Caien

Best of luck @lyonessrampant, and many congratulations on completing!

Declined an offer from Boston College today.

The explanatory paragraph is to explain where the extract fits in the full writing sample. So if its follows another chapter you should summarise that chapter so it makes sense to the reader/adcomm member picking up the argument in the middle, or similarly if the extract ends abruptly describe the final chapters of the writing chapter and what you concluded from the project. Its just so that they get a sense of the overall paper and therefore understand what you were trying to do with the section you've extracted. I'd also put in a few sentences describing the project overall at the beginning of the explanatory paragraph, like an abstract similar to those included before articles in academic journals. This can be useful to situate your argument the broader wider critical debate is this is not addressed in the extract you've submitted. Then follow that with more specific detail on the sections you've left out and where the extract is located in the wider paper. Alternatively, if the extract stands up fairly well on its own, you can make some edits so that it works as an essay in itself. I took the first chapter of my undergrad dissertation and some portions of the second and third, and edited them all together to work as a single essay, wrote a new conclusion, and didn't bother with the explanatory paragraph. This took a very long time to get right though (about 6 months).

Are you sure that wasn't just the Joyce?

I've seen a few people mention this in the last week or so, so I thought I'd just start a new thread to focus on offer negotiation. What's the protocol for this? When I tell my schools that I have another offer on the table do I name the school? Do I come at it in a round about way like, Oh, cost of living is so high and I'm concerned about my quality of life... Should I have this sorted out before I visit or wait until afterward? Should I tell them I have other offers now or wait till I'm visiting campus? I'm terrible at this sort of thing. I took the first job I was offered out of college and didn't negotiate my salary at all. When I asked for a raise after a year it was like pulling out my own toenails.

Was there any change to your portal?

Nothing for me either, maybe the MA? NYU dates seems to be all over the place in the last few years so its hard to guess.

Haha, you know whats funny is they're all really depressing! They almost all end with the heroes dying. When I was little my mother's favourite was the Children of Lir, and mine was Oisin and an Tir na nOg, both of which just have horribly sad endings. Bet you're having fun with the name pronunciations? You know I've never heard of Meyer, but I just googled him and its so odd! I think perhaps, and this is something I mentioned in my SoP as something we need to get past, that nowadays Irish studies of the long nineteenth century seems to disregard the works and scholarship of non-Irish people from the period. Its a very self-involved critical discourse. I was recently reading Standish O'Grady's The Heroic Period, which deals with more the Red Branch Knights than the Fianna, but you might be interested nonetheless. My interest stems from this intro he writes about the purpose and nature of history, which you'd think would be such an odd line of thought to take in an intro to book of myths, but this is characteristic of Irish 'histories' in the late nineteenth century, so as a student of historiography and narrative theory its fascinating. I'd also recommend TW Rolleston's Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race. Its considered a bit of a standard text on Irish mythology. Its a pity you haven't come across a professor to work with on this, have you considered coming to Ireland to study? (Edit: I just remembered in another thread you said you did in fact hope to come to Ireland, so never mind me )

People are honestly so, so weird. And would they read these novels to find out if the actually are bad or damaging? Not in a million years. Yes you mentioned that before! I'm curious what texts you deal with? We get told Fianna and Cuchulain stories as children here (I'm actually from the part of Ireland where Fionn MacCumhaill supposedly hung out ), but that's about the extent of it, what pop culture works have you come across that reference them?

Oh my God! My parents have this thing that reading 'weird' books will affect me mentally. It's all because when I was a child I was home alone for a few hours, and when my parents got back they asked me why I had pulled the curtains upstairs but not downstairs (the reason was simply that I hadn't been downstairs), and my mom was like 'Nobody will be looking in at you from the upstairs windows', and snarky little 12 year old me was like 'vampires could', because I was reading Dracula at the time. I'm a big fan of epic fantasy, and ever since then my parents have been trying to pressure me into reading more 'normal' books, and periodically ask me when I'm going to grow out of all this weird fantasy stuff. (Never, the answer is never.) This is a fun little thread we have going guys

Haha, aw! My mom wanted me to go to California so she could visit me and go to the beach! (She is not impressed with this whole Indiana business...)

They are indeed hilarious. And infuriating. My mother also didn't want me to go to Amsterdam to get an MA in case I ended up becoming a prostitute. It defies logic. I do think you're right that at the root of it is just worry and concern. My mother always wanted me to emigrate (I'm from a very rural part of Ireland), she wanted me to see the world and travel like she never did. But she couldn't wait for me to move back from Japan, and I think its only hitting her now that 5 years in the US is a long time, and I may never come back at all... Edit: I forgot to mention that my father simply cannot get his head around the Doctorate of Philosophy part. When he asked me what PhD stood for, first we hit a bit of a stumbling block until I realised he didn't know philosophy was spelled with a 'ph' (my father is hard working and good at his job, but not what you would call book smart). Now he just keeps going, 'But you're studying English, not philosophy...'

True, but its mandatory to have a masters first before going on to a humanities PhD in the British system. So really the absolute minimum is four years, but most people will take longer by taking an extra year to finish their thesis, doing a two year masters, or just taking a break between their masters and PhD. Over here we also don't get much teaching experience. For the most part it amounts to leading some tutorial sessions, and many students won't teach at all until they get their first job. Personally I think its worth taking the extra year or two in the US to get that extra experience.

The day I was accepted to BC and called my mom, she started telling me about a documentary she watched on a cult in England where all these young people ended up giving up modern day life and basically living in a basement with no contact with the outside world. Then she was like, 'and they were all so smart and going to Oxford and those places', and then she proceeded to warn me not to join a cult as if being a grad student will make me more susceptible to cult-joining. Parents are so bizarre. Unrelated to academia, a friend of mine has a colleague from Israel. When she got her job in Ireland, her mother was like 'You can't go there? There are terrorists! You'll die!' My parents also do this thing where every few weeks they'll ask me how long my PhD will take, and I reply 5-6 years as always, and they act all shocked and horrified as if this is the first they're hearing this. Over Christmas my mother even said 'You told me it was two years!' I have never told her that. Then they'll talk about my uncle's ex-girlfriend that got a philosophy PhD and that they remember it only took her like 3 years. I'm not sure what they expect, that I'll call the DGS at Notre Dame and tell her I'll need to be getting my PhD in 2-3 years because my uncle's ex got her philosophy doctorate in that time in England in the 80s?

They seem to have removed the 'confession' post but not the two 'acceptance' posts. I'd hoped they'd remove them all as now people will be checking the board and just seeing the 'acceptances', thus causing further unnecessary upset, but I guess its the mods prerogative as they can't confirm a fake post. Edit: They're all gone now.