Riotbeard

I am doing a combo of moving and ordering from ikea... I am moving my bed, desk, a chair, 10 boxes of books, too much clothes, brewing equipment, cookware/appliances, and tv to NOLA, but I am going to Ikea tomorrow in Atlanta to figure out what I want to order fill in the gaps (by gaps, I mean virtually everything). I am moving somewhere for 5-7 years, I would rather spend a little money to keep the stuff I love than have to start back at sqare one, but then again I am not moving cross country, just six hours...

Reply with a brief synopsis in your reply e-mail, and if he responds again in a decent amount of detail offer to send it to him, but be sure to give him and out, so he doesn't feel obligated or anything. I am trying to put a paper of mine in front of a professor who is tops in my sub-sub field, and this has been my approach.

Yeah, I think we could all collectively open a kia dealership.

I personally like to phrase dollar amounts in terms of number of kias able to be purchased, but yeah, out state tuition is certainely not cheep. In either case, I could not afford to go without funding!

Congrats fellow Southerner!

It still blows my mind confuses me that someone is investing $300,000 + for my education. But hey coya, we have inflated private school tuitions to get waivered! I think the dollar value of my education blew my mind more than anything else and leads to moments of imposter syndrome (how American, I know.) But alas we must deal with the sad fact that we fooled someone into paying for a humanities PhD. What suckers! Haha, mostly kidding.

I blame military historians. You couldn't find a more boring bunch of people for the most part. One guy derailed an entire lecture in my civil war class to talk about the soldiers glove types... It was weird in undergrad we left the city (Charelston), and a girl from the Pheonix area goes, now this look like the city as we passed a suburban strip mall. Strange.

Haha! I was a double major in history and English in College, and I always found my fellow history majors to be lacking in modern social interests (in other words they seemed like the type to go to Chilli's on the weekend and listen to shit music). As a result, I made a lot of friends through English. I had hoped that Grad School would attract only the cool history majors, but alas, I forsee a year of driving away from New Orleans in search of suburban TGI Fridays on a Saturday with "friends". Thanks StrangeLight! Haha.

What's the problem with old Abe? I knew Biblio was abnormally nice, but I had not heard Abebooks was abnormally awful.

My patience ends when it comes to discriminatory views whether related to gender, sexuality, or race.

Kudos for not beating the hell out of that person! I think the fact that you maintained a level of academic discourse is incredible! I hope I don't have to worry about these types of politics in my program. I know my advisor is at least "liberal", but I tend to describe myself as socialist, so I am planning to try and restrain myself. I always hoped academia would be a place where people could hold opposing views and not get there feathers ruffled. Oh but I am an idealist.

I say for the first month of school only wear t-shirts with polarizing slogans!

If you are willing to go Comm Studies/ Rhetoric route U. Alabama has a decent program to get a masters. They have a lot of money too if you can coach forensics. I have a friend who got a master's degree there and loved it. Really Comm. studies would allow you to look at a wider-variety of types of rhetoric than English/Rhetoric... Somebody at UA was doing their master's thesis on Video Game Rhetoric...

I was looking for apartments yesturday and having lunch with my advisor, and I definately felt insanely gung ho! He did it give me some sweet gossip on big wigs in my field. Also the city flooded, while I was there, haha!

I would say they have a good reputation overall for Southern studies, but are strongest in 19th century South. They also seemed to be successful at placing people at tenured jobs. I can't comment on the time question of the Ph D, but on their accepted student info day, I did not get that impression (but I don't have an MA, so I wasn't listening for that stuff...). I thought pretty hard about going to South Carolina (but am not going there... Part of me wishes I could have gone to both schools!), they have great faculty for U.S. South and a really nice department and students. For Southern Studies in general, I would also look at Georgia, UNC, WashU, Florida, Tulane (Where I am going!), Rice, Vandy, Emory, Duke, Mississippi, and there are also really prominent U.S. South faculty spread throughout the top schools, but few of those programs are really geared toward the South like those listed so..., but they are worth looking at if there are any scholars you are obsessed with, and their school names certainly won't hurt you. Also most of the regional have some pretty solid scholars (alabama, kentucky, tennessee, mississippi state, Auburn, etc.), so they are all solid fallback.

That's pretty great.

It's strange, the first city I really loved living in and felt at home in, Charleston, is muggy, so to me, humidity is kinda like home. The stench, the thickness just feels like going home to me now. So whenever, I go somewhere with that mugginess, I am like soak it up! Then everyone looks at me like I am crazy . It's some thing that excites about NOLA, being by some water (if only a river), and in that strange humid lifestyle.

It ok. Your secret is safe with me. I was born in DC (and before I was born my parents lived in NYC and Boston), and didn't move to Alabama till I was seven. I exclaimed, are we moving to a farm??? As it turned out, there is non-agriculture related realestate and cities in the South. On a side note, it would have been very strange for my dad to take up farming seeing as he is a banker.

I didn't apply to emory for reasons of sub-sub topic fit, but it is a great place to study Southern history in general from what I hear. I almost applied to their African American Studies program, but decided not to. I love/hate the South, and if it were up to me, which I know it's not, I would never leave, but I hate the city I grew up in (Birmingham), so off to New Orleans. Southern Ivy's unite! (ok that was nerdy, and only discusses an unofficial group of schools...) UNC and South Carolina have great Southern Studies Centers too. That's the nice thing, is at worst my research locations are only a 14~ hour drive. As an undergrad, I did a lot of Georgia history too.

I went to undergraduate in Charleston, South Carolina, so New Orleans will hopefully be just a return to Normal (there is a debate on which is worse though). In charleston, after a ten minute bike ride, one shower is required. It's definately a 3 shower a day type of place, but you get used to the heat. I also grew up in Alabama (eek!), and nothing prepared me for Charleston, but I think I am ready for New Orleans. That may be cockiness though.

I would add that on the fit paragraph (I applied to Amer studies and history, but I am going to a history program next year...), I did my best to name 3 people in the department (a few schools where my fit was bleh, I could only find 2...) and why their focus/research would improve the direction for myself set out in the rest of the SOP. Like the previous poster said, this will tell them in 3 to 4 sentances why you think you should be at their program. I would definately look at the faculty interests before you decide to apply anywhere, and I might also tread softly about picking schools for a while because your focus may change (mine did drastically during my junior year) and those options may no longer be relevant. That being said, I think being aware of Grad school at this point is fantastic. It is never to early to start crafting your application/cv, and making the right decision early on to make you the strongest applicant. My first go round, I realy did not know what I was doing and my lack of acceptances evidenced that.

In mid-July, when I leave my full time job, I plan to do some traveling (I am bestmanning a wedding in DC), and have some fun, but right now I just want a distraction from work..., so I can't relish yet, but August will be amazing. I am moving to a new city (New Orleans!) and will have a month to explore before school starts!

I am totally with you, although I finished school last year and have been working. I am going to look at apartments though this weekend! I don't even know what classes are offered in the fall yet!