Silabus

I will tell you about it! And I hope you go to A&M! I'm still waiting to hear from schools but...I feel a strong pull in A&M's direction.

Ohhhh, well I know they're willing to cover more for international flights. I'm not sure how much though. And don't worry about your transportation or hotel, they are covering the hotel as well as driving us around to events!

My family is reading my MA thesis this summer... I will get back to all of you with the results. xD

I'm with youuuuu! I've been waiting to hear from Brandeis FOREVER! I really, really, really, want to work with John Plotz! I pray both of us receive our acceptance emails tomorrow!

Hola everyone! I saw that @Wyatt's Terps made a similar topic like this for the OSU Visit Day so I thought I would make one too for the A&M visit day on the 24th of this month! I'm planning on going and I'd love to chat with folks before the event! I'm super psyched about it! I'm flying in Thursday, I'll get there around 6pm. I'm also staying an extra day, until Sunday, because any plane fights I could take on Saturday would just give me a long 16+ hour layover anyway. It sounds like all of our activities are on Friday so if anyone else is hanging out on Saturday, let me know! Maybe we can go do something!

Ha ha! I did get in! I was a month late. I got a very nice email saying they'd love to include a topic paper on Translations. (I was talking about the fact that the first Shakespeare play to be translated to Japanese was Julius Caesar.) I mean it could have been a number of things I wouldn't know about, like they didn't have a lot of interest, someone dropped out, ect. But it was fun! Moral of the Story: If you do nothing you will get back nothing. It doesn't hurt to try and show interest---they will never dislike you for that!

What I wish I'd done better: Spent more time on the SOP. What was I really trying to say in there? I'm not sure, reading over it. I explained what my current MA thesis was over, my general research interests, then talked about my possible dissertation topic. I didn't tailor it to any specific program but made a one-size-fits-all SOP. Maybe that wasn't a smart idea? On the other hand, I don't know that I had time to write 11 different SOP's. *shrug* Writing Sample: It could have been more fleshed out, more polished, but I liked the argument I made in it and I found the essay interesting to me. That says to me that I picked the right WS to reflect my interests and writing style--but it could use more polish. I'm also going to a conference with it at the end of April so maybe I'll get some even better ideas after that. Those two things, I think, would have made me a stronger applicant. As to the GRE stuff, eh, my scores were so-so. 163v/140q/5W with a Subject Score that I worked my tail off to get of 680. But with those scores I didn't get into any Ivy Leagues. However, I too, am of the opinion that all you can do is give it your best shot. As long as you know you put your all into those applications, that's the best you can hope for. I know that I put as much as I could into my applications! But yeah, for anyone applying to schools next year: Work your ass off on the SOP and WP. I think those are the two major components. Don't worry so much about the GRE stuff, just make sure you get it done! I don't know what to say about contacting the POI's. I see it as being kind of hammy. So I assume departments see it as being hammy. But it seems to work for some folks!

You've heard from all of them?! Oh no! It'll be okay!

I'm not sure what particular programs you're referring to. There are certainly a number of schools that don't require an MA for admission, however there are also a number of schools that do require an MA for admission. Most of the schools I applied to for my PhD required an MA, it says so on their admissions page. There's also some argument to be made about the Admissions Results Page and how it might not be a good gauge of what schools are looking for but if you do look at it, quite a few people who get accepted mention holding MAs. So to say the statements "simply aren't true" is...well...simply not true. I'd also like to point out that mine and @Wyatt's Terps were responding to @natalielouise who holds a BA, didn't make it into PhD programs, but did get into an MA program. We, and others, were telling her that it definitely doesn't hurt go get an MA---it can really help her chances in the future!

I gotta say, good on you for applying to PhD's out of your BA. I did NOT have that level of confidence. I only applied to MA programs. I got into all of them, but part of me will always be wondering now: What if? Anyway, what everyone is saying is right. PhD programs these days seem to almost require an MA---so many folks applying have them. This means they have more experience in the classroom, they've been writing longer, some of them have teaching experience already, and they've already been in the grad school environment. My advice, if Villanova offers funding, take it and go for it. If they don't offer funding...ehhhh...maybe it's a good idea to just bide your time for a year and really perfect all of your application materials? I hate to see people pay for their MA. But I know it's also hard to think about what the heck you're going to do for a year!

