apcoach

I hear what you're saying, but all of those things sound so boring and petty to me. I just want to study write about and teach literature - I hate that I'm considered unqualified to do so until I've accumulated all of these stupid little accolades. It's like the old argument about whether anyone can really learn how to be a writer; I look at the study of literature as pretty similar to writing, which is to say, I don't think it's just some job that you learn how to do, but rather a kind of calling that you just do. But maybe I'm just bitter because I've never published and never presented at any conferences - and for that matter wouldn't be caught dead going to a conference on literature - much better to just read or write, or better yet just live.

... I'm not saying all this to criticize you; your answer makes perfect sense and I'll probably end up scrounging those qualifications myself. I'm just wondering whether anyone else feels this way - feels alienated by the business-like attitude of all these so-called lovers of literature. Alienated by the fact that all these English department people sound exactly like the finance department people and the psychology department people etc.

Wow! Hadn't intended my initial post to be quite such a polemic! Of COURSE I'm not going to graduate school for purposes of acquiring cultural capital! Wow, this strikes me as a willful misreading, probably motivated by my strongly expressed skepticism about a lot of the knowledge produced within the academy (ie. my remarks about research interests).

What I was saying about "respected institutions" was that the only way, in our society at least, to balance the desire to spend one's life primarily in intellectual pursuits with the inescapable fact that we have to satisfy basic existential needs (food, shelter, occasional medical care--these things cost money!) is to attach oneself to institutions like universities that have been historically approved by society (read: funded by tax dollars! for the most part anyway) and that can offer financial support and a path toward a modestly paid career. These, I'm afraid, are simply the facts. I don't look to these institutions with any abnormal degree of reverence, I just understand them to be the places in which I can further my own education while also acquiring the skills/credentials necessary for a career that will in turn allow me to spend a lot of time growing intellectually.

As far as research interests go, well, yes I suppose in some very basic sense everyone has "research interests." As inquisitive, contemplative individuals we identify and identify with particular areas of human knowledge that we wish to know a great deal more about. What I don't think we have, or at least we wouldn't without the existence of a graduate admissions process, are these very technical, narrow, limited research interests. We come to define/express ourselves in this way (allow me to stress this: in my opinion!) only because we know admissions committees are thinking about finding folks who will reproduce the established approaches/methodologies/knowledge areas that already exist. I have no beef with research interests as such. I have them too, and for purposes of grad admissions I can refine them quite nicely (or at least the schools that have accepted me thus far seem to think so). My beef is rather with the ways in which we are narrowly constrained by the existing bureaucracy of knowledge in American academia. There seems to be nothing free about free inquiry as it exists in American higher ed.

But the problem is more than just with feeling constrained in the way we are allowed to self-identify. The problem is that, although this bureaucracy produces knowledge, much of it is of pretty dubious quality. And if you don't think so, you probably haven't perused enough academic journals. I think the humanities probably suffer uniquely in this way. This hyper-specialized model works quite well in the natural and social sciences (or so I've been led to believe) but it doesn't seem to me to be at ALL the way one should transmit humanistic knowledge. Again, just my opinion. But I should point out that it really isn't just my opinion. Richard Rorty said a decade ago most of what I've just said above and in my previous post. Louis Menand also has made a species of the same argument.

As for concerns about my use of the word "intellectual," I'm going to wager that those who raised concerns were doing the same kind of willful misreading that I described above re: cultural capital. I hadn't realized this was such a contested term among academics! All I'll say about this is that only in America can even the intellectuals be convinced that "intellectual" is a bad word. People watch too much damn television. Yikes.

For those who defended me against the more abusive/belligerent among us, thanks. Someone suggested that I must have spent a lot of time writing that earlier post. Alas, I probably spent about 3 minutes on the thing. Just meant to be an alternative perspective for someone I saw agonizing in much the same way I'd been agonizing about this crazy process. Maybe I should have spent a little more time and avoided the vitriol! Anyway, happy waiting to everybody.

