crazedandinfused

I'm right there with ya.... Let's keep in mind that most adcoms have only just begun to meet

Wow. It's quite astonishing how giving people healthcare has been so controversial. What a country! (Yes, I know that there are costs to it. I understand public policy. It's just that when you run those costs out over the long-term they actually end up paying for themselves and eventually being a net benefit.)

Very well said. Comparative analysis need not entail packaging disparate events into a "singular entity." Without getting into a nitpicking discussion over the difference between comparison and juxtaposition, I think that there are very tangible benefits to understanding the relational differences and similarities of the object of inquiry. Comparing race relations in Brazil with race relations in the US gives us not only a more in depth understanding of the subtleties and nuances of each country's system of categorization, but can bring to light broader historical and sociological mechanisms and tendencies which have the ability to enrich our understanding of the history of race in general. Obviously, in order to do such a comparison one must have a working understanding of each object which is to be compared with another, but trying to understand race relations in the United States (for the sake of my example) without understanding the history of Atlantic slavery (of which Brazil is a huge part) is well nigh impossible. In order to build the foundation for comparison the historian needs to be mired in relational inquiry. From the transnational we can build the national, and then go back and continue the inquiry on a truly inclusively transnational and comparative basis. I'm afraid that the desire to understand historical events "on their own terms", while undoubtedly important in the sense that one should not carelessly import from one context to another, has the potential to be a misleading trope with very little meaning beyond its linguistic allure.

Is anyone else suffering from Wikipedia withdrawal? This sucks. I've already called my congressman (only to learn, to my embarrassment, that he's a co-sponsor of this legislation). I need to know about the Tong Wars of the early 20th century. Anybody?

Oseirus, In my humble opinion your views could use some refinement and it might behoove you to digest what older members of this board, and more accomplished scholars than you and I, have to say about methodology. While it is undoubtedly frustrating to see flippant and thoughtless comparisons made between historical and current events, there is a definite utility to trying to understand the present through the events of the past (after all, isn't the goal of historical study a better understanding of where we are today?). Working in the other direction, it is nearly impossible for the historian, or for any scholar, to fully remove themselves from their contemporary intellectual context in attempting to understand the past. Many times this undoubtedly leads to bias, but I think that some of the sentiment against quixotic quests for objectivity comes from the observation that when many scholars try to wiggle their way out of their own biases they unwittingly introduce even more bias and more anachronism because they use their own constructions of "objectivity" to decide what to leave in and what to leave out. In a weird way, trying to run away from bias is the most biased thing one could do. I think that there is a widely held and eminently justified feeling that it is better to try to acknowledge one's own personal bias and let the reader make of your scholarship what he/she may. Regardless of whether or not any of what I just said makes sense, I think that you should really take into account what others have to say and maybe relax some of your own positions. That is the number one duty of any scholar. Oh, if I don't get in anywhere i would really like to become one of those melodramatic reenactors on the History Channel. I would love to wave a broad-ax and burn down Potemkin Villages for a living.

Sometimes I feel like Strangelight is my wise godmother. I'm deleting this bookmark (again) and I'm gonna try really hard to forget that I have ten applications pending. Bye everybody!! I mean it this time.

Is anybody able to speak to the relative influence on adcoms of the DGS and professors? Essentially, how helpful is it to have the DGS in your corner? (this might be a dumb question)

I think/hope they learned their lesson. Fighting with people on Internet forums, or anywhere else for that matter, makes very little sense to begin with.

I'm officially losing it. From the moment I wake up until the hours I spend tossing and turning in bed, my mind is thoroughly preoccupied with applications. My wacky application dream consisted of one of my recommenders calling me into his office and telling me that my usage of which/that was so consistently wrong that I would need to pay him $10 per letter in order for him to recommend me.

Talk about neurotic: Now I'm tossing and turning due to concern that my use of the word "feminist" on the first page of my WS is anachronistic because it refers to a very early, pre Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women's rights advocate. Anyone care to opine on what gender equality may have meant in Boston, 1833? Christ, it's 250 in the morning.

I think I'm dealing with the fact that two of my applications were due two hours ago and that one of my recommenders hasn't submitted those two yet rather calmly. Have you ever read Vic Gatrell's "City of Laughter"? I figured on account of your avatar.....

I'm so sick of deary, monster buildings...... UVA, please help me out here. I met with the DGS at one of my upper mid-level schools and he was super enthusiastic about my application. I hope that my transcripts don't scare them away. This thread is going to be a thousand pages long.

