crazedandinfused

Ok, I just read like 20 pages of last years "waiting it out" forum, and I will go crazy if I'm on this website until February. So I'm deleting my bookmark, as if that will help, and I'm just gonna chill for a couple months. My apps are all in (except for a few recommendations) so I'm gonna relax. If you see me on this board, please do chastise me. I would really, really like to thank StrangeLight, TMP, natsteel, and qbtacoma for their advice, patience and kind help. This process was more illuminating than it was grueling, more fun than it was anxious, and your help really, really meant a whole heckuva lot to a longtime intellectual wanderer who is determined to carve out a niche in a discipline he wants to (and to a certain extent already does) call home. You all seriously rock. The best of luck to everyone; see you all when the decisions start rolling in. Ciao!!

The book review really is friggin short. I went back and read mine and it reads more like a review in the New Yorker than it does a review in a journal....... Oh well! We shall see.

I emailed him yesterday..... I went by his office before I sent the email and he wasn't there. I'm sure it'll be fine. He's insanely busy, but this IS part of a prof's job.....

Now I'm starting to freak out about my last recommender.... 11.5 hours until the deadline and he still hasn't responded to my last reminder. Advice??!

We are doing this in order to have the privilege to be even more stressed once we actually get in (knock on wood).

If it helps, and forgive me if I'm making this about myself, think about the fact that you can control what happens! I would imagine we're going to half to deal with at least an equivalent amount of stress as we continue our careers, so just hunker down and do it, and soon it will all be over....... (my recommender who's AWOL lives down the block from me, and it's taking a good deal of self control not to go knock on his door. I'm refreshing my email every two seconds when I should be reading Charles Tilly....)

Ugh, I'm starting to freak out about my last recommender. I sent him a very polite and gentle email but I have not gotten a response. I'm concerned that when he does get the letter in it will be rushed. (I already had my strongest recommender undergo major heart surgery and I "withdrew" my request out of a sense of propriety. I hope I don't regret that decision......)

For what it's worth, I did both..

Agonizingly waiting for that last letter.... It can be submitted ON the 1st, right?

Everything is submitted; I'm waiting on one recommender. He sent me an email yesterday saying he was working on my letter, and i told him a while ago that my first deadline was Dec.1, but naturally I'm getting anxious..... Still, it feels awesome to have everything that I can do done. Oh, my Dec 1 school is typically ambiguous in their instructions regarding transcripts. I uploaded a copy and my school is sending mine out tmrw. Is it worth paying the $20 for them to overnight a copy?

yeah, it's very strange how my AW score stayed exactly the same. I've DEFINITELY become a better writer after two years of grad school. I guess I'll never be able to help Overton, Kansas figure out how to make its garbage collection program more efficient by sending out flyers aimed at gauging customer response time, blah, blah, blah................My verbals jumped 14 percentile points, but my math scores are at the 50th percentile (which is actually an improvement from the last time I took the test). I should probably go to the gym as well, but i'll probably just eat a beignet.

Great advice!! He's not very well cited, so the "hidden treasure" hypothesis is what I'm going with... He had to go to court in order to get the FBI to release files he needed for his dissertation (labor history), so I don't think he works for the government. Maybe, and this just occurred to me, he's an adjunct simply because labor history is not that hip anymore and his department is already VERY well represented in that field. So, I'm gonna ask him. Now, i just have to decline a letter from someone else. That'll be fun.

He's definitely quirky... I think I'll ask him. He's effin brilliant, which makes it all the more confusing.

So I just ran in to an old history prof of mine who's been an adjunct at my institution for like 30 years and is well published, but for reasons I don't care to ask about, is not a full time prof. I'm sure he'd write me a letter but I already have all three lined up (1 historian, 1 political scientist, 1 economist). So my question is: which is better, adjunct historian or full time non-historian?

Thanks goldielocks. I tried those every which way and the best I could do was get them all to align by extending my paper by 4 pages........ I don't think it's the end of the world if the reader has to look on the next page for the footnote, right? I could solve this by doing endnotes but I think those would be even more of an inconvenience.

Yeah, that probably would help. Microsoft word 2010.

Ok, I'm only asking this because it seems that this conversation has gotten somewhat mechanical. I can't get some of my footnotes to stay on the same page as the text that cites them. I've scoured the web and even talked to computing services at my school and I've had no luck. Anybody have any tips or useful links?

So if I understand this correctly, it's standard not to include a bibliography? One school said not to include it, but could I get away with not putting it on any of my essays? An extra page would be amazing........!

One of my letter writers just had heart surgery and is now convalescing, so i guess the etiquette there is NOT TO ASK.......... Thankfully another professor stepped up!

I'm sending them out to my recommenders tomorrow, and I've already had one professor proofread my writing sample. I was just feeling anxious when I posted that. Point well taken!

Anyone want to read a Statement of Purpose? Or a Writing Sample?

I want my danged GRE scores....................

Great advice Sigaba, and point well taken, TMP. That said, I'm gonna do it. I figure if the book that I want to do is reviewed in Reviews in American History, then its status as a work of history is pretty solid. Even if it's written by a very interdisciplinary scholar (which is what I would want to be anyway...... On creating a strong application for each school, beyond tailoring the SOP and contacting profs what more is there? I suppose I could do so through my writing sample but that may be like opening pandora's box........ LORs?

The book that I want to review, and the one which really, really deals with my subject is John Stauffer's The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race. It's tough though, because while it's undoubtedly a work of history, Stauffer is a professor of English and Afr-American Studies....... He uses alot of literary analysis, but he does so in order to make a strong historical argument. I would think that this is not really a problem, right? The other direction I would want to go would be reviewing a book that is stylistically similar to what I want to do. Briggs' Victorian Cities and Wilentz's Chants Democratic are the awesome and brilliant books that made me want to be a historian in the first place. In the end, I hope I can compete with all of you in applying to Yale. I'm intimidated by the folks that are already teaching and presenting at conferences.

Book review here as well. I have it whittled down to 3 or 4 books but it's kinda like Sophie's Choice....... Any tips?