MastigosAtLarge

I had a 2.91 overall from undergrad, and got into the Boston College and UMD--College Park history MAs. My GREs were 161 Verbal (88%), 153 Math (51%), and 5.5 Writing (98%). Now, I'm going to UC Irvine for Ph.D. on full funding (to be fair, my MA GPA is a 3.85 or something).

The person who visited my advisor was in for Ph.D.

Boston College does not offer tuition remission for MAs anymore, nor health insurance, and my TA stipend was ~$23,000 for MA. But not everyone's given a TA-ship.

I'm not much help, I'm sorry, but could you call or email the department?

The reading strategy I use--taught to be my both my undergrad advisor and my current Masters advisor--is to read the intro, the conclusion, and then the intro and conclusion for each chapter. If you'd like, you can add reading one chapter in full to this list, so that you have more details re: one specific section of the text that you're particularly interested in. At Boston College, I have one book per week per course, and I usually have to submit a book review for each as well. This is the best method I've found. I'm so glad I was taught it as early as undergrad, it let me refine my application.

Re: the earlier discussion about grading, I think it's important to remember that they've earned their grades. Don't go on a power trip, and if you've legitimately not taught them something well enough (more than half of the class doesn't get it) then you need to address that. But if it's on them, do what you can to help them improve moving forward. I also think it's reasonable to evaluate each learner's progress against themselves for future assessments, not against each other. Which is to say I might hold a learner to a higher standard if they earned an A+ on the first exam than another learner who earned a B- on the first exam but has really been putting in work to improve since then. Another micro-tip I have is to grade on a 50 point scale, not a 100 point scale. Which is to say, Fs go in as 50s, not as 0s. Learners can recover from 50s, they can't recover from 0s. You can also make assessments formative for learners who score below a certain threshold, but then be prepared to explain yourself to the B+ leaners re: why they don't have a chance to redo the thing. I definitely wouldn't recommend this for classes larger than like 36. Personally, I'm a fan of keeping all assessments formative, because it allows the learners to focus on the material instead of on their grades.

Some people have egos, and we have no way of knowing how these specific people will react. But presumably, part of the reason you want to work with each of these people is that they're nice to you. If you think they're nice people, we can only assume that if you explain that you regret they won't be your advisor but that you still really want to work with them in the future, that they will be receptive. That's no guarantee, but if you find out that they have bad blood upon hearing the decline, then something would have happened eventually to make them angry.

Crossposting this. I've TA'd five courses, and I've been hired by my department to look into how our professors and TAs respond to learners in distress, and to recommend department-wide change moving forward. My biggest tip is to remember that you are not a psychologist. If you notice any sign that one of your learners is in distress (whether they make a disclosure of sexual violence, suicidal ideation, a suicide plan, disordered eating, etc, OR whether they cry in office hours or send you an anxious email) tell the professor or the department head. Do not tell the learner that it's normal. Do not assume they're just trying to get a higher grade out of you. You're right, OP, that learners are more anxious than ever. The numbers I'm familiar with are that over 8% of undergrads seriously consider suicide and over 51% experience what they call "overwhelming anxiety". Do not take the chance that you, as not the expert, incorrectly evaluate what is going on. You are part of educating the whole learner, and that includes responding to their emotional development, not only their academic needs. And remember, a learner's mental state contributes to their academic performance. But this all also means that it's important to remember that you are not a psychologist. You don't have the resources to pinpoint what's going on, nor provide a learner who really is in crisis with what they need. So inform the people who can help the learner obtain those things, do not assume it's nothing.

Again, tips from having TAd five courses--learners (like everyone else) do not like silence. If you ask a question and everyone's staying quiet, don't cave and answer it yourself. If you stand still long enough (which is to say, 30 seconds to one minute, I'll bet you), someone will speak. This even works when you tell them you're doing it. "I'm going to stand here quietly for one minute, and I bet one of you will say something because the silence will feel awkward". I've done it just that way in class before, and someone always speaks up. Be confident in your own pedagogical abilities and trust your techniques.

I've TA'd five courses, and I've been hired by my department to look into how our professors and TAs respond to learners in distress, and to recommend department-wide change moving forward. My biggest tip is to remember that you are not a psychologist. If you notice any sign that one of your learners is in distress (whether they make a disclosure of sexual violence, suicidal ideation, a suicide plan, disordered eating, etc, OR whether they cry in office hours or send you an anxious email) tell the professor or the department head. Do not tell them that it's normal. Do not assume they're just trying to get a higher grade out of you. Now, when over 8% of undergrads seriously consider suicide and over 51% experience what they call "overwhelming anxiety", do not take the chance that you, as not the expert, incorrectly evaluate what is going on. You are part of educating the whole learner, and that includes responding to their emotional development. But that also means that it's important that you are not a psychologist. You don't have the resources to pinpoint what's going on, nor provide a learner who really is in crisis with what they need. So inform the people who can help the learner obtain those things, do not assume it's nothing.

