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rimeroyal

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Everything posted by rimeroyal

  1. I'm officially shut out this cycle! Oh well, my list was just three long shots, and the rejections could have been worse, so I don't feel too bad. Just as well, in a lot of ways, but I you could probably say that's just sour grapes on my part. Glad for y'all who did get in! Seeya next cycle.
  2. I took a gap year between my BA and the MA I'm in right now, and all I did was work and save money. Honestly, even if I hadn't had to work to keep a roof over my head, I'm convinced that's the best thing I could have done with my time. Get some working experience, build friendships, figure out time management on your own, then go back to school with a better grip on how things look on the other side of the 'academy wall'. The downside was that I had to work so much I didn't have time to do stuff that could contribute to an academic career. I'm one reply away from having another gap year, which is fine, but this time around I'm gonna make a concerted effort to get Latin and some French down and try sending out some of my existing papers to publishers. I'll have time to deal with that kind of grueling, tedious stuff then, but I don't wanna stress over publishing while I'm working on a Master's thesis. Casually keeping up contact with POIs at prospective unis is good, too. More than a few "hey I like your work, what do you think about X" conversations have turned into "hey you should apply next cycle" conversations.
  3. I applied for the Toronto's CMS PhD, but they offered me a spot MA that I turned down. But then again, I'm not sure how the PhD/MA decision order works up in Canada. Schools in the States usually do PhD offers then MA offers, but I saw a bunch of MA offers from UBC at the end of February and absolutely nothing yet on their PhD front. Last one I'm waiting on. I wonder that a lot about Medieval Studies vs English/History. I'd imagine part of it depends on your CV. Two people could go into the same CMS and one could come out with a few papers on editing theory and the other with work in urban economies. But the field is niche enough that there's not much data that lines up with it on big lists and stuff. One idea could be to bring it up with your person of interest at the given program. Data on where alumni ended up would be good, too.
  4. Ulgh, just got my McGill rejection. It was a nice and encouraging letter, but still, it was my unofficial #1, so I can't say I'm not disappointed. And Toronto offered me a spot in their CMS MA instead of PhD, which was a really nice surprise, but even if it were funded, I'm already in the middle of an MA for the same subject. Just waiting to hear back from UBC now, but since that's the end of my short list, I'm gonna start preparing for the year as if I've already got a rejection. Huge bummer, but hey, next cycle I'll have three more papers, three conferences, and a dissertation under my belt! Cheers to everyone who made it in this cycle!
  5. First thing to consider is that an MFA is already a terminal degree, so it might be good to ask yourself whether you absolutely do feel like it's best to spend the next 4-5 years doing a PhD. Back at my undergrad, there was a CW MFA instructor as well as a CW professor with a PhD, and there wasn't much difference, in terms of status in the department. The only difference I noticed was that the PhD seemed to have a better grip on the market and teaching students how to handle it, but I think that's more reflective of the person rather than the degree. If you stick to CW, think hard about whether those 4-5 years are worth investing instead of hitting the job market and using that time to get settled there. That said, lit and CW are totally different fields, both in teaching and what they do. CW teaches workshops and organizes academic writing groups; some of what they do sounds like your interests--for example, the CW folks here in Wales did a series of teleconferences last semester talking about experimental poetry as it relates to ecology and brought on some guest speakers who are published poets who mess with translation, etc. As far as I know, most of us in lit don't do much creative work on a professional level, we mostly stick to our subject material and bring up new ways to look at it. Then again, I'm a medievalist, so even our purest "lit" people do stuff that looks totally different from, say, the postmodernists. I knew a professor who was doing research on trauma and war stories, and some of the lit theory specialists study experimental writing, but it's all critical work, less output in the sense CW folks do it.
  6. I'm in a one-year MA in the UK, and I think it's got its ups and downs. I won't lie, it's really fast-paced, but in some ways that forces you to structure time and work independently better, which is nice if you have PhD plans. I don't think we're structured the same way Canada does it; we have 2-3 classes a semester that meet once a week, and our only marks each semester are the final papers, so we really have a lot of freedom as far as what we study, as long as we do it well. Then again, we also don't teach. The 'free' time is nice for things like brushing up on Latin or manuscript work. I'm helping with a conference, and I don't feel like it's a gigantic drain on time. On the other hand, I do feel like there's a lot I'm missing out on in the classroom that I'm expected to know but don't. Like, we did a class on medieval music and the lecturer was shocked when she realized none of us knew how monastic daily life was structured or even how the liturgy worked, and it kinda felt like she was going over 'old material' to explain it to us, even though we'd never been in a situation to read over that ourselves. But that's also part of why you spend a lot more time with your advisor when you can; any time I ask about a subject, they're happy to give me a pretty big bibliography on it, if it's on their radar. So in short, it's a crash course, but it sounds a lot like what PhD life is like, so I don't regret it at all! Plus, the year saved is nice. And yeah, I haven't heard from any of the picks on my short list either. UoT's medieval PhD, McGill's and UBC's English PhD. Feels like an eternity compared to US programs, but the past few years make it seem like this is about the time Canadian programs start giving out decisions, so it seems normal.
