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rheya19

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Everything posted by rheya19

  1. Thank you, sacklunch! I appreciate your generosity. I have pmed you.
  2. Hello! I just finished my third year in my PhD program in early Christian history at UIowa, and I'm preparing for exams in the fall. I am looking for other people to compare reading lists with. My focus is more of the 2nd-4th centuries, bleeding into Late Antiquity but still more interested in pre-Constantine history. Most of my cohort does Late Antiquity, and the general early Christian history reading list that I inherited from them has more Late Antiquity titles than I think I need. My advisor (who is the only one in the department who focuses on early Christian history) is on sabbatical right now and with the quarantine going on too, he is basically MIA. Sigh. He's given me leave to adjust the list as I want to, but I don't really know what is vital to include in early Xty or what is extraneous in Late Antiquity. I also feel like the list has too much Gnosticism, but again I'm not sure. Maybe that's the norm these days. My reading iist (in progress) is on Google Docs, and I am happy to share it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I67MFqOIxzXs-8hFOSeIVk2xGMMjQmtjoCPWq-sCLBA/edit?usp=sharing The first list is the one I'm looking for input on. The other two I have more of a handle on. Does anyone in ancient Christianity or ancient Mediterranean religions have a reading list they would be willing to share? Thank you! Stay safe!
  3. It took me forEVER to write a complete draft of my major seminar paper this semester. I have three others, but those only need to be 12-15 pages and aren't super related to my research interests. But this draft ended up being 26 pages and is the kind of work I want to publish someday. And it's DONE! It took me weeks, but it's DONE! I'm so happy! Next week my colleagues will workshop it with me and help me fix it up real pretty like, and then the semester will be done!
  4. It's possible that the people who were drawn to this panel were people who were in the process of dealing with the kinds of issues the other panelists were talking about still struggling with. As a person who deals with mental health issues too, I feel like our society sends us messages that those who seem positive and optimistic have "successfully" dealt with their problems, which always feels like a moral judgment to me. The audience might have been low-key intimidated by someone who (In their minds) has "pulled themselves up by their boot straps" while they're still struggling to cope. I'm not saying that you in any way projected any of that. I just think that those of us with mental illness are made to feel like we're doing something wrong if we take too long to "succeed" in coping (as if coping is a finite process. LMFAO) I'm just conjecturing based on my own years of self-judgment, so take my ideas with a grain of salt. I'm sure you did a great job, and you don't know that you didn't impact people in the audience who didn't say anything. Keep reaching out.
  5. Oops! I forgot a couple of things in my precis template. Let me try that again: Publication info Purpose Argument Sub arguments Key words (with definitions in your own words) Sources Methods/Strategies Contributions/Evaluation Quotes
  6. My husband is completing his PhD in clinical psychology this spring, and he's been in the reserves for about 8-9 years. It's really hard. I'm not going to lie to you. He started in the National Guard, but the one-weekends-a-month just killed him. You're not always going to be able to spend a full three day weekend away from class work every month--especially between midterms and finals. That being said, his faculty were incredibly understanding and accommodating, but he ultimately transferred to the Air Force Reserve where (as a chaplain) he gives 21 days a year, which he works with his CO to fit into his schedule (usually 5 days around winter break and the rest in the summer.) I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions I might be able to answer. I can even pass them along to my husband.
  7. One of my professors gave me an awesome little precis template to fill out for each title I do for exams. It consists of: Title, author, publishing info: Topic: Main argument: Subarguments: - - - Sources and methodologies: Contributions: 2-3 quotes: She encouraged us to try to keep the precis to just one page (Word document) or two max if the work is particularly long or complex. You can keep them all in a file and print them out to play with (review, group together in different ways, think through) to help you prepare to discuss them in the broad survey--ish kind of way you will need to on your exams. I hope this helps!!
  8. I'll be done with my courses after this semester and can then just focus on studying for my exams and my own research.
  9. First I would research your school's policies on bringing on a second advisor to your dissertation and make sure you're very clear on what the procedure is for doing so. There has to be some policy on the books somewhere. If there is someone in the department that you trust (like a professor or advanced graduate student), talk to them privately and see what they think, if they have any suggestions for getting the help you need. Then set up an appointment to talk to your department chair or department's director of graduate studies and politely suggest that your current advisor is very busy and you need a little bit more help, and wouldn't it be moist convenient for everyone to bring on a second advisor. Use what you've learned about the school's policy to show (again, politely) that your suggestion is totally ok and easy to do. If no one will help you, then you might need to go over the department's head--to the graduate school admissions or graduate union if you have one, and find out what your next options are. When you signed that contract as a graduate student, your school had to grant that it would provide you with any reasonable resource you need to complete your program, and that includes first and foremost an advisor who advises you. In the mess that is departmental politics, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that they are obligated to help you in addition to you being obligated to them, but that's what the contract is for. Good luck!
  10. Are there other ways you could find beauty on your campus? Is there a performing arts center where you could go see live theater or concerts? Are there art displays or venues around that have live music? Maybe you could even try to make some of your own beauty by auditing a visual arts course; I myself am a historian auditing a course in ancient to Medieval calligraphy this semester, and it's a no pressure creative time for me. Good luck! Keep us posted!
