EnfantTerrible

Wonderful, breaking news: Stanford just made me an offer. Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee doesn't even cover it!
 
Good luck to everyone waiting. IT CAN HAPPEN!

Wonderful, breaking news: Stanford just made me an offer. Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee doesn't even cover it!
 
Good luck to everyone waiting. IT CAN HAPPEN!

Wonderful, breaking news: Stanford just made me an offer. Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee doesn't even cover it!
 
Good luck to everyone waiting. IT CAN HAPPEN!

Wonderful, breaking news: Stanford just made me an offer. Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee doesn't even cover it!
 
Good luck to everyone waiting. IT CAN HAPPEN!

Wonderful, breaking news: Stanford just made me an offer. Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee doesn't even cover it!
 
Good luck to everyone waiting. IT CAN HAPPEN!

Wonderful, breaking news: Stanford just made me an offer. Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee doesn't even cover it!
 
Good luck to everyone waiting. IT CAN HAPPEN!

Wonderful, breaking news: Stanford just made me an offer. Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee doesn't even cover it!
 
Good luck to everyone waiting. IT CAN HAPPEN!

I really wish we could all hang out in one room and drink some cocoa while we wait for the last minute offers to come in. I can't imagine what you all are feeling! Sending unicorn and leprechaun vibes to all still waiting!
 

Thanks, everyone! This little corner of the internet has been so helpful over the past few weeks! I'm working in a small town in Austria, feeling very cut off from the academy, and I think without your help I would have driven my friends crazy with questions they couldn't answer.

Congratulations, HayleyG!

I think it's a great idea. And be sure to mention that someone had told you that you'd hear by the end of last week (which is a good excuse).

1. I see literally no one in this thread who questions that there's a labor crisis in the contemporary university.
2. I see literally no one in this thread who questions that there's exploitation in the contemporary university.
3. I see literally no one in this thread who questions the deprofessionalization of the professoriate in this thread.
4. "The faculty" is not a monolithic bloc and describing them as such does not help us in the structural or in the particular.
5. Yes, it's important to describe and criticize the labor crisis in the university; in fact, many faculty members are among the most strident and vocal in doing so. Sure, there's also faculty members who are part of the problem, and they deserve criticism, and I have made that  criticism, publicly, many times. But there is no question that the ultimate culpability lies in the hands of politicians and administrators. That's not displacement; that's a fact, a plain fact about who holds power in the contemporary university. It just doesn't fit in your ongoing psychodrama, which you are busily inflicting on the people here every da  y.
6. People who are entering the profession (and I'm not sure what your scare quotes prove, other than that you escalate meaninglessly when pushed back against) are having that conversation. We have it all over the internet, and have, for years. We have it here all the time. The fact that you don't get to dictate every aspect of that conversation does not mean it doesn't happen. We are not here to serve the needs of your ego.
7. Putting capitalism in scare quotes does not diminish the plain reality that I'm describing, which is that almost every aspect of the academic labor situation you deride is a product of the system in which it is embedded and is not reducible to a morality play which pits those mean faculty members against our hero VirtualMessage.
8. No one is "theorizing" anything; we are talking about the real world, and many of us are doing so in a profoundly less romantic and more concrete manner than you are. 
9. Labor issues are political issues and structural issues and material issues. Reducing them to a meaningless whinge about personal morality and the naivete you are so addicted to observing in others does nothing for anyone.
10. Things are bleak. Progress is possible. Both of those things are true. What is necessary is for people to formulate a plan to try to secure that progress. I see some of that from some faculty members. I see some of that from the people here. I see nothing resembling a plan from you. I just see bitterness and recrimination that plays out in the most emotional, least constructive terms possible.
11. I don't mind naivete. I don't mind cynicism. But your brand of naive cynicism is tiresome and narcissistic and personally I've had quite enough of it.