Yes! Can I ask which concentration you chose at UIC? I found it impossible to choose but went with the WRGUW (Work, Race, and Gender in the Urban World). And my hierarchy of preference is essentially the order in which the appear in my signature, with a little bit of latitude at the end of the pack. CPetersen: you are spared the app season insomnia from which I am currently suffering. Lucky......

I deplore the ignorance. Lately I've taken to re-reading various departments' course offerings for 2009 and 2010 and trying to guess what's in the syllabi. Only one month...........

Wow, congratulations!! I believe you are the first. We honor you.

I hope not!! (plucks another gray hair named Harvard)

Jeez, what happened here? We are all nervous but there is no need for personal invective. Let's keep our cool until at least Valentine's Day, ok? To try to get this back on topic: With all you Ivy League-3.6+GPA people bemoaning your slim chances, I feel pretty crappy about my 3.0 and 3.4(UG and Grad) from my middle-rank university. Writing Sample and LORS, Writing Sample and LORS....... Oh, and I'm also not applying to exclusively top notch programs. I have a feeling, and one of my recommendeds confirmed this, that by the time I hit the job market the people i will have worked with and the work i will have done will be equally as important as the institution on my diploma.

I would take what MrArl and TMP have said very seriously. I have a Master's in International Development, and throughout grad school I was pushed more and more towards academia in general and history in particular. History is VERY different from the policy world. You need to really ask yourself which discipline you want to go into. There are no easy answers to that. It took me years of unfulfilling graduate study and personal exploration to arrive at academic history as a goal. If you want to be a think-tanker then you might consider getting an MA in the history of your area of interest and subsequently getting a PHD from a policy school. If I were you I would do it in that order, because an MA will go a long way towards your PHD coursework while a policy Master's (in my case MID) won't do much for your coursework in a history PHD. In fact, i might have to get a whole new stand-alone MA if this application season goes poorly. I could go on forever. If you have more questions, PM me. I've been in a similar boat.

I've learned the hard way that academics are particularly sensitive to the notion that somehow being a scholar is not a "real" profession. When one actually enters the "professional" (ie, non-academic) world, the banality and futility of many private sector jobs only highlights the importance and potential for personal fulfillment that academia offers. The fact that many non-academic jobs are nine-to-fivers where you DON'T take your work home with you makes the idea that the all consuming work of academia is not real work all the more insulting. I used to have very grave misgivings about the social efficacy of academia, but two years in the "professional world" sent me scurrying back to the Ivory Tower.

Yeah, I got that email as well. I've pretty much given up on my chances at Yale (I loathe the book review I submitted) but one never knows. Do I gather from the other thread that if by some divinely ordained stroke of luck I'm considered, then I will get to do a phone interview? I think that'd be great. At the very least I could apologize for the abominable book review and expand on some of what I had to cut from my SOP.

Wow, so I just googled my handle and I would like to publicly state that I am NOT the crazedandinfused that blogs at blogspot. No insult to her, or to "crazy feminists" in general (I am as close to one as someone who identifies as male can be), but I just don't want to have any of her potentially maniacal missives attributed to me. I thought this handle was original... I'm just a little neurotic and I love Led Zep and tea Oh, and I'm sorry for my sarcasm, sapdaddy.. I thought you were a bot. And yes, if one does get drunk it's best just to eat or sleep. Listen to me, sounding like my Jewish-Hippie-Mom.

"@SapperDaddy With respect, if you're a 12 series, and/or have been deployed in support of OIF and/or OEF, and/or use this same screen name elsewhere, you may want to increase your level of PERSEC. In any case, you might consider upping the level of your SA. The comment that follows is representative of the type of behavior that is UNSAT in a graduate program" What does this mean? Is it a bot? So professors actually do work on their papers before conferences? Sorry. I know it's off topic and that i just outed myself as a technological neophyte, but the cherry comment was odd.......

Agh, you conference paper-presenters make me feel so pessimistic about my chances!!! I've already begun to plot the process which will turn my writing sample into a presentable paper, and I'm not that far away (I hope). What I need is to get into a program where I can do that....... It being Friday of the first week of most semesters, I have a thoroughly unfounded hunch that adcoms are meeting today. Please lord.

Yes, this is definitely an agonizing process. Try to reach the point where you know that it's literally out of your control and just take it easy. Read an 800 page book or read for fun. Hopefully you won't be able to do so for a long, long time........ I'm not even supposed to be on this board.

Wow! That's great news and a very auspicious beginning. Many congratulations. I want similar news!!! (I quit smoking as a new years resolution, and the double anxiety of nicotine-withdrawal and application-suspense is driving me nuts....)