EnfantTerrible

USC just emailed. I'm. in. 
 

 
Actually crying real tears right now as I sit in a pile of books. 

LCB is right to emphasize that rhet/comp is a field made up of very different opinions on what should go on in a writing classroom. But there are some things that the field does agree on, almost unanimously. See: the various position statements of CCC or other organizations within the field. Thus, there are some things that we can rightfully call best practices, and conversely there are some things that are rightfully called bad practices. I believe that those best practices should be imposed on people who teach freshman comp. 
 
Part of the problem implicit in all this is there is a whole strata of people who teach writing without studying it, conceivably without caring about it. In my utopian world, literature graduate students and people with literature degrees would not teach first year composition. But we are not in a utopian world. We are in a very messy and problematic system where literature departments exist economically on the backs of writing programs, and in this world pushing for literature people not to teach comp is essentially pushing literature to wither away into nothingness. Which is at least not my intention, as I value humanities work generally. But lit students should realize that they effectively operate in two fields and that they will have to conform to the methods of that other field when they occupy it.

Forgive the intrusion on this discussion, which will probably just further derail this from the original post.
 
As someone without a PhD in English or Rhet/Comp, I for one am glad that in places where WIC/WID (WAC/WAD?) is done there are also pedagogical workshops on how to teach writing and do it well. Because really, it is everyone's job to ensure that students can write well. I'm in the social sciences but I need students to be able to explain what they've read, report on their research findings, etc. But, I also don't receive any specific training in how to teach writing unless I seek it out for myself. For me, WPAs are helpful because they can look at my syllabus and assignments and help me figure out how to craft things better, what aspects to emphasize in my teaching, etc., so that students become better writers in my course. In fact, one of the best compliments I got from students last semester was that they became better (or stronger) writers in my course. And I don't teach writing. I teach [redacted] social science where writing is in there because they need to be able to think critically and communicate their ideas.

Accepted off the wait-list at UMD, my first choice, for 19th C. American.  Now I have to figure out how to move the family caravan to suburban Maryland.  (Help!)
 
I appreciate what a mutually supportive environment you all have made here this year. 

I see these questions pop up from time to time, but can't help but wonder if they're of any use.
 
All it seems to do is make anyone outside the 23-28 age range feel out of place. Isn't there enough worry already about being able to connect with new peers?
 
One of the things I love about grad school is that it's so transient. For some amount of time, you get to be surrounded by peers who are from different backgrounds, different knowledge bases, different sets of experiences, and so forth. With that, you get a number of students who don't fit the "standard" age range, but it also means that it just doesn't matter any more.
 
What does matter is that you can learn new information quickly, keep up with a hard-working lifestyle, and build relationships with new and interesting people. I don't see how age affects any of that, nor why anyone outside the "standard" age range should feel like they have something to prove.

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.  

Okay, loooong time lurker here. I'm almost completely striking out this season. I have one acceptance, but am on the waitlist for funding--and I can't imagine taking on more debt for the sake of being too impatient to wait a year. As it's April 1 tomorrow I'm not feeling terribly optimistic. I can tell you my long list of reasons for why I need to get in this year: soul crushing depression, professional stagnation, my dog just died unexpectedly; but rather than go on about how I'm climbing the walls on the wait list, I'd like to just say that I'm grateful for my spot. I've gotten some personalized rejections, in fact from some outstanding programs that have completely floored me with their genuine "please apply next year" emails. And while as of right now it looks like it's not going to happen for fall 2015, I'm just grateful to not have been shut out universally. I am grateful for the near miss.
 
And those of us who are waiting to exhale may be disappointed, but I remember applying for my MFA and being universally shut out. I was convinced this was my doom. I sucked. Surely I was terrible. I was likely a talentless hack. Anyway, that year I spent reapplying turned out to be the best year of my life. I moved, met some truly incredible humans, and am so tremendously grateful for having been shut out. If I hadn't I wouldn't have had those experiences, ones which I count among some of the best of my life. It's entirely possible that won't happen again this year, and I'm okay with that. Don't get me wrong, the rejection sucks. I feel ready. I am ready. I want to start part of my life, but in the meantime I'm going to keep working. I'm going to keep writing, and keep connecting with all the other English department crazies, because I'm delighted to count myself among this tribe of readers and thinkers.
 