  7. How about "Grendel Has a Mother but He Wants a Daddy?" Everywhere but one place, I used the paper I gave at my first conference on one of Thomas Hoccleve's minor poems. He calls out the rebel John Oldcastle for being a heretic and tells him to come back to the fold while he's still got a chance, but I argued that it's more instructive about Hoccleve calling out Oldcastle for being a bad friend to Henry V. The two were really chummy back when the king was young Prince Harry, and we have evidence that once Oldcastle was officially accused of heresy, Henry V really dragged his feet doing anything about it. Hoccleve was on the fringe of that literary circle Chaucer and a bunch of heretic knights were a part of, so I argue that he was intimate enough with that crowd that he'd be able to comment on it and have it resonate with Henry. It served me really well when I was applying for MAs, so I figured "don't fix it if it ain't broke!" The other paper I sent in was on a newly-discovered copy of the Davies Chronicle that features the complete reigns of Richard II and Henry IV with a very interesting account of the Great Rising--one that's practically sympathetic to the rebels, since it copies almost everything from the Eulogium...except for any mention of John Wyclif, oddly, which is what the paper's trying to figure out. I think it's because the Yorkist who wrote it was just better at populist propaganda.
  8. I've never been anywhere that would look down on jeans for students. In class I'm almost always in jeans and a flannel rolled-up at the sleeves. Most of the lecturers I know dress at least one step above the students--usually somewhere in the "business casual" range. I did know one guy who obsessively wore a tie every day, saying he wanted work-time to "feel different" from everything else, which I guess I get. When they put me in a classroom I'll go for nice jeans, a button-down, and a pullover, unless someone tells me to. I might dress up a little more for a conference, but only if it's a fancy atmosphere.
  9. I don't know about usually, but I know it does happen. One or two on my list had a checkbox for letting your app get forwarded to other departments, and one faculty contact advised applying to Medieval Studies specifically, since they can have more control over who they take in (i.e. they don't have to make room for non-medieval specialists). I know Toronto does it because they're firm about their Latin/French/German requirements, so it can be for specific things, too.
  10. Congrats to the UBC crowd! Still waiting to hear from them, but I'm not holding my breath. Good to know responses are finally going out this though! ^^
  11. What @loganondorf wrote is right on the money. I can vouch for that mostly being a good strategy for schools over here in the EU too. Only things I would add are to make sure you ask if they're accepting grad students in your field specifically (won't go into detail, but that's burned me before). Other than that, my usual format was "Hi I'm rimeroyal, was wondering if you're accepting new students, I've worked on X and I'm interested in continuing with Y and Z, and since you're a specialist in Y I was wondering if you wanna some magic." I usually include a disclaimer like "If not, do you know anyone else in the department who might jive with me?" kinda thing. I've gotten answers ranging from really enthusiastic replies to handoffs to other faculty to one or two who admitted the whole uni wouldn't be the best place for that, but even they gave me a short list of different places to try. As far as tone, I've learned since coming to a UK grad school that my email tone is apparently really informal, in that I say stuff like "Good morning!" or "Hope the semester's going well," etc. Personally I can't stand stiff emails, and my impulse is to try to be friendly and open with your potential advisors rather than risking coming off like a really formal stick in the mud, but I've had other grad students in my cohort say I should be a little more formal. I should mention that it didn't seem to have a bad impact on what replies I got (opposite, in fact), but make of it what you will.
  12. In medieval studies, my program has us doing 2-3 sources (which could be anywhere from a short book to a 10k line poem) and 5-6 scholarly articles a week, on average. It varies by class, though; my load this semester is different thanks to a paleography class, so sub one of those sources from just reading to transcribing. But yeah, period will make it vary wildly. In the UK, we have a little more freedom with how we structure our time since we only meet once a week, but that also means we have to have a lot ready to talk about in each class. Those reading loads were pretty common in the first half of the semester, but toward the end, most people I knew (me included) cut back on class reading to make room for finals reading. For me at least, reading is a lot more time-consuming than the writing. I can fire off a full paper in a day, but only after weeks of reading at my snail's pace.
  13. Are Canadian PhDs usually a little later than US ones? Only one up there I've heard about decisions coming from yet is Alberta.
  14. Hey, a medievalist thread! I signed up just to say hi. I'm doing my MA right now and waiting to hear back from everyone on my awfully short list: U British Columbia, Toronto, and McGill. My strategy's been to just forget I applied and prepare for the rest of the year as if a PhD isn't on the table at all, but uh, discovering this place might throw a wrench into that. I do mostly late-medieval heresy and political propaganda, especially around public dissent and revolt. English Lollardy and its suppression are my main "thing," but I'm just halfway through a one-year MA, so I don't wanna pigeonhole myself too soon. So for now, I bounce around heretics and rebels from England and Wales down to Italy, focusing less on the ins and outs of academic doctrine and more on the political consequences and propaganda rhetoric, both from the state and the dissenter. Manuscript codicology on bureaucratic poets like Hoccleve and Usk are taking up most of my time right now, and I've done a little work with chronicles recently that I'd like to keep rolling. That and some recent papers on the breakdown of rebels in the Great Rising have gotten my attention, so Wyclif and his followers' writings are going to be on the table for the foreseeable future. I'm over in the UK right now, but can't wait to get back to North America, maybe even make it back to Kzoo next year!
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