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red_patch

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  1. From what I can tell, there isn't much pointing doing this unless you're really doing it, as one of the best, so I think you're probably right. Applying to poorly-ranked schools just to get into a program soon seems like suicide to me. Are there any postbacc programs that aren't insanely expensive? Also, I don't know, how did any of you know pursuing this would be a good idea for you? Like, if you weren't "smart" enough to do this, how would you know? Your GREs? Rejections? But I see people getting shut out, even for multiple years, and just trying again. When do you stop trying and resign yourself to a non-academic life? This is probably a very naive and reductive question, but if I hit that marker I want to know. Thanks for all the thoughts so far!
  2. So I'm in a pretty bad muddle, and, having read through these forums a bunch, feel that you guys are really the only people who can give me some objective advice on my situation and let me know to what degree I might be fucked. Sorry in advance that this is so long and melodramatic. I went to a "pretty good" school for undergrad, a "public Ivy" if you want to get your eyes rolling.The first few years of undergrad were bad. I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, dealing with an extremely serious disease that killed me slowly at first, but started snowballing spring of my sophomore year. I refused treatment for a long time because I figured I was probably going to die walking to class one day anyway. That almost happened, but I was rushed to the hospital spring of junior year with all my organs failing etc., missed a bunch of exams but ultimately survived. Senior year was a grueling recovery process but I refused to take a year off. Because of all this, my grades my first two years were awful, but not uniformly. I had As mostly in philosophy and my highest-level classes, but one failed class and a handful of Cs in gen-ed requirement classes I didn't put enough effort into. It's still unclear to me how much of this was "illness" and how much was just my inherent stupidity and lack of competence. Junior and senior year my grades were paradoxically better as my health spiraled out of control, but still pretty bad. About a 3.6 I think, with my final cumulative gpa being a fucking 3.0 because of that bloody failed class freshman year, etc. Yuck. I graduated in 2013 and all I want is to be learning full-time again and to have concrete academic goals, instead of aimlessly picking at things in my free time. My partner is getting his PhD at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, not in philosophy but a related field, and being in that environment with him all the time makes this situation 1000x more crushing. The upside of dealing with my bodily vessel betraying me was that I learned a lot about human physiology, spent/spend lots of time reading medical journals and compiling research, and have a few things to say, maybe, on philosophy of medicine, cultural models of health, medical/health ontology, etc. I would love to something more formal with this, but am completely at a loss about what to actually do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd probably need a postbac to pad my grades if I even wanted a hope of getting a funded masters, especially in that area. Does the fact that I'd need to do that already show I'm fundamentally unsuited to higher-level academic work anyway, i.e. if I was the right kind of person for doing this stuff I wouldn't have gotten shit grades in the first place? It would be difficult for me to get LORs, since I'm a few years out now and was too petrified of being outed as an idiot to talk much in most classes or make real connections with more than a prof or two (again pointing at being fundamentally unsuited for grad school?). I don't know. I feel very fucked. Should I just let this go? Thanks so much for any advice or opinions you might be able to offer!
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