Anyway, in the spirit of combatting self loathing, I present to you a Ted Talk for inspiration. Hang in there! In the end it will all be okay, and okay can happen whether you're enrolled come fall or not. 
 
https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_lewis_embrace_the_near_win

Ugh, yeah, I feel for you. I didn't apply to Toronto for that very reason (plus their OE faculty's in such flux) but damn--that must be hard. Such an amazing program in academic terms!

I didn't understand how grad school worked until the start of my junior year, so up until that point I had little preparation for grad school applications besides a high GPA. Before college I had never met anyone with an advanced degree, so my image of grad school was high school teachers and business managers going to classes at night to get their masters so that they could be paid more. The summer before my junior year I joined a project that was part of my college's summer research experience program because it was paid and it seemed interesting. It was then I learned about grad school from my labmates (they were already planning to apply and would talk about picking research interests, finding POIs, funding, etc).  Before that I honestly had no idea that you could get a MS/PhD and be paid for it, or that classes were just a small part of graduate school.
 
At my college the vast majority of science majors were pre-med/dental/health, and the few that were interested in grad school were into genetics and molecular bio, so it took me awhile to figure out how to find opportunities in ecology. I took a year off after undergrad because it took me too long to get involved in research that was relevant to my interests. 
 
Fortunately one of my recommenders told me about the NSF GRFP in September the year I applied, and my advisor brought it up as well when I first contacted her. I probably wouldn't have found out about it in time on my own (I didn't find this website until December).
 
Honestly I'm still surprised sometimes that I'm getting paid to get a PhD. And that I'm getting paid to work on a project that's all my own. The autonomy was jarring at first: I used to feel uncomfortable with the amount of freedom my advisor gave me in developing my research plans. Some days I do wish someone would just give me a project and tell me what to do. But I'm more confident now, and surprisingly not stressed out most of the time. The whole stressed, starving grad student stereotype has not been my experience at all. 

Well unfortunately these are not often things you do consciously or that you can actually influence. But, for example, the paper topics you have in your first year and second year seminars will probably determine to some significant extent what your qualifying papers and ultimately dissertation will be about. The people you choose to talk to will inform the theories you will think about. Some of this will be determined by the topics the particular instructors you had in your intro courses chose to cover in the particular year you took the class (and topics and instructors change from year to year) and who was accessible and available to advise you on these projects when you were just starting out. Not to mention the school you chose over other acceptances you didn't take when choosing grad schools. The luck of the draw will determine that some abstract will get into a conference and another might not, and you might pursue the one that was accepted at the expense of the one that wasn't. You might study language X for your field methods class, but if you'd done it the year before/after you'd have studied language Y, and the project that would come out of it would be very different. A lot of projects come out of work in these field methods classes, sometimes leading to whole dissertations and research programs. Same for experimental methodologies - you need to decide very early that you want to be trained in that, and have the luck of having the right courses offered at the right time, and the right advisor being around and available (for example, not on sabbatical or busy with a sick family member), and even the right research question that is amenable to being asked experimentally using the tools you have available. 
 
In the 1-2-3 year most people are not in a position to articulate their research program -- which is ok and makes sense, because to a large extent that is determined by your research experiences. But by the time you get to 4-5 year and go on the job market, there is not too much you can do to "invent" parts of your profile that don't exist but you wish were there. Not too many advisors will actually have a conversation with you once in a while about how your profile as a scientist is developing (and a lot of people may not want that or may be too intimidated) but as it turns out, my profile now as a 1st year postdoc is determined almost exclusively by what I've done in grad school, which in turn was determined to a very large extent by accidents of topics and instructors that happened in my first year. That determines to a large degree the broader research questions I can formulate that encompass (most of) my previous work and the work I want to do in the future (or at least, the work I tell hiring committees on job interviews that I want to do). 
 
This all said, I am of the firm belief that although my research might have been very different had I gone to a different school or had a different independent study advisor in my first year, or if I had not stumbled onto experimental work, etc., it would have been just as good. My character is my character and my abilities are my abilities, so my productivity would have been similar, just that the actual papers and topics (and methodologies, languages of interest, etc) would be different. I think it would have been good either way, just.. different in ways I can't imagine, which is what I mean when I say that early choice points lead to very different possible outcomes.