My advisor had an admitted incoming Ph.D. student visit a few weeks ago, Boston College has released at least some acceptances.

Thanks! Updated with my UC Irvine offer.

I can't access the spreadsheet for some reason? EDIT: I see that you posted updated links, but they seem to have mostly old information. Is that right?

Can now confirm that I'm in at UC Irvine to work with Sharon Block!

Email from Penn that my admissions decision is available, but it's not showing up on my end of the application account... EDIT: Just updated after a few refreshes

Has anyone heard anything from UC Irvine?

YUP, that's my main claim as well. I highly recommend you check out The Origins of the First World War by James Joll and Gordon Martell. They examine a variety of different potential causes as claimed by others, and then examine whether or not they think they're legitimate. They have a really popular chapter called "The Mood of 1912", I believe. It gets reprinted a lot.

If you're going to use Sleepwalkers, be aware of the fact that he likes to victim-blame the Serbs. I took a seminar on WWI. I'm going to post what I thought were the best books we read in that class: James Joll, and Gordon Martel, The Origins of the First World War Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies 1914 to the Present Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 Tammy M. Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, 1914-1918 Susan R. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War Both All Quiet on the Western Front and Storm of Steel were great in terms of cultural history. J. M. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History I'm also going to attach the syllabus for that class, in case it would be useful. Our professor studied at Harvard, and was in the habit of posting books each week that we HAD to read, and like ten others each week that we could read for additional context, so there's an entire host of other books here that you might like, but I can't comment because I didn't read all of the ones he labeled "suggested". He recommended that we read the required one and then two or three "suggested" books a week. (And speaking of Pity of War, you'll see that our professor did make us read it. Oh, god. I do not believe there was one person in the class who thought he should include it for the next class. His economic sections are enlightening, but beyond that, it reminds me of when news channels insist on having two sides to every story, when some stories have six sides and some stories only have one. Check it out before you assign it, definitely. His overall claim is that Britain should have let Germany take over Europe, because they only wanted to be a colonial power too, and they would have had "their time in the sun" is I believe his line, stopped at France, and then Ferguson claims Europe might have seen something like the EU much earlier. Again, I'm not telling you not to assign it. But my thought was that it was contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, and to draw attention, and honestly, I can't think of one person in the class who did not tell our professor that he should take it off the syllabus for next time.) Hist500WWIsyllabus.docx

I totally see what you both are saying, which is why I said *my* adviser, not *all* advisers. And I say this all based on explicit conversations we've had on the topic, and conversations I've had with former grad students of his. Obviously, things may prove to be very different once the year starts, and I recognize that. But at this point, I see *my* adviser specifically as *my* mentor specifically, and that's not to make a comment on all advisers, it's a specific comment about my adviser specifically. And I'm really sorry, Sigaba =(. That sounds horrible, whatever it was that happened.

I'm not going to comment on question 2, as I'm starting this fall myself. But re: question 1, I reached out to all of my POI and read as much work of theirs as I could before the application process, to see how much I could garner of our compatibility so that I was familiar when my application came up. That's obviously behind us, and now we're at the present, where you've already accepted an offer. But I see academia as a constant learning feed each way. I see my adviser as my mentor. Once I had narrowed my schools down to two, I emailed each professor who would be my adviser at each school. I wanted an adviser as excited to work with me as I was to work with them. I do not think you should show up on the first day with no idea what to expect. You have time right now to try and start building that relationship on your own, without your adviser being distracted by undergrads and by the others students she mentors. I think you should write to her, and ask her if she'd be willing to meet with you if you came to campus before classes start. Then, in a closed space with just the two of you, you can talk about research interests, goals, you can ask her questions about her past research, etc. I felt so much more comfortable after I did that with my adviser. He had told one of my undergraduate professors and a former grad student of his own that he was so excited to work with me, but seeing that for myself took away a lot of my anxiety, and now I'm really, really excited for school to start.

I was just at campus two weeks ago, I guess you're the PhD student he mentioned was starting! It's you, me, and two other PhD students! Small group of us.

Early North American social history! My thesis was on the commutation of execution sentences for pregnant women convicted of witchcraft in 1692 Salem. Owen Stanwood is my adviser. What about you?

On closer examination, he also wrote a book about gender and patriarchy in late colonial Mexico.

I think Steve Stern and a lot of others are still at Wisconsin. He's more of a Latin Americanist, I'm not sure where they are specifically for BL.

I declined UMD--College Park for MA. The professors were perfect for me, but I was worried about the size of the program and the fact that they said I had basically no chance of getting any funding. Boston College, where I accepted, gives TAs tuition remission and a yearly stipend, and the program is really small (they accept ~6 every year), so those who want to TA have the chance.