I did that once! I finished writing this paper for my Shakespeare class on Julius Caesar. I just happened to find out there was a whole conference on that play! It was past the deadline but I was like: Fuck it, doesn't hurt to try. And sent it off.

Person posting about acceptance to Brandeis MA program. Good for them! When are they getting to me about my PhD application? It's either this week or next week. I am dying here. Meanwhile the schools that did accept me are sending me emails and breathing down my neck, it feels like. Here I am still holding out!

Oh good. Awesome! And congratulations!

Maybe that one Brandeis acceptance was meant to mess with me? And the Florida State one? I hope so. I haven't heard from either of them! *headdesk*

My official acceptance letter came in yesterday. It was mailed to my home instead of to my P.O. Box where I'm at school. Weird. Anyway my grandfather took it upon himself to open it. He called me yesterday like: "This is a great deal! You're going to get health insurance!" xD Thanks, can you send that to me?!

Ha ha! They ARE depressing aren't they? I guess I got to them when I was in my mid-teens so I didn't find them depressing...or I just didn't think about it. But yeah they all do die! I love both of those stories too! If I had to pic though I'd probably go with you on Oisin. And yeah, the pronunciations get me. I imagine I actually butcher them. I've mostly been treating this stuff like my own pet project. I haven't been able to use any of my research in a course because the professor has never read anything. So this information you've giving me is great! Like, I actually had no idea people disregard works and scholarship of non-Irish people. xD That's going to make it hard for me to get involved. And I'll have to get my hands on those two books. My hope is that I can talk my PhD program into funding some trips to Ireland to study. Like I'd love to go to Trinity to study for a while. We shall see on that end.

Ha ha ha! I'm the only one in my family who would even bother reading a book! I get my grandfather history books, he manages to get maybe halfway but then he's done. Except for...The People's Account of the American Revolution. He loved that one. Ugh! I should have been born in Ireland I tell you. Getting told those stories as children sounds AWESOME! So I defer to Fianaigecht by Kuno Meyer. It's all the original poems and stories with explanations by Meyer. So far all of my Fianna stuff has been a pet project, I've yet to find a professor who is interested in them. My favorite pop culture work is the .Hack series, it's an anime about people who get stuck in an online MMO. One of the characters, when he isn't playing the .Hack online game, is a translator. And after witnessing something amazing in the game, writes a poem on one of the stories: Damage done to the evil shaped one, too massive to compare. Balmung of the Azure Sky, Orca of the Azure Sea, together they gallop at full speed. In the depth of my bosom, your names shall remain. You are none other than the descendants of Fianna. I'll leave a link about it here in case you want to investigate on your own. http://dothack.wikia.com/wiki/Descendants_of_Fianna

Oh, I fudged that. It was "Measure for Measure," not "The Merchant of Venice." You've both got great stories! It seems like we've all had similar experiences with friends and family. Dracula! That's funny! I remember my mother once tried hiding all of my World of Warcraft novels because she was convinced they would "poison" me. However, she just hid them under her nightstand so I snuck into her room and took them back--only I hid them even better in my room. xD I too, am a very big fan of epic fantasy. You know, actually, I'm a huge fan of the Knights of Fianna and pretty much any pop culture creation that gives a nod to them.

@Caien Ah, you know that's true! Part of the reason it takes so long is the extra time spent teaching. Hmmm, now I'm wondering how this woman got her PhD in two years... @Yanaka Yours too? My grandparents too are thinking to themselves, ohhhh, you know...we could move over to where you're going to school. And I'm over here like: Do what you want. But I'm getting my own apartment! And for both of you, I can add one more story. Last semester I was taking a Shakespeare course and we were reading "The Merchant of Venice." I think two days prior I'd gotten into a conversation with my mother over the phone about transsexual people and I ended up telling my mother this long explanation about how the whole issue was based around this system our society has created when it comes to a person's sex, that a person might not feel the need to even be transsexual if we didn't have all these caveats about how men and women should dress, act like, do, ect. I think I also mentioned at one point that she was just a little too judgmental. Anyway, two days later I had to call her about something and she asked me about the class that I just got out of and I told her the overall plot of the play. Her response: "You know, I think all of this weird stuff you read in college warps your thinking." I didn't even know how to respond to her, I just started laughing.

