chronicle and seems interesting. http://chronicle.com/article/As-Academiaedu-Grows-Some/234414

I chose location over ranking for similar reasons. It would have been almost impossible to support myself and my husband on the UCLA stipend long enough for him to find work. It is SUPER expensive out there.. but people, couples even, do make it work. I just wasn't prepared to make all the sacrifices that would have been necessary to do that. Despite that though, UCLA was the hardest one to let go because it has a lot of great things going for it.

Oh no problem! I'm not sure how Rutgers uses the GRE scores, but the only "good" part of the score that I had was the verbal. Both my quantitative, and probably more importantly, analytical writing scores were also abysmal, so I wouldn't necessarily write Rutgers off because of it. (My GRE lit was also quite laughable!) The only thing about UConn that I know about is Jean Marsden, but really it's just the name that I've heard tossed about. I don't really know anything about the specifics of the program or the 18th C concentration, sorry!

Hey TeaOverCoffee, I can give you the schools I applied to as a Restoration/18th C applicant. I successfully applied to: University of California - Los Angeles, University of Indiana - Bloomington, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, and Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey. Other schools have 18th century professors as well, but not as highly concentrated. UPenn would be the next highly concentrated, but mostly on the Romanticism end of the spectrum. Columbia for instance really only has 1, Jenny Davidson, with one or two Romanticists who may dabble in the latter end of the century. Yale also has two that I know of, but both are relatively older. Both UCLA and Rutgers have new hire 18th century professors which means they both have a great mix of stages for professors. Hope this helps!

Thanks Metaellipses for answering my anxieties as well as Lauren's questions!

Hey Lauren! I'm currently a Rutgers PhD student and also live in NYC. I'm not sure which borough you're in, but I'm coming from Staten Island and know people who commute from the other boroughs as well. If you're coming from Brooklyn/Manhattan it seems like it's about 1 1/2 hours, from Queens it's a little more. I drive from SI so it takes about an hour. Commuting is definitely doable, although they do ask for you to establish residency within a year (or provide a good reason why this would be unfeasible). In terms of your interests, there are a lot of modernists at Rutgers. I'm not sure of how many that study Latin@ literature, but I do know there are some affect people. They notified me in the middle of February by phone call, but honestly I don't know if that's typical or not. All I can suggest is to try and do anything to take your mind off of things because the waiting will drive you crazy! Best of luck! Let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

Congratulations! It's the happiest time of the year!

It really was once I got past the apprentice part. That involved cutting a lot of greens and "greening" center arrangements for Christmas, Easter, Birthdays etc. But out of all the retail positions I've had, that was by far my favorite. Ooooh used bookstore dream is a good dream. I'd love to have a Black Books store.