Hi janaca! Welcome to the Forum. From my imperfect knowledge, I reckon that the kind of programmes you're talking about do not usually over-offer, i.e. they only make offers for the exact number of places they have and being first on the WL means you're the first person they call if one of the original offers is turned down. This has been the case in my own personal experience, though I'm sure there are some variations.

I've read through several years' worth of forums and I have to say this year's GC group has been one of the most supportive I've ever seen. Really helps this process for me at least!

I've been told, in so many words, that cohorts often aren't finalized until the end of April.  It does seem like, once the visits are over, things start to shift, but then the first round of people notified off the waitlist need a minute to process, too.  Since some waitlists are apparently 4 people deep or more, it's understandable that it might take a while.  It might be that this is the worst form of managing admissions "except for all the others."  At least, under this system, everyone is treated equally, and all schools play by the same rules.  It does seem like they could move the whole thing up a couple of weeks to make the aftermath (planning moves, etc.) a smidge easier, but the logistics of this stuff, on their end, must be crazy.

If I were sitting on admissions but waitlisted for a program I preferred, I'd certainly hold on until the deadline.  No hard feelings from this waitlisted person.  

Hi everyone.  I've been lurking on this forum for years but for some reason I never made an account.  I joined just now, however, to say a sentence I never thought I'd say.
 
I, like many people, have applied to graduate school before.  In 2011 I was rejected from eight MFAs and in 2012 I was rejected from eight English PhDs.  I skipped a year of applying to focus on teaching high school (I had recently been hired part-time) and writing book reviews for a local paper.  Last June, however, that private school laid me off.  I spent the next seven months collecting unemployment and applying to every job I could find.  This was about as rewarding and fruitful as my graduate school applications had been.
 
Right after Christmas, a different private school hired me to teach English part-time.  I was overjoyed, though the stipend was well below anything I could live on.  Just the other day, however, I got word that I got into the SUNY Buffalo English PhD program with a Presidential Fellowship.  I am still waiting to hear from seven other schools, but UB is extremely strong in my area of interest (psychoanalysis) and they have given me the best possible financial package.  And I'll get dental insurance and healthcare.  And I'll be able to afford an apartment.
 
I am overjoyed.  Just wanted to tell someone.

In most STEM fields, it unfortunately is at the discretion of your PI when you defend your thesis & graduate. In most cases, an email such as you received would not count as a "threat", it is simply a statement of expectations. Although you are adamant here that you don't want or need help, it might be apparent to others that you really do need assistance with your research, which is why they are trying to intervene ("I want to help you" can be an indirect way of saying "You're struggling and you need help."). 
 
At this point, your path of least resistance is to sit down with your PI in person and agree on a timeline for your graduation. Ask them directly what (and how much) work you need to do before they will let you graduate. Write down what they say on paper, then email them a "summary" of what you discussed once the meeting is over. Then go ahead and do that work, even if you don't like it. 
 
Regardless of whether you go into academia or industry as your future career, there will be a lot of times when (i) you have to work with others even when you don't want to or don't think it is necessary (ii) you have to complete more tasks than you want to, either because your boss has told you to, or because need to get grant money, publications or new research projects off the ground. You can't be a successful scientist in a vacuum. 

I don't think that much of what is being discussed here is useful or important honestly. It's just needlessly stirring the pot since this is literally a discussion that has been posted all across GC at least three separate times in the last three months.
What strikes me every time is a lack of perspective by some posters on how much "lost income" getting an English phd will cost us. This statement neglects the fact that the stipend offered may be more money than many have ever made. That it may provide them with a living wage.
There are benefits of getting a phd that are beyond landing an academic job, such as a sense of security for a minimum of 5-6 years with a living wage and health insurance. I'll certainly try to get a TT job after I finish, but if I don't my quality of life for those 5-6 years will certainly be better than it has been for the last 12 years of my working adult life or what it would be if I didn't do it at all.

This is a helpful distinction for me. I'm just very worried when people get all pollyanna about grad school with stuff like, "Well I don't mind burying my nose in books for 5-8 years, to hell with the consequences." I would add that often the casual fallback option planning is far too casual. People need to realize that 5-8 years of studying for a degree that probably won't get you a job is a long time to not be earning and saving for whatever your needs may be in the future (retirement, family, home, etc.) It's just a huge chunk of deferred income (5-8 for the degree, but +2 years or so if you choose to try your hand at the academic job market; so that's 10 years of deferred income, people!) that can really screw with your life plans if you're not ready for it.
 