@Caien That's hilarious! Joining a cult! Everyone has crazy parents then. Ha ha! Oh that's funny too! Well in the UK they do have shorter timespans to get degrees. I looked into it once upon a time. US degrees take a longer time. And you know, now that you mention it, I remember telling my family briefly that PhD's take about 5 years or more and they were shocked. "That's a long time!" I just tried explaining to them that it was like having a career already, I was just also in training simultaneously. I think for people who aren't really in academia, the whole system is bizarre and confusing. You're lucky your family isn't like my friend's family. Her mother used to call the school, call the president of the university, and make demands. I remember at the end of her undergrad she said: "The admins all glare me down! It's all my mom's fault!" It was too funny.

Ha ha! It's such a coincidence for you to use an engineering example @orphic_mel528. I just got done talking to a friend from my undergrad (She's finishing up her last semester) on the phone. She was saying how much she loves the people in the town. Apparently she ran into an older veteran man who saw the school shirt she was wearing and during their conversation he asked about what she was majoring in. She said Education, she wants to teach young kids. His answer, she said, made her smile, "We engineers may build the world, but teachers build the minds that build the world." You might be right. I think the work that teachers, professors, deal in is just not in the visible realm---unless we write books or articles. Our real work is in the minds we build and the ideas we create. Those things aren't as tangible as engineering but they aren't any less either. Both professions are equally important to society, they just work in different ways and with different results. But because our results occur more intrinsically and in the ether, it's hard for people to see the work we've done unless they are the actual benefactor of it. I'd be willing to bet that every person who doesn't see the significance of academia and wanting to be a professor has a teacher in the past that they have fond memories of, who taught them something they continue to use and reflect on. That's our significance. As to the question you've presented us with: Just curious: What have the reactions been from family/friends/whoever regarding your PhD plans? I can echo what most people have already said. No one in my immediate family earned a college degree, maybe they went to college a bit, but dropped out. That's mostly because I come from a fairly rural community and it's difficult for anyone from our area to be successful in college. When I shipped out to go to college I was given a hard time because I had a very distinct accent, I would have to go home on the weekends to help my family back at home (we have a fairly large ranch), and I was more conservative than my peers. If my life as a college student was anything like the family members preceding me, I can understand why they quit it. I was made to feel shame about my accent, where I was from, and my personal philosophies. What I quickly discovered on that latter part was that I'd merely only been exposed to certain ideas and philosophies, but, conversely, my peers were criticizing my limited understanding with their own limited understanding. (I think in psychology they have a term for the fact that opposing groups usually have mirrored thoughts on each other.) Maybe that's why I got so into my studies, for a greater understanding of the world around me. Anyway, back to the point. I got my BA and my family was really proud of me--but I'd already told them I'd applied to MA programs and wanted to keep going. They were upset about that point. They wanted me to get a job, support myself, in all honesty they were just worried about my well-being. I remember at one point my grandfather jerked his finger at me and said: "You knew when you picked that 'English' major that you'd have to do this!" He felt like I'd been deceitful. After that came the, "We aren't going to be able to help you with more school. We've helped you out all through your bachelors. If you want to do this, you're on your own." So they thought they'd effectively derailed any of my plans and hamstrung me into teaching high school English. Until I showed them that I'd been accepted into MA programs with funding, tuition waivers, stipends, teaching experience, the whole sha-bang. That same grandfather offered to go with me to visit a school I was interested in and I think he had an experience he'd never forget, he got to meet the dean of the Liberal Arts department at that school. We got to talk to the dean because, for some reason, no professor from the English department could be bothered to show up for the recruitment day. I didn't end up going to that school (see above comment about no English professor bothering to show up), but since that point him and the rest of my family have been supportive. As far as PhD stuff goes, by now my family is supportive. My mother and father are supportive and, I think, proud of me. My grandparents are also supportive. My grandmother thinks I'm wasting my time, I should be getting married and having children, and she still doesn't understand how "funding" works or what it means. My grandfather, on the other hand, has surprised me. He's turned around. He told me: "You don't need to worry about marriage. You'll get there. A career is more important than a woman, trust me." Which, maybe there's some chauvinism there but it's coming from a really caring place and I appreciate that---it also helped me because where I'm from I'm one of the only men who are not married or about to be married. So that's been nice. They are excited I got into a PhD program. The thing I'm most annoyed with is the pressure to go to Texas A&M because it's closer to them. They are also convinced that if I move somewhere up north where it snows I'm going to get into a car accident and die. They're just convinced of that.

