Historiogaffe

De-lurking to adapt an old chestnut: don't judge an envelope by its girth! I received a thin SSHRC envelope in Vancouver this afternoon with a fellowship offer — my application scored 13.7.

Yes, me! I'm a medievalist! I'm interested in British history-writing after the Norman Conquest, and the intersections of landscape and memory therein. I'll be attending UBC, up here in Canada. Pretty stoked. Grettir and sstrickland — congrats on your acceptances! And best of luck to everyone else!

Seems like Toronto has a healthy wait list this year! I'll be advising them to remove me, as I've accepted an offer elsewhere.

That was also me! (I may or may not have only applied to Canadian schools.) I did not apply for the CSPT concentration.

That's me! Just sent you a message

Ha! I figured as much – with the rational part of my brain, at least. The other part was like, "There is something suspicious in your application and they want to smoke you out!" 95% of my brain knew this was BS. The other 5% knows that it's February The interest in amping up interest in their program makes sense, as well — they're one of those that have been lower-ranked but are clearly putting the jets on in terms of raising their visibility and prestige. Very responsive to queries about placement rates, etc.

Have any of you received phone/Skype/chat requests from programs of interest? The graduate advisor of one of the unis I've applied to contacted me about an informal Skype chat about my application and what their program has to offer. She sounded really interested in my research and potential fit with the program, but emphasized it wasn't a formal interview, and that they hadn't made admission decisions yet. Is this normal, or heard-of? If so, what have your experiences been with it? This program's really, really interesting to me in terms of fit, and I'd kinda love to attend – despite it being the lowest-ranked of the four programs I've applied to. ETA: I'd also love to hear about similar "What does this MEAN??" interactions others have had! Vent away

A salient detail for me is that both my wife and my closest referee have forbidden me from leaping into the adjunct lifestyle — so developing a Plan B has become a must! So, my Plan A verse is the same as the first: I'd love to snag a tenure-track position at a research university. You hear me on this one. It'd be a dream. Plan B emerged during my ill-fated, 2.5-year attempt to sell myself out — er, that is, sell myself ON corporate communications. That didn't work out in itself (good lord), but the organization I worked for (a corporate nonprofit, for that special kind of bleeding-heart) had an ongoing relationship with this really, really cool digital marketing/strategy agency. Y'know, the kind that works with multiple clients in brand strategy, web design, copywriting, what-have-you. I'd love to get a copywriting gig with an agency like that, potentially moving up to project management or content strategy. And my two top-choice PhD programs do have co-op options... But while I've grown pretty keen on that gig, it's not quite enough for me to give up the tomfoolery of a PhD in medieval literature. Heh. So I'm not quite in the "there's something I'd rather do" camp, just the "there's something I'd also like to do."

The month after finishing my MA in English Lit, I landed a job in communications (tourism/hospitality industry). It's been great because I happen to love where I live, so the industry fits; and, well, I'm not a barista -- love to the profession, but I've found out the hard way, a couple of times, that I'm far too introverted for customer service. Heh. In terms of landing the job, the MA was an advantage, as were part-time editing/RA gigs during undergrad and grad. Anyway, the job involves a blend of writing (internal comm.), writing (external comm.), editing/proofing, design, admin, event planning, and, starting this year, strategic planning/implementation. I'm planning to put in another 2-3 years and apply to PhD programs in 2017. (A few reasons for this: Want a bit more non-LDR time with my wife; nest eggs are best eggs; and, as I do enjoy communications, I'm hoping ~5 yrs FT on the résumé will help me slide back in post-PhD in the statistically probable event that pursuing TT doesn't work out.) In the meantime, conference presentations and a potential journal submission should keep me a scraping along as an undercover medievalist...

We're pretty crazy. BUT I found this quite odd (olol our souls are too crushed for optimism) career forecast on the Canadian government's career stats page for professors: "Outlook Job prospects in this occupation are good. (Update: January 2011) After dropping slightly over most of the last decade, the number of university professors has increased slightly. These movements can be explained by changes in government spending, the number of university-age young people, the school attendance rate of young people aged 20 to 29 and the highly skilled labour supply. Given the expected changes in these factors, the number of university professors is forecasted to rise significantly over the next few years." So, uh... What? This is, of course, for professors across disciplines, but (as the infographic proflorax provided shows) the crisis is all o'er the place, if more so in the humanities. Hopefully these changes (???), if they're real, hop on across the border and the pond.

The best starting point: author stalking. What books or articles have bowled you over in the Modern American Lit field? If someone called, say, Georgina Wu wrote something that stoked your nerdy flames, Google her. (If it's someone with a name more like John Brown, maybe type "John Brown professor".) See where they are, and where they got their PhDs. Which of these universities have you heard of before? Which ones do many PhDs seem to be coming from? That should start you off. You can also plumb the archives here for "american lit" or whatever; posters often list the schools they have applied/are applying to in their signatures, so you can go on over to those institutions' sites and see if you like their gist. Edit: Solid GPA and GRE scores. 3.5 should only preclude a few Ivies and West Coasties. If you feel that having relatively few ENGL courses on your transcript could hurt you, you may want to check out (funded) terminal MA programs in English lit.

A bit of wisdom ("wisdom") that I encountered frequently when I began my neurotic online grad school advice search a couple of years ago: Of all your possible degrees (BA, MA, PhD), prestige matters least for the MA. What does matter, as some above have noted, comes down to making connections, working with specialists in your field, going to conferences, etc.

I submitted a 761-word SOP to a program that asked for 500, and was accepted to it with pretty great funding. They'll take longer as long as you really aren't repeating anything, every sentence matters, etc. etc. The only place I encountered a real problem with word limit was in an online application with a textbox for the SOP that would not accept more than however many words/characters.

Thanks, everyone! Zeugma, my own research is friendly to both new and traditional approaches to medieval studies, but it's certainly the Ivies/traditional programs where rhetoric's unlikely to be an area of focus. WUSTL looks promising -- I'll add it to my nascent list.

Any takers? I'll be in Canada's Austin this fall for a one-year MA in English. (And, of course, for All the Music Festivals.)