I hate the rat race and every other part of capitalist society that makes me worry about the crap I listed above, but simply ignoring it is not going to help me and my family survive.
 
And I think this is ComeBackZinc's point--if you go in with the express knowledge that you can walk out either unfinished or without a job with a smile on your face, then have at it. The awareness is what's key. Have Plan B's and C's that you're ready to move up in the queue at a moment's notice. Ph.Ds are not just a risky choice anymore, it's almost a sure-lose.
 
Unfortunately, like OP said, I really do think there's a lot of exceptionalism in these types of threads, so his or her warnings are very, very much needed for that reason.

I genuinely don't understand the position that, since it's unlikely you'll get an academic job, you shouldn't do a PhD. Like, if you'd be happier working in marketing or HR or restaurants than you would be doing a PhD, absolutely you should go do that stuff. But if that stuff is your fall-back, and you'd be happier reading for a living for 5-8 years, that stuff will still be there later.

So I googled "alt-ac career english phd" and this link came up: http://fromphdtolife.com/transition-q-as/
 
I know the majority of PhDs want to pursue a TT position, but some of these jobs look really cool! There doesn't have to be misery after academia. Not that I know anything about it just yet, but hey, at least it's a glimmer of hope.

What is your goal... research or industry? Also, what are your research interests?
 
I was accepted to programs in various fields since my research interests can fit into biophysics, comp bio, physical biology, etc. The name on the degree matters much less then the research you do. For example, you can get a post doc in a chem eng department with a chemistry phd, if your PhD work fits with chem eng research. I think you should reflect on your research interests and see which school has the most labs that interest you. Also, what sort of jobs do the graduates gets... and are these jobs in line with your goals? The name on the degree is one of the least important things to consider.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've had an admission fairy tale. 
 
There was one school I was looking at that only accepts four students a year. FOUR. It was SO competitive and the current students seemed SO ridiculously accomplished ... I thought the program was amazing but that I had a snowball's chance in hell of getting in. Didn't apply. 
 
After the deadline came and went, I became filled with regret that I hadn't at least TRIED. In a bout of anxiety over Christmas break (nearly a month after the deadline), I went to look at the website one last time, and bemoan "what could have been."
 
Lo and behold, I saw that the deadline had been extended. ... to one week after I happened to check the website. I still had time. 
 
I whipped together one last application and fired it off. It came together in an oddly beautiful and easy fashion.
 
"Surely my rec letter writers won't get my request in time ... it's Christmas, they're not checking their email!" To my surprise all three of my writers responded to my late "one last upload?" request on the same day.
 
"Of course my GRE scores won't get there in time! Those take weeks!" Bizarrely, this time they got there in just a few days, in fact the exact DAY of the new deadline. 
 
Still, I thought there was no chance. I hadn't contacted any POIs or established any relationship, I'd never visited campus, I'd named only one POI in my SOP. BUT at least I tried, right?
 
Imagine my shock when I got a phone call a few months later. Admitted with full funding. 
 
Fairy tales do come true. 

Take a list of questions with you.  There was a great thread on this back when I applied, and I took this and asked them of the DGS when meeting with her, grad students I met there, and some here with people at the schools I was considering.  Depending on where you go, you'll probably be put in contact with a current grad student.  These people are great resources, and most will answer your questions directly about both strengths and weaknesses of programs.
 
I just looked to see if I still had this list in an old folder, and here it is.
 
-PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK
-Where do most people do their writing and reading?
-What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office?

-LIBRARY
-What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed?
-What are the library hours?
-Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research?
-Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research?

-FACULTY
-Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon?
-Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work?
-Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests?
-Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well?

-FUNDING
-Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t?
-How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships?
-How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably?
-Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding?
-If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.)
-Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips?
-How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?)

-COHORT
-Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive?
-Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey?
-How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class?
-Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially?
-Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned?
-Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice?
-What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time?
-I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program?

-JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION
-What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track?
-What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed?
-How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks?
-Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves?
-If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?)
-How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications?

-SUMMER WORK
-What is encouraged/required?
-If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer?
-Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money?
-Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t?

-LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT
-What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding?
-What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it?
-Given my research interests, what languages should I study?
-When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.)

-LOCATION REQUIREMENTS
-How long are students required to be in residence?
-How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?)
-How is funding affected if you don’t stay?

-Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program?

