HelloKaty37

Seconding the suggestion of the Ph.D. in Lit at Notre Dame. I am there right now and I have found it very fitting to what I want to study. I am also a Medievalist, though I am more focused on the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance than many Medievalists. I study Italian and Latin literature, but I draw also from French, English, and Spanish occasionally, and the department has supported this kind of study. I also have taken many classes with the Medieval Studies program in addition to the national literature programs. I do agree very much with Medievalmaniac's concern about comparative programs and the job market. We can't go a week in my department without hearing about how to market ourselves to national literature programs for jobs, and comp lit programs have the same issue. I would say that if you do want to go the comparative way, try to find a program associated with a well-known national literature program and do something to prove your mastery in that area. For example, if students are graduating with an MA in that program, take the same exams as them. Your challenge will be to prove that you are as competent in each of your individual fields as someone who has studied them exclusively at the graduate level. It's a daunting task, but I would say worth it if you are passionate about interdisciplinary work.

Question: What is the difference between the left-handed spirals and just flipping a regular spiral over and writing on the "back" of the pages? I'm semi-ambidextrous, and whenever one section of my spiral fills up (I write one-sided only), I flip the spiral over and begin writing on the back of the same sheets working my way toward the front of the section, leaving the spiral side of the notebook on the right. This makes it very comfortable to write left-handed.

I've known quite a few people from a long line of hyphenated last names. They have all been of Mexican-American families, so perhaps it is a cultural thing. Typically, they have each inherited [Mother's Maiden]-[Father's] so, for example, Maria Chavez-Garcia marries Juan Gonzales-Valdez and their child is named Jose Garcia-Valdez. Thus, the children take something from both their mother and their father. Granted, the grandmothers get left out of the final equation, but it solves the problem of never-ending name multiplication without the woman's heritage getting lost. I've never taken note of how the wife's name is changed when she gets married, but this may give an idea of how children's names can work with two hyphenated last names.

When I was applying to graduate schools, the McNair program provided me with business cards to use. They had the seal of my undergraduate university (UT Austin) as well as my contact information, and I found them to be very helpful in the application process. I probably won't get new ones right away as a graduate student, because I won't be faced with the same sort of situations in my first year here that I used my old ones in, but when I met with a student from a school I was interested in, we often exchanged cards as a means of keeping in touch. When I met with the head of the department that I am now part of, he asked if I could write down my contact information for him to give to his secretary, and I gave him one of the business cards. Rather than seeming put off by the formality of it, he actually told me it was a welcome solution to having many slips of paper with questionably legible handwriting to keep up with. Honestly, I would prefer if everyone had business cards, but I guess I am a rarity in the humanities.

Currently: Re-reading Good Omens On Deck: Can't Teach an Old Demon New Tricks by Cara Lockwood. Thus far, I have managed to avoid the Twilight books, but I think the movies are works of comic genius. I mean, the body glitter part in the first movie had me in tears I was laughing so hard, and now the trailer for the third one... it has to be meant as a comedy!

I've found that taking out a lease for less than a year, while possible, raises your rent significantly. For example, I had to take out a 9 month lease this year because I will be leaving in the summer and my lease began in the fall, and it raised my rent by almost $30 a month. There are fliers all over campus if you can find time to get here and check them out. Some people post them in the restrooms, but more often they are stuck to information bulletin posts that are situated all around campus. Craigslist is also a great resource for finding housing in Austin, especially if you need to find a roommate. There is a search feature on the website that specifically looks for "roommate wanted" ads. Also, I don't know how common this is among grad students, but I know Facebook marketplace is pretty popular among undergraduates looking for roommates. And don't forget the Daily Texan classifieds, which have less postings but are geared specifically to UT students: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/

JustChill, I'm not going to lie: South Bend sucks a little. It isn't the prettiest or most lively city. On the other hand, Mishawaka didn't seem all that bad to me, and the Notre Dame campus more than makes up for the city surrounding it. It is beautiful and filled with things to do, from film festivals to concerts to sporting events. Ceridwen, it's good to know that some graduate students care about football there. I was beginning to think I would be the lone grad student in a sea of undergrads in the student section at games.

My situation is eerily similar to yours. It began for me last semester, when I tried my usual one all-nighter per week routine the last month of class and around midterms. Each time I found my vision getting blurry to the point that I couldn't read or write anymore and I would have to take short naps to regain my ability to function. I'm also 21... maybe nature's way of telling us we need to develop better study habits before starting graduate school, lol.

My plane landed a little late to do much partying on Wednesday, but the restaurant that the program had me get dinner from had an excellent corn beef, cabbage, and potatoes special, lamb stew, and Guinness available for the occasion. I'm sure next year St Patrick's Day will be awesome! The visit was really good. The students who I met in the program were all very friendly and welcoming and I could tell they all knew one another very well. There was much good-natured mockery and stories of drunken events going around. The professors were also very helpful, and the campus really can't be beat. The weather was mercifully mild these last few days (almost the same as Texas) but I have been told that is not the norm this time of year, so it may be hellish by the time your visit rolls around. There are a couple of students in the program currently doing Irish. One girl actually did her Masters in Galway, and presented at the conference today on an Irish translation of the Aeneid. I imagine they will be able to tell you plenty about that aspect of the program. One thing I have noticed is next to none of the grad students really care about ND sports, which is disappointing (though probably should have been expected). I'm looking forward to getting football tickets to as many of the games as I can next year, and I'm a little bit heartbroken the basketball team went down so quickly this week.

Just wanted to give you a heads-up. I called the realtors whose sites I suggested, and they are all rented out for next year already! Time for some more online searching, I guess. *shrug*

I should have specified. I would love to learn how to drive a standard transmission car. I even tried a few years ago. It took me several days to make it out of first gear once, then I never achieved that feat again. The person teaching me finally just gave up after a few weeks. So what I meant was that the cost decrease was not enough for me to put yet another car through my failed attempts at using a clutch. If someone does know how to work with a manual transmission car and doesn't mind doing so (my boyfriend, for example, can but hates it so he always buys automatic) then it would definitely be nice to spend less.

Actually, automatics tend to be a little more expensive (I guess it costs more to make them), but not enough for it to really matter. For example, I just bought a used 08 Civic, and buying it manual would have meant a cost decrease of only about 1-2k dollars. Seeing as the automatics were about 12-13k, that's not a really big savings in my opinion, especially since I would have had to learn how to drive stick!

I notice you're a psych major (which I was briefly so I know a lot of people who are applying to grad school in that discipline). Have you considered taking the GRE subject test? If your general test scores don't come up much, you may be able to make up for that with a more specialized set of scores. It may not matter much, but it can't hurt to demonstrate your strength in the relevant area. Also, I hear the psych subject test is much better for studying for than the regular GRE is, since it is more fact-based and less "memorize as many words as possible and hope they show up on test day".

I'm pretty sure that by deferring you are agreeing to attend there and may not apply to other programs or attend any other school during your deferral year. This is what I have always heard for undergraduate at least; maybe it's different for graduate. Really though, that seems kind of a sketchy thing to do. If you aren't excited about going to this school, then you probably shouldn't string them along like that. If you did get into your top school next year then you would lose the respect of some people in your field for how you treated them, and (possibly even worse) the adcomm to your top school may see next year that you accepted an offer the year before and deferred and that could seriously hurt your application.