  11. Hello! I'm in my second year of my PhD program (religious studies) and have an MA as well. A couple of weeks ago I got an official diagnosis for ADHD. So I'm here to seek out other grad students with ADHD or other challenges and start a thread comparing strategies that help us handle the workload, organize our time, get through readings, write, finish what we start, start what we need to finish, etc. etc. I've realized that I get very overwhelmed by large amounts of information, so I have to take certain preventative measures to not get overstimulated. So when I have a lot of reading to do in one book, I might cover the opposite page of what I'm reading and track the lines that I'm reading with a note card. In general I also do the 25 minute read/5 minute rest thing. I take more notes than I used to and stop after each chapter to sum it up in a few bullet points. I also use a meditation timer on my phone to play a little chime every 1-2 minutes in case my mind starts straying. I've taken great pains to organize my planner and keep a "dump list" to write down the odds and ends I think of when I'm in class so I can jot it down and return to listening. I've gotten really anal about my keeping my planner just-so, but it does give me a sense of structure and direction. What I still need to do is work on a plan for writing my seminar papers. I have FOUR this semester. >_< So I'm meeting with my professors whose writing is clear and organized to see if they can give me any advice. So far I have a general outline structure to follow (Intro, Warrant/Relevance, Opposition, Evidence and Rebuttal/Qualifier, Conclusion). I'm hoping by making tight outlines, I can manage writing more easily. Boo. I'm scared to have to write all these papers. I'm also working with my advisor to create more structure around my comps reading, like weekly deadlines, prioritizing readings, and more frequent check-ins. What are you all doing? At least hanging in there?
  12. If it hasn't been suggested yet, I would contact a couple of programs you might be interested in, and just explain your situation. Tell them the kind of research you want to do and see what they advice. I've been in two religious studies programs (my masters and PhD) who have religious folk or previously-very religious folk on their faculty. You don't get to be a religious studies professor without understanding the complexity of American religion, so I think you'll find them more understanding than you'd expect. Maybe seek out a professor or two who have both MDivs and MAs or PhDs Good luck!
  13. Most schools have career counselors for their grad students. A lot of what they are there to do is to talk you through your options for when you leave the school--whether it is with or without a degree. I would make an appointment with one and see if they can give you a better sense of what to expect if you leave school early. i would also talk to second year students in your program and see what they think of their time there--is it well-spent? Are their tactics for getting what you need out of the program? etc.
  14. University of Iowa has a very good Digital Humanities program, and there are a couple of religious studies professors who do DH. However, I don't know if their Islamic Studies prof, Ahmed Souaiaia, does DH or how open he would be to it. You could email and ask, though.
  15. I applied to Religious Studies programs about 6-7 years after my undergrad. I majored in Asian Studies, spend 5 years in Asia learning Chinese and teaching, and then applied to early Christian history master's programs with no applicable languages, and I got in to a top-tier program. It's all about showing that you understand the field and what you want to study within it and paint your background as a story that has prepared you for this new challenge in unconventional ways that make you a unique and insightful scholar. Basically. Feel free to ask me any questions that you have. I'd be happy to help in anyway I can.
  16. I have a few friends who got their PhDs at UC's Div School. There are serious leadership problems there right now that go beyond these articles, though the Mdiv program is still doing pretty well. If you have any other options for grad school, I'd choose one of those. PM for details, if you want.
  17. When encountering trolls, I try to remind myself that making up fake online identities in order to derail conversations with strangers is likely their only sense of importance or happiness in their lives, at which point I could be the bigger person and feel bad for them, but instead I take a page out of their red-pill books and just don't care.
  18. Emotional appeal is not fallacious. It's human. I could appeal to someone to not yell at someone else because they're hurting that person's feelings, or to support war refugees on the basis of empathy for the refugees' emotional trauma, and those would not be fallacious arguments. Emotion is not necessarily false. It is simply another way of interpreting the world and other people. And the inability to accept others' emotions as reason to treat them with dignity (ie believing they are being discriminated against and are unhappy about it despite not providing you a data set and chart) is neither mature nor healthy.
  19. At my program you have the opportunity to teach intro to composition with your own class of 15-20 students (the university uses grad students to let all undergrads be able to take composition in a smaller class setting.) If you do so, you get a week of teaching orientation before and weekly professional development meetings during your first semester teaching it. Most religious studies grad students are TAs for religious studies courses, though, and training is up to the professor. Sometimes we can TA for professors outside of our departments as well, since we do a lot of interdisciplinary work anyway. After we finish our exams, we can apply to teach a course independently and even suggest our own curriculum. I'm looking forward to designing a course around early Christianity and material culture someday!
  20. In my experience, it's to be expected. I did a two-year MA and am in my first year of a PhD program now. I've definitely had semesters in which I was stimulated, supported, and productive, and ones in which I was just pushing through to the end of the semester. I do hope next year gets better for you. And now that you know the faculty you prefer working with, maybe you can make that work for you as your planning fall semester. Good luck!
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