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skydancer

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Everything posted by skydancer

  1. skydancer
    Congratulations!!! It must feel absolutely incredible to get such wonderful news at the penultimate hour!
  2. skydancer
    We DC-folk shop at the grocery stores that are close by, like most people do! We pay attention to prices and most of us are not coastal elites that can shop weekly at Whole Paycheck ;). There are Targets within the city limits, but the lines are such that it's not always great to shop there for normal groceries. We have Safeways (some are better than others), Giant (great in the suburbs, awful produce within the city), Trader Joe's, Whole Foods. I usually shop at TJ and Safway, and I'm in the Columbia Heights/Petworth area. It's all going to change depending on which neighborhood you live in - it's worth google mapping the time to grocery stores from any apartment you're looking at. City grocery shopping can be a bit different, especially if you don't have a car. I'll get two large paper bags full of groceries on my way home from work and hop on the bus the rest of the way. Or occasionally I'll do a bigger batch of shopping and get a ~$5 uber home with my groceries. Do be careful with this though, and get a store employee to let undo the automatic wheel lock so you can take the grocery cart to the curb! Target is really awful about this so I try not to shop there much. City stores usually lock cart wheels once they pass the exit so people don't steal. Sometimes I'll do Amazon Pantry for heavy staples that I don't want to cart around. People WILL go out of the city to get to Costco or H-Mart, both of which are up just a bit north of the DC line. That's when you and a friend share a car and everyone loads up on non-perishables for months. It's a pain though, so most people don't go very often.
  3. skydancer
    I'll be going to UBC Vancouver! I ended up choosing it over Columbia, the Courtauld, and Tufts - it didn't start out my top choice, but I ended up choosing it over everywhere else I applied except for Williams, where I was waitlisted. The funding is great, it's a wonderful city with a dynamic arts scene, and the professors are all heavy weights who seem genuinely excited about their students. The current students I talked to are all really happy with the program and job/phd placements. So, I'd definitely encourage future applicants to take a look at Canada!
  4. skydancer
    Another word of warning about the auction house programs - I went to an info session by Sotheby's a year or two ago, and part of their program had a pie chart of where their grads ended up. The sections were basically, major galleries, curatorial museum work, auction houses. And....the chart added up to 100%. So I asked the rep if this statistical info was based on only people who got jobs in the field, only people who responded to the survey, or all graduates - and they couldn't answer but promised to look it up. I very followed up on this by email, since the program sounded interesting, and I received a very hostile reply before never receiving a response from them again. I'd advise anyone contacting them to look carefully at the numbers in their program advertisements and remain skeptical of anything that sounds too good to be true. On the other hand, one of the people who worked for my college's art gallery went to Christie's and enjoyed her time in the program and got a job in an academic art museum. So, it's not a worthless program.
  5. skydancer
    Hi! I had this same dilemma, and I'm sure there are tons of opinions out there. I've heard that a curatorial MA can help for some people but can also be seen as limiting, since you can acquire a lot of curatorial knowledge through work experience. It seems to be preferable to acquire deep knowledge of the period of art history that you would want to curate. Then, maybe find a program that is strong in curatorial studies and take classes in that department, find internships, curate a show with artists from the school. Pick an MA where it's possible to do an "unofficial minor" in curatorial studies! I've chosen the MA in Art History at UBC* partially for that reason - they have a critical curatorial studies department at which I can take classes, opportunities to work with galleries around Vancouver and on campus, and still offers an absolutely amazing array of faculty who are strong in my areas of interest and a department culture of strong engagement with critical theory. (*For those who were interested, Williams was not very helpful except for basically saying admission was possible but unlikely. UBC upped their offer, they had a deadline, and I love them! I'm done!)
  6. skydancer
    I know, I don't want to ask and them be like "oh well she has an offer let's just reject her so she can make a decision" instead of keeping me around in case things pan out. Because My mind is currently conjuring up that scenario side by side with the fairy tale "omg wait we totally meant to accept you with piles and piles of money" response. I'll keep you updated!
  7. skydancer
    Thank you, that's what I thought! Do you happen to know if it's best to email the admin people, email the DGS, or call? I know it's acceptable at this point but it *feels* so rude and like there should be very specific etiquette for doing this.
  8. skydancer
    Does anyone have any experience contacting Williams to ask for an application update? They seem to send out rejections pretty late, and I just want to know now so I can hurry up and get uncomplicatedly excited about one of my other offers. Or to know if there's still a slight chance of admittance and that I should ask for an extension to decide! On that note, does anyone have experience asking Canadian schools for such extensions?
  9. skydancer
    You might not get a response from such an inquiry, but asking is certainly not prohibited. I know of at least a few people who asked for recommendations to improve their application and who received constructive, helpful feedback. They also received generic responses on 'fit' or other factors outside of their control. Still, I have one friend who received specific feedback on her personal statement and how certain aspects of her application needed to be addressed, such as a shift in academic focus, or suggestions for a writing sample that better fit an intended course of study. Give yourself a couple days to process and cool off a bit (as in, make sure you're calm enough to not start crying on the phone when you receive criticism - this is an emotional time!), and reach out to see if you can talk about ways to improve your application for next year.
  10. skydancer
    It's such a huge decision! I've found that weighing significant but not insurmountable cons from both leading offers to be remarkably confusing. It's the age-old conflict of good financial package and good academics vs ok finances and great academics. I'm clearly leaning towards the latter option, but it feels quite risky.