-TEACHING
-What sort of training is provided?
-What types of courses do people teach?
-Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp?
-How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field?
-How many courses do you teach per semester/year?
-How many students are in your classes?
-How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study?
-How do students balance teaching with their own work?
-Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes?
-How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes?
-What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them?

-METHODOLOGY
-Is a theory course required?
-What methodology do most people use?
-Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading?
-Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken?

-Typical graduate class and seminar sizes

-What should I do to prepare over the summer?

-Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me?

-Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program?

-Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements?

-What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required?

-What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating?

-What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field?

-Ask professors: what have you been working on lately?

-Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students?

-How long are class meetings?

-How often do professors teach graduate courses?

-Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)?

-Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see?


-QUALITY OF LIFE
-Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in?
-Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment.
-What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing?
-When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look?
-Is it easy to find a summer subletter?
-How close to campus can—and should—one live?
-What grocery stores are there in town?
-How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open?
-What do people do to make extra money?
-Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)?
-Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide?
-How far does the stipend go in this location?

Sorry to change the subject away from WS/SOP vs. test scores, but here's something I learned about grad school in general (and I'm not a 2014er but more like a 2011er):
 
Just because you don't get into your top-choice program with a huge fellowship, doesn't mean you're doomed.
 
I was rejected from ten programs the year I applied. I got into one program that wasn't at the top of my list, but pretty good. However, I barely got in, and I was made to feel like I barely got in. At a school that capitalizes on distinguishing between the sought-after candidates and those that are just so-so, I was not a top "draft pick."
 
Four years later, I hold my school's top competitive fellowship (as well as a national one). I've published and presented and done all the stuff you're supposed to do. I don't have a TT job yet, so my story's not really over (and maybe I'll be a huge failure, who knows). But I don't feel that my admissions track record hindered my performance in grad school in any way. In other words, I don't think that getting turned away from so many programs was the final verdict on my potential or my ambition.
 
The take-away: don't be discouraged if you don't have amazing success in the admissions process. It's just one aspect of this game. The work you do in grad school is much more important.

I'm very sorry you went through all this. I had a really miserable experience the first time I went to graduate school as well, so I sympathize.
 
I also have two master's degrees (in different fields), but both were fully funded. I wouldn't recommend going back for an MA in English. Frankly, I don't think it will do anything for your PhD application other than underscore the fact that you couldn't get into a PhD program. It's not fair, but PhD programs often look at candidates with unusual trajectories as having been left on the vine for too long. I definitely confronted that bias when I applied.
 
If you want an MAT, you should get one with the thought that you really want to be a teacher. Otherwise, I don't think it's wise to invest so much in that kind of degree. I really don't think it's wise to invest in that degree with the thought that you're just doing this for the time being but you REALLY want a PhD.
 
Have you thought about doing some other things to get experience as a teacher without plunging directly into an MAT? What about Teach for America or NY Teaching Fellows? Moreover, if you have a certificate already, you should probably continue to try to find work with it. It may take a long time in this market, but I'm not sure that the MAT will make you more employable as a teacher.
 
This advice might be unnecessary here, but I also have to point out that PhD programs are incredibly stressful. Like, ridiculously so. I really enjoyed my PhD, but I think that was because I was a little older and had some perspective. When I went back to school at 30, I also knew who I was. (The first time I went to grad school I was 22 and I didn't know right from left, and I got eaten alive at my program.) But even though I enjoyed it, the PhD was still really, really hard. Coursework is hard--it's constant performance. Exams are hard--I almost failed mine. Writing a dissertation is a constant slog--I would have chapter draft after chapter draft get turned down by my advisor. On top of all that, I had to teach every semester, and sometimes my students were not nice. Then there's the job market, lol. The job market is like the PhD admissions process on steroids. Instead of vying against 300 people for one of 14 slots in a grad program, you're vying against 500 people for one little job, and some of these people already have TT jobs and books published. And oh yeah--then there's getting published via anonymous peer review. Readers reports can be brutal.
 
All of that is to say that you need to be in a mostly secure place before you embark on a PhD program because PhD programs are a test of emotional and psychological endurance. I could not have done it in my 20s, and I could not have done it after coming out of the MA program where I did not have a good experience. It took working outside academia for about 5 years to get to the place where a PhD actually seemed fun in comparison.

Declined BC this morning. Really hope it goes to a GradCafe human!