M(allthevowels)H

Remember: literally everyone who has ever applied to graduate school has had a typo in one of their materials somewhere. I'm sure there are errors bad enough to take people out of the running! That said, if departments only took students who never omitted a word somewhere, every graduate classroom everywhere would be empty.
At about this point in the application process, I recommend this website: https://calmingmanatee.com/

I completely forgot to finish a sentence in one of my apps *stressed smile.* I meant to say that "yada yada yada would be a great honor" and it instead said, "yada yada yada would be a great" and that's all! 
It's a super competitive program (my highest reach) and I wasn't expecting to get in, so I'm just taking the L preemptively. 

In the ONE French word I had on my SOP, I put the wrong accent on the word. Does not bode very well for me lol.

I misspelled Charles Chesnutt as Chestnutt in my SoP.

What? You've never heard of Henry James's botanical work? 

I came very close to sending SOPs that referred to James’s Bloom instead of Joyce’s Bloom.  
Not a deadly error, but I’m sure it would’ve earned a laugh or two at my expense in the conference room. 

I saw one of these posts from years gone by and felt it to my bones. Here are my whoopsie-daisies:
1. Near miss: I almost deadnamed/misgendered a scholar I want to work with because I read an edition of their book that was published before their transition.
2. Used "conflagration" when I meant "conflation" in two SoPs, even though I know what both mean. I'm from Southern California! I know all the words for fire! But now I look like a dope who tried punching above her vocabulary.
 
*Get it? Reaaaaaaal.

Long time lurker emerging from the shadows to say that I am losing control. I keep refreshing this page, checking my email, checking application portals, etc. And it’s only the second week of January! How do people distract themselves to pass the time?
 
Congrats to the people offered UMD interviews! I guess if we didn’t receive an interview we can assume we’re on some sort of unofficial waitlist?

I am the Buffalo acceptance. I posted the standard package that they've offered me although they said they will nominate me for a Schomberg fellowship as well so my package offer may change. My first response from any program so far.

If you don't mind me banging in here, English was my second choice. It never really coalesced into a viable avenue for graduate school for me, but I have imagined plausible scholarly tracks based on the English Renaissance or Afrofuturism. For the former, I really like Milton. I was especially interested in Orientalism and (maritime) trade in his works. That's well-trodden ground, of course; my inclination would have been to expand the project through comparison with some of his contemporaries (TBD). As a long-time fantasy and science-fiction reader, I have felt like there has (finally) been another upswing in Black speculative fiction authors recently, especially women, but the extent of the intellectual development for that idea is "NK Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor are just, like, so good!" How to relate that to the first wave of Afrofuturism, or whether 'Afrofuturism' is even an appropriate category for all the books I'm thinking of (I would guess no), also got a big fat TBD.
I only wish I had as much energy for follow-through on my current project as I do for coming up with new ones!

Grigio is a nice apartment complex. If I don't make a mistake there two complexes of this group on Tempe. One is located on Apachi Dr. and the other somewhere near Tempe lake. The one on Apachi Dr. is more convenient to live in since it's close to Light Rail. 
 
Though there is a big problem with the atmosphere aside from being an over-priced apartment complex. I prefer to live in a complex where tenants are mostly Americans ! or Asians (as they are peaceful and neat people). 

My favorite part of Boulder is the Goss-Grove area, just to the north of campus across Arapahoe. The location is great (by far the best of the places I've lived in Boulder) and the neighborhood looks nice. It's really not a great place to travel in by car, as the streets cut off all over the place, but that makes it perfect for walking/biking around. I am able to walk to the campus in 10 minutes, or bike in about 5. And about a 10 minute walk in the other direction is the main strip of Pearl street. Sunflower Farmers market is right down the street for groceries, and there are multiple coffee shops nearby.

The biggest drawback is the large number of undergrads, but it's certainly not in the same ballpark as the Hill. A lot of them seem to be from Naropa, which is a plus.

