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.

I'm in my fourth year in Austin, TX and until about a month ago did not have a car. Now I share one with my boyfriend, who has it most of the time because he uses it to get back and forth from work. I don't know how to ride a bike (go ahead and laugh; everyone does) so I can't speak for that other than that trying to *learn* to ride a bike in Austin was difficult because it is so hilly. There do seem to be plenty of bike lanes though and when I do drive I notice bikers here must feel very safe (read: entitled) because they have no problem riding in the car lanes when there isn't a bike one, making the cars go 15 mph in a 35-40 zone. I read somewhere that a well-respected biking magazine rated Austin the #1 biking city in the US, but as I don't bike I couldn't tell you which magazine that is. Lance Armstrong owns a house in Austin, so that must say something about how bikers feel about the city. As for the bus system, which I know really well, it makes car-free transportation in Austin a breeze. I haven't lived in West Campus for three years (and honestly wouldn't recommend the area for grad students because it is very noisy and filled with frats/sororities and ever-drunk freshmen) and I have done just fine getting around. It is handy to live on the 1L/1M route, because it runs about once every 12 minutes, but even off the route there are plenty of frequent bus lines. And the campus buses go all the way to Far West one way and Riverside the other way, which if you look it up on the CapMetro website you will see is pretty impressive. As a bonus, UT students ride all the buses for free! Overall, I would have to give it 4/5 stars. If only we had something like the Boston T, New York subway, or DC Metro, then it would get that fifth star. edit: I haven't noticed an opinion on Dallas, TX yet. I've never lived in the city, but I grew up nearby and my older brother went to college in Dallas. I get the distinct impression that it is not at all livable for those without a car. There is public transportation but everyone there drives and everyone expects you to drive. And the housing around college campuses is typically very expensive, so you can't really plan to walk/bike to school unless you're willing to shell out big bucks for an apartment.

Along these lines, I've always heard that if you just want one for 911 purposes, to plug a phone into a jack in your house and check to see if it has a dial tone before you purchase service. Some places have a "soft line" (or something like that) that works for dialing 911 without paying for service.

I just wonder what kind of private lender kept giving you loans when you started getting that far into debt. My brother (who is a banker) talks all the time about irresponsible lending on the part of some banks but I didn't know it had gotten this bad... Surely they know that's almost impossible to pay back with just a BA in Sociology! And speaking as someone whose close family did have to declare bankruptcy, I can tell you that is the very last thing you want to do, even if it is an option for some of your debt. You will never be able to get a home loan or car loan with reasonable interest or cosign for your children when they grow up... it's bad stuff.

I'm a college senior and I'm on my way to South Bend to start a Ph.D. in the fall. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who isn't taking time off. Even though I do have some very nice classes and great professors this semester, I know what you mean by 'senioritis'. I'm just ready to move on to the next phase in my life, and I'm becoming increasingly bored of Austin. It's interesting that someone equated this to marrying your high school sweetheart. Maybe there's a connection there in personality type because I'm also still with the guy I started dating at the end of my senior year of high school and we plan on getting married soon. Many people question my decisions both because I have never had a real job and because I never shopped around in the dating department after high school. While I feel very confident in my choices (and wouldn't change my life for anything), I know plenty of people who would be miserable being where I am at 21.

George Foreman (...'s Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine!)

I think anxiousapplicant makes a good point. I am also in a committed relationship and we are planning on getting married in the next couple of years but are not formally engaged (he wants to be able to afford me a nice ring, lol). My boyfriend is planning to move across the country with me, to a place with freezing cold winters when we have both spent our whole lives in Texas and he loves it here. Even more, he's leaving behind a job that he loves and that he could have potentially been promoted at in the next month or so. Now if we had just started dating, I know I would have a really hard time not feeling guilty for being the cause of all this. In fact, we were in essentially the same situation when we started undergrad. He went to a school two hours away from me and decided to transfer to a community college to be with me after we had been dating for over a year because the long distance thing was so hard. I guess what I'm trying to say is, your boyfriend may have some great insight into this beyond just finances, because having been in a similar position, I can say for myself that I felt it was putting a lot of pressure on the relationship the first time my boyfriend uprooted his life for me, but now that we've been together much longer and know that we plan on getting married, the pressure isn't really there this time. Where you are in your relationship can very much determine how successful a leap of faith will be.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I was going to withdraw my apps in light of this information then found out it was out of my hands anyway. (A government program paid for my applications and they need the official responses for their records.) So I'm sending back replies as soon as I get the official letters in hopes that those who are waitlisted will not have to wait too long. It seems as though all of these programs do have waitlists, which makes me feel a little less guilty, but I still wish I could have helped others out. No complaining though... I know most people have to pay for their own apps, and I'm grateful that I didn't.

Houston Astros

Awesome! Nice reference to Inferno V. I'm going to tell this one to my boyfriend when he gets home from work and watch how fast he calls me a nerd. Is anyone on this forum interested in doing Tolkien research as well? I've noticed almost all of the living Tolkienists are also medievalists. (Perhaps because Tolkien himself was a medievalist?) I would like to think it's because we have a knack for spotting quality work from whatever era...

I'm interested in the two 31st street houses and the one on South Bend Ave at Blue and Gold Rentals. At Bumbacahouses, mainly the one on South Bend Ave. I will be checking them all out when I visit, so I'll let you know if any of them really catches my eye, but feel free to grab any of them that allow your dog if you're looking to prelease now. I know what a hassle it can be to move with an animal. From the pictures I've seen of Cairn terriers, they actually look smaller than my cat, who is almost 20 lbs. Landlords always give me a funny look when I ask if there is a cat weight limit as well as a dog one, lol. I mainly do Dante, since my language background is mostly Italian. I'm very interested in his arguments for the use of vernacular languages and his influence on later Medieval/early Renaissance authors. In general, I am interested in the depiction of Medieval Catholic theology in literature, so Dante gives me a wealth of that what with the Commedia and everything. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to study Irish yet, so all the mythology I have been able to read is in translation. I'm hoping to pick up some Irish classes while at ND, which Dr. Buttigieg was supportive of when I spoke with him last summer. I love the stories of Cù Chulainn and how the heroes of that cycle of literature are so flawed. I would love at some point to do some comparative work on the depiction of warrior-heroes in the Ulster Cycle with those in other literary traditions (particularly Anglo Saxon), but I need to get started on that Irish first.