  11. skydancer
    Is anyone else finding that their priorities and even research interests have shifted due to the entire application process? In December, I wouldn't have dreamed of turning down the Courtauld, and now I'm leaning towards doing so and it's not even that hard of a decision. I just want more time, more potential paths of inquiry, and more a bit less financial risk. And to think that at the beginning of this process, it was probably my second choice! Anyone else finding their decision making process going differently than expected?
  12. skydancer
    I've never heard of anyone getting funding from Columbia for an MA/MODA, unfortunately. One of my undergrad professors also seemed a bit hesitant about the program due to mixed reports from other students who've gone through it. Still, it's Columbia, and it would be an extremely tempting offer if the debt were closer to, say, $50k and not $150k.
  13. skydancer
    Kinda shocked that there's only one Williams admit and one Williams waitlist up right now, but, I'm guessing that signals rejections for the rest of us who haven't heard. Congrats to those who got in!
  14. skydancer
    Any other UBC admits here? While my funding covers tuition and not living expenses, I'm surprised at how exceedingly fond I've become of this program! It almost snuck into my application file and I'm unexpectedly over the moon and falling more in love with the program every day. Really, I think only a scholarship at Williams (and maybe Tufts) would beat it out now.
  15. skydancer
    If you check the results board and search for Williams, it will show that the first round of acceptances usually come out within the first ten days of March. Of course, acceptances continue to trickle in as the first round of people decline, but that's the general timeframe.
  16. skydancer
    Does anyone have any thoughts/feelings about the University of Oregon's MA program? I'm one of the admits and while the research fit is pretty perfect, I'm having some trouble discerning the general reputation of their program and where their MA grads end up. Feel free to PM me if you'd like!
  17. skydancer
    Congrats to all the admits today!! I shouldn't be too too anxious now as I'm applying to masters programs and not phds. The plan is to get a masters, work for a few years, and go back or not as my career demands and interests focus. Right now there are too many subjects I'm interested in for me to pick a PhD program! Still, there were a couple places that had released some masters acceptances by now and I'm ready to have a response or two while I wait for my top choice programs to respond in early-mid March. (I'd love to hear back from the Courtauld soon, ack! ...but only if it's positive.....) So, it's funny you ask for those books. I just went to a talk last night at the Holocaust Museum, with six writers dealing with the inheritance of trauma-memory. They spoke about post-memory, non-archival memory, and their searches for people lost to fascism. Quiet Americans by Erika Dreifus is a collection of short stories set during World War II and inspired by her grandfather's moments. Paper Love by Sarah Wildman deals with her search for her grandfather's true love, whom he had to leave behind in Warsaw, and There Was and There Was Not by Meline Toumani grapples with the Armenian genocide, Turkish denial thereof, and what that means for her as an Armenian-American. If you want a full novel, The Sympathizer or The Refugees by Thiet Van Nguyen just won tons of awards, and Han Kang's new book Human Acts (she wrote The Vegetarian which won the International Booker Prize and I would highly recommend for magical surrealism and subtle, disturbing feminism) explores the ramifications of a violent student uprising in South Korea, and is a very slim novel that you could get through quickly.
  18. skydancer
    Does anyone else feel like the results process is just slightly delayed from previous years? I honestly wonder if the national turmoil resulting from cheeto-mussolini delayed some preliminary readings and committee meetings. Or maybe I'm just paranoid and looking for more things to blame on our political state. Anyways, it's been quiet here! How's everyone holding up? What are you reading now? What's the best exhibition you've seen recently? I'd like to give a shout out to the Art of the Qur'an at the Freer|Sackler, an especially relevant exhibition these days, and stunningly beautiful.
  19. skydancer
    I did some work on new media art in undergrad, and while I'm not entirely sure that's what I want to solely focus on, that's part of what I want to study. (I'm torn between new media art and feminist art histories of modernism and the avant-gardes.) Did you apply to Oregon? I love Kate Mondloch's work but I'm worried about their record for job and PhD placements. I also applied to terminal masters programs, not PhDs.
  20. skydancer
    In case anyone else is wondering - I emailed Middlebury regarding the Kress Fellowship, and they said announcements should go out next week. So if you haven't heard back from the other fellowships, don't lose hope quite yet!
  21. skydancer
    Another Mahler lover here! (I actually got to sing in his 8th Symphony once, that was incredible.) Dvorak and Stravinsky are other classics - if you like opera, you should listen to Rusalka. When I'm feeling anxious or angry, virtuoso violin concertos tend to be perfect! I'd really recommend the Ronda Capriccioso by Saint-Saens and Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D major. For another rebel who's less, hm, vigorously emotive, you should listen to Erik Satie. He's the one who composed the music for Parade!
  22. skydancer
    Yo anyone else side-eyeing that crazy detailed Courtauld scholarship application they emailed out today? They want full bank and credit card statements for three months! I feel like they're going to look at how much Thai food I've ordered and how much money I spent on fancy dresses in December and just decide I deserve no scholarship money at all.
  23. skydancer
    You should post those results in the results page - be honest, it's for posterity! Then the next round of applicants can drown in anxiety right around this time when they see it's possible to receive results this early.
  24. skydancer
    Hey guys, finally coming out of lurker territory to join in the anxiety-waiting game - fingers crossed for everyone here! Anyone else having major application list FOMO? I keep getting these flashes of terror that my life is ruined because I didn't apply to this one school that might not have been a good fit anyways :D. YA novels are fantastic distractions, the more ludicrous the better! Arboreal, I just started the Throne of Glass series, which for some reason expects us to believe that the captain of the royal guard for a tyrant is a romantic 22 year old who's never killed anyone? What are you reading?
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