Reluctantly bumping this thread wondering if anyone has checked out Franco Berardi's new book, "Heroes" (Verso, 2015), where he describes the conditions of "semio-workers" and "cognitarians," whose general condition is characterized by precarity, self-exploitation, the fractalization of work time, and the transformation of language into a prodctive commodity:

"Language is captured by the networked machine and turned into an essentially productive activity. Herein lies the trap: people are encouraged to consider their linguistic competence as factors of economic competition, and to manage and invest in them as such. Creativity, expressiveness, affection, emotion -- the human soul, in other words -- are considered to be productive factors and consequently, they are evaluated according to standards of productivity. Exploitation, competition, precariousness, redundancy are not perceived as the effects of a conflictual social relationship, but are internalized as deficiencies of the self, as personal inadequacies. The unceasing rstructuring of the organization of work is perceived as humiliation and brutality.
"Only non-involvement and the ability to remain extranesous, to refuse any identification with one's job and one's working condition, oonly a radical rejection of the ethics of responsibility, might offer workers the possibility of navigating a way out from this productivity blackmail [debt might also be seen as a type of "productivity blackmail].
"[...] cognitive workers have been lured into the trap of creativity: their expectations are submitted to the poductivity blackmail because they are obliged to identify their soul (the linguistic and emotional core of their activity) with their work. Social conflicts and dissatisfaction are perceived as psychological failures whose effect is the destruction of self-esteem." (166-67)

When I read this just now, I immediately thought of things I've read/learned from threads like this and wondered: is this perhaps the direction academic labor is headed -- a fragmentary, abstract labor of adjunct pay calculated by credit hours justified by a superficial link to an increasingly outmoded link to a profession that I'm not sure can really be purged of this expectation that your soul be identified with your labor?

Reading shit like that really hits this idea home for me: for my own health, an education in the humanities should be divorced from my expectations and goals related to work; my love of literature should have nothing to do with my need for a paycheck. Which is probably what a lot of you have been trying to communicate for a while -- if, at times, the ideas have lacked the proper vocabulary (which is only barely, I think, starting to be developed). I really recommend this book as a useful critique of the relationship between mental health and the current state of global capitalism as well as for describing the kind of exploitation and psychological frustration expressed by certain inndividuals in this thread.

The best advice I have gotten for overcoming jealousy at other's accomplishments is "don't compare your insides to their outsides."  LD, you only see a person's outside presentation of their relationship or other accomplishments, and people have a vested interest in making themselves appear happy and well-adjusted. What you don't see are the problems that are inside other people - the stress that may come from maintaining a marriage in graduate school, the financial arguments that come with lower income in younger marriages, the potential jealousy of your freedom to make choices as you please without considering another person. 
 
So you compare the visible positives to your more balanced appraisal of yourself (because you know your own deepest insecurities and problems in addition to your good points), and find yourself coming up short.  If you have depression and anxiety as treated by a therapist, that can compound the problem, since depressed and/or anxious people have lower appraisals of themselves and tend to downplay their positives.
 
You have to remind yourself that every position has good points and bad points.  What might be helpful is making a list (an actual written list) of the things that are great about being single/unmarried, right now.  If you need help, you can search the Internet and there are plenty online.  Then if you find your anxiety rising when you hear others comment about the SO, quickly remind yourself of why it's awesome that you're single.  (I did an exercise like this in a different context - I felt like peers were more scientifically productive than I was, so I made a list of reasons why I am professionally awesome, and remind myself of them if I feel inadequate.  It helps!)
 
Also make sure that you make some single friends, too - and some single friends who enjoy being single and aren't always looking for a potential SO at every social opportunity.  You need some strong social support from friends who are going to help you to focus on yourself and having a good time rather than looking for a partner, and potentially making decisions that will hurt you.

I'm not a psychologist, but I am certifiably crazy (ask my therapist!) so my question to you is this:  What exactly are you hoping to fix by getting married and having children? 
You seem at least marginally self-aware so you should know that this:
is an EXTREMELY unhealthy thought.  That right there is liable to get you into a mess of a situation that would be more harmful than it would be fulfilling. 
I think the problem that you have with being around happy couples is just a symptom of a bigger problem.  You really need therapy more than once a month.  Talk with the counseling center.  They are normally willing to bend any rules they have for people that show true need.  And I think you really need more intense therapy to become comfortable with whatever it was in your life that hurt you so bad that you think only a husband and child can fill it. 
This is obviously all just my opinion, but if you are serious about getting your mental state healthy again, you might want to think about these things.   