I gotta echo @HumanCylinder. I don't really suffer from Imposter Syndrome. I think the reason for that is I don't read other theories or listen to other folks' presentations and compare it to my own work. What I'm doing is very specialized to my particular set of interests and schools---so as far as I'm concerned no one is as good as me at my own scholarship. Maybe that comes off pretentiously, but oh well. The point I'm trying to make here is the same as that old adage about the fact that there's always going to be someone richer than you, better looking, smarter, yadda yadda, but it's self-defeating to compare yourself to others. Just do your own thing, the way you can make it work. To quote Dorian Corey: "If you shoot an arrow up and it goes real high, hooray for you." Ultimately, you're in literary studies for you. Because you find it interesting and worth putting your time into. In that way, you're the same as everyone else, you're just as qualified as everyone else. Taking yourself too seriously is one of the least serious things you can do.

I've had it dead-set in my mind that I'm going to be a very prominent Victorianist in the future. So I've developed a strategy of taking whatever literary theories I enjoy playing around with and using them on 19th century British novels. My WS was over Thackeray's Vanity Fair, specifically looking at the character Amelia and the side plot going on in the novel, known as "the piano plot." In it, I use John Plotz's example of Thing Theory having to do with sentimentality and how it makes an object more than just an object to people, coupled with Baudrillard's Simulation Theory. What I end up coming out with is that by Amelia using the piano to cause a public display of her emotions, the piano becomes not just a part of Amelia but an extension of her---the two become inextricable from one another, especially in the eyes of the other characters viewing her at the piano. This is also backed up by various looks at the history of the piano, about Victorian women/girls and the piano, and whatnot. It was really fun to write! Edit: Oddly, for someone who wants to study Victorian Masculinity, my papers are always leaning toward talking about how women subvert male authority by playing into the expectations placed upon them as women. By playing their roles very well, and very shrewdly, they actually end up controlling their male counterparts rather than the other way around.

This might be cheating...but, I'll tell you what I did! For my MA we have to meet a language requirement and there's two ways to do it: 1.) Pass a Foreign Language Test through the Master's Program in the language of your choosing, translating 3 pages of a critical article in that foreign language. 2.) Make a B in the second semester course of a second year language class. I chose option 2 and I took it my second semester in grad school. I thought to myself: I could take a foreign language course every semester and take the one I need to take my last semester in my MA...but...I don't really have time. So I just decided to go ahead and go for the course I needed, thinking if I didn't do well enough I could just take it again the next year. However! Living in the southwest most of my life, I'm surprisingly good at Spanish! I made an A in the course! So you could try something like that. If you just need to make a B or higher in some foreign lit class or something like the language course I took, just keep trying to take the same class over and over until you make the right grade. I mean that's probably not the "correct" answer to give...but it's an option.

I don't know how helpful my post is going to be...but I want to contribute! I always buy cheap matching 70 cent journals with folders. However, I never really take many notes in them. I've got what folks call hyperthymesia. I can remember specific days of my life and sort of relive them like I'm watching a movie play. So when I'm in a lecture I just sit at the front of the room and pay close attention to the professor. I don't really take any notes. Maybe I jot down a parallel idea I've had or something, but that's about it. When I was growing up it was more of a pain because I had no control over my perception of things, I'd mentally be distracted thinking about something that was bothering me in the middle of a class so then when I tried to remember what happened that day I'd just get led down this rabbit hole of memories about what was bothering me, how it all started, all the other days that I'd had similar thoughts. Anyway! Training myself and maturing a bit more emotionally has allowed me to hone in on this a little more. I guess that's not really all that helpful to your note taking. Maybe my piece of advice is to remind you that it's important to not get so wrapped up in your note taking that you miss making your own connections? I'm not sure.