Edit: I see I am about a year late in this response :shock:

I'm not sure why, but this post kind of rubs me the wrong way. Maybe because I'm already feeling anxiety about being "too old" (I just turned 30), and I feel like this attitude is what I'm most anxious about encountering--a kind of patronizing "good for you!" masking potential underlying criticism. Well shucks, gee, it sure would be an advantage if I was younger, but there's this thing where time only moves in one direction...
 
The truth is that it just took me longer to get here. It took me 6 years to finish undergrad because of financial difficulties, I lived and worked abroad for a while after that, then got a regular job, then realized I wanted to go back into academia, so spent the last 3 years working full time, starting a family, and earning my MA. Voila, I'm 30. It's not as though you can't live your life before you get tenure, so if that doesn't happen until I'm 45 (or, let's be honest, ever), so what? I just don't understand the "racing toward tenure so I can start my real life" idea, which views it as a beginning, rather than a milestone or an eventual goal. Obviously it's an important goal/step in an academic career, but I'm not sure that being a few years older affects the granting of tenure, and something like 50% won't end up getting it anyway, so I think it's important to be open to other possibilities.
 
I'm sorry, I really don't mean to be snippy--I think I'm just grumpy about turning 30. But I don't exactly wear dentures and hobble around on a walker in my slippers. 30 is young. 40 is young. People change careers all the time, and from the people I've spoken to in grad programs, a 10 or 15 year age difference means nothing at all. It's not like I've decided to become a gymnast at 30--I think I've got a few good years before senility will rob me of my literature-teaching abilities.

The only question that I have to you folk over 30 (and in some cases around 35) is: why?
 
Are you doing the PhD as a passion project? If so, hats off and my congratulations--I love your spirit. Are you doing it in hopes of a traditional academic career afterward? If so, my congratulations again--I'm not sure I could stand the odds. You're looking at 5-7 years to complete (effectively placing yourself at or near 40). Then you're looking at a year or two of postdocs, and then you begin on the tenure track (at or near age 42-43). You're looking at something like 50 by the time you're tenured. This is in a market that will be full of PhDs at or near 30 (if I finish in 6 years, I will be 32, and I already think that's on the older side). Wouldn't there be a distinct advantage to being younger, or at least, within the usual age range?

As an added note to what @M(allthevowels)H  has posted:

UT Austin now "recommends" instead of "requires" subject scores.
Illinois Urbana-Champaign does "not require" subject scores.
UC Santa Barbara has moved from "requires" subject scores to "optional" subject scores.

Just to clarify, I just heard someone say this and I thought it was an interesting topic in a general sense. I have thoughts about Chelsea Manning, but would not personally make any decision about a school based on their positive or negative treatment of her. She was not my point. But I think you need to look at a school and assess its values and see if any of them really contradict your own. It's not about safe spaces as JKL said. I've never experienced safe spaces the way TV hosts and columnists discuss them. But, I understand that I am not always welcome and I don't want to waste my time, money, and effort applying to or attending a school that does not support me. I'm lucky to be applying in 2017/18 when most of the big/top schools are LGBT friendly, but if any of them were systematically mistreating queer individuals, I would cross them off of my list.
 
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting topic. Sorry to see how sarcastic and rude the comments got.

I haven't posted here before, but I just want to say how grateful I am to see everyone freaking out about the exact same things I am freaking out about. I have a list of "Definite" schools and a list of "Runner-up" schools and it feels like every time I open the list I move options from one column to the other and then back again. I am also nervous because I come from a creative background, I have a BA and MFA in fiction, rather than a strictly research-oriented one. But I have strong English department recs and I scored well on the verbal section of the GRE, so I'm hoping that balances it?
@a_sort_of_fractious_angel I would second that it's better to be straight forward. If the quote isn't organic, it may just make you seem like a different brand of generic rather than making you stand out. An adviser used to say "that which does not strengthen the message, dilutes it." That may be the case here. (Also, sup Philly!)