But I think you're imposing your preconception of what someone means when they say "an intellectual" on Baldwin, and I don't think it necessarily fits here. When I read Baldwin's post, I definitely didn't interpret it to mean that he wanted to been thought of as intelligent or cultured, but that he wanted to be involved in intellectual pursuits as a major part of his life - but that he hadn't exactly sorted through the particulars of what he wanted to research. There are a lot of grad applicants - and new students - that are a little fuzzy on exactly what they want to study, but just have more general pull towards certain interests. I don't know that there's anything wrong with that, as a starting point. I applied two years ago straight out of undergrad and definitely had a "fuzzy" view of exactly what I wanted to study - I had loved doing my thesis and independent projects and knew that that was ultimately the only thing I'd truly feel satisfied doing: rigorous, intellectual work. I had that intuitive sense and pull towards it, but as I was very fresh, I hadn't quite worked through exactly what direction I would take that research in but rather had broad interests and a few general questions I was interested in.

But in the two years since I've really had time to think about exactly what I'm interested in, who I would be as a scholar, and yes, part of the reason I was forced to do that now and not later was to make my application stronger this time around. I pursued some of my general interests to learn more about what specifically interested me, reading up on some theory, current scholarship, and subfields in general. Maybe that's the sort of independent intellectual pursuit Baldwin was talking about - but eventually it just affirmed that I needed the resources of an actual program if I wanted to be able to go further. So in that way, the grad school application process has forced me to identify and articulate research interests, when I couldn't have before. The thing is, some people go through this "focusing process" in the first year or so of grad school, while others do it before they apply (though you're going to have a much stronger application if you do it before, as I learned - grad schools would rather you figure it out on your own and not on their penny so that you can hit the ground running). You reacted to Baldwin's blanket statement, which is fair because it's not true for all of us, but you're also making one. It's no more fair to say that just because someone hasn't yet fully gotten their specific research interests 100% into focus yet (don't some complain about this tendency/pressure for applicants to do this so early in their academic careers? pre-professionalizing?), they don't have a valid desire to be a scholar and don't deserve a spot in a grad cohort.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you that Baldwin's statement, "We develop research interests because we want to go to graduate school, not the other way around," was a polite one. I gather that he was trying to be encouraging, but such a blanket declaration that categorically denies the genuine motivation of virtually every respectable scholar that I know can hardly be considered polite or even "well thought out." It is extremely presumptuous--and I would suggest, indicative of the mindset of many lackluster graduate students--to assert that "we all just want to be intellectuals, but we figured that out by going to college (or anyway, being in school). So our intellectual models are teachers/professors." I could care less about being an "intellectual," which from what I gather, means to Baldwin a person who receives recognition for being "intelligent" and "cultured"; I want to contribute to scholarly debate and knowledge. I have known many graduate students who are either on board because they want the sort of cultural capital that Baldwin speaks of or simply didn't know what else to do after undergrad in this less than stellar economy. By and large, they don't hack it as scholars, either deciding not to continue after finishing an MA or eating up funding as PhD students who never finish their dissertations. I would argue that the "having research interests that produce the need to attend grad school" motivation is the only one that should (and frankly, does) fly, at least at the PhD level. There are so many people who consume funding that would have been better spent on other people, realizing that graduate school is hard work that requires more than the desire to be thought of as an "intellectual."

I just found out that I got in when I saw an earlier post in the results and checked out my status! I am officially into the MA program en route to the PhD. I am new to the forums, so I'm not sure which info to post, but I'll throw up everything that I have.

GPA Cumulative: 3.75
GPA Major: 3.8ish
GRE: 740/ 690 5.5 (My physics major friend got a 6, and I just about shot him.)
Subject GRE: 670

I went to one of those small liberal arts colleges in the midwest, and I could tell you how my statement of purpose, writing sample, and recommendations stack up against other applicants. I'm focused on 19th century Brit. Lit. with an emphasis on Victorian novels and formalist theory. Anything else I should include?

I just found out that I got in when I saw an earlier post in the results and checked out my status! I am officially into the MA program en route to the PhD. I am new to the forums, so I'm not sure which info to post, but I'll throw up everything that I have.

GPA Cumulative: 3.75
GPA Major: 3.8ish
GRE: 740/ 690 5.5 (My physics major friend got a 6, and I just about shot him.)
Subject GRE: 670

I went to one of those small liberal arts colleges in the midwest, and I could tell you how my statement of purpose, writing sample, and recommendations stack up against other applicants. I'm focused on 19th century Brit. Lit. with an emphasis on Victorian novels and formalist theory. Anything else I should include?