Somewhere on one of these threads a while back, a similar discussion came up right around the time I saw a story online about Harvard's acceptance rate.  It turned out that, stated as a percentage, the rate of acceptance for most of the PhD programs I (and probably you, if you're reading this) applied to was *lower* than Harvard's famously absurd undergraduate acceptance rate: so low that it made the news.  That gave me some perspective.  I feel damned lucky to have gotten into a good program (barely, the second time around).  I've never been particularly competitive, so this might be a rationalization, but it feels like chance plays a big role in these outcomes.  Take heart.  If you got in, it's because they saw something in your prospective work.  If you didn't, ask for feedback and try again.  My application the second time around was objectively better b/c of what I learned the first time around.  
 
PS, I half-expected that things would get more contentious on this board as April 15 drew near.  That it hasn't confirms something good, and pretty rare, about you folks.  I hope to get to know some of you at conferences and such.  

It's certainly not ideal to take back your acceptance, but I say do it. Finances matter. I think you could even say something to them to the effect of 'After reexamining my financial situation I regret to say that I will not be able to attend next year. I am deeply sorry, but I wish to withdraw from your program.'

I had a good few weeks of feeling low and stuck too. What's helped me is having a few encouraging conversations with my advisors, who all essentially said that many, many students are much more successful their second time applying. That's something I've seen evidence of here on GC as well. So, chin up - we'll try it again next year. In the meantime, I'm perfectly happy to continue working at my job and saving some money. With the funding packages some universities are offering, it looks like having extra cash will come in handy.

After receiving rejections and only one waitlist my chances were very slim. But out of the blue yesterday I got accepted off the wait list. I am still in total shock never expected this. Miracles can happen. Hang in there guys I am rooting for all you also on wait lists.

I have very visible hand tattoos.  They elicited curiosity during my campus visit but nothing negative and I got in so they were not a deal breaker.   

I'm happy to know I'm officially pursuing my PhD. With that said, I'm strongly considering a tattoo this summer before I go.
 
It would simply be text, ideally located on the inside of my forearm, which would make it fairly visible unless I wear long sleeves. Should I have any concerns being a grad student/TA/teacher with a visible tattoo?
 
It would be completely inoffensive and is more of a personal message to myself than anything else. I don't think it would make a difference in getting an academic job down the line but I'd like some thoughts.

I spent so much of my life trying to force myself to eat tiny amounts of super healthy food, while occasionally doing little baby aerobics work outs. It sucked. I never had enough willpower to reduce my calorie intake enough to maintain my weight, and I was extremely weak and stressed.

Now I do intense workouts a few times a week and let myself eat whatever I want. I feel great, I'm the strongest I've been in years, and I've been dropping pounds steadily.

I do strength workouts with weights now, instead of just using my body weight, and oh my god what a difference it's made in my muscle composition. I like to lift in my room in my pajamas watching TV, so it's easy to make time for it.

I also try to bike as much as possible. Since it's just a mode of transportation, it doesn't really feel like exercise, and it's made my legs SO strong.

The last thing I do is the hardest one. I'm training for a thru-hike, so I put bags of cat litter in a backpack and walk up and down the stairs in my house for about an hour. I listen to music to keep my mind off the task. It's rough, but after only three times of doing it spread out over a week or two, I noticed a visible change in my legs. Crazy.

Basically the moral of the story is I am so much happier doing intense workouts, being strong, and getting to eat whenever I want, instead of trying to force myself to look and act like some frail wispy fashion model.

I think regret is a possibility whatever decision one has had to make, it's the risk we take whenever we make a choice, so if/when those silly thoughts start messing with your head, don't pay any heed to them, they hardly ever lead to anything good...
 
But that is an impressive collection of acceptances
 
Have you decided where you'll be going?

At Boston College there is one last offer out, and I am next on the waitlist. The school's my top choice. It's a coin flip. I spend my days willing this one person to not accept.
 
Hey person. Go someplace else. If you've spent this long thinking about it it clearly isn't a slam dunk decision for you. It would be a slam dunk for me.
 
Those are the kinds of things I say to them inside my brain.

I feel you, BeatrizBear! I received an email yesterday to say I'm one of two people on the waitlist, and two people have not yet responded to offers of admission.
I wish the numbers were more indicative of my chances!
 
Eight days until certainty...