khigh

My GPA was around 3.5. GRE was 161V 147Q and 5.0AW (humanities, so Q doesn't count for much). My SOPs are solid if they like a "leadership and initiative" SOP. I got one from the advisor I worked with for 4 years, including an independent research project, who also went to the one university I applied to and the POI I want to work with was on his dissertation committee. One rec was from the department chair, who I worked with extensively for all 4 years. The last one is the one I'm worried about. It's from the University President. I was Student Government Vice President and then President, so two years of being on committees and working with the President and administration. It's not a research rec, though, which really worries me. On top of that, I found some typos in my writing sample, PLUS I sent the wrong draft, so some of the translations are missing or the original is in text instead of footnotes. I just want to KNOW.

I keep poking my application, trying to justify why I'm not getting in, even though admits are notified around January 20th and rejects around February 10th. Are my grades good enough? My GRE? My SOP? Writing sample? What if my recommenders really don't like me and wrote something horrible? Should I have done 3 academic recommendations instead of two plus the university president (we worked on committees together for 2 years)? Do I have enough languages (history PhD)? Did I travel enough in undergrad? Do I fit in? There's nothing I can do about any of it now, but dreams are dreams until they are reality.

Honestly, I found my boyfriend and love when I stopped looking. I’m divorced and an older student (31), so I didn’t fit into the dating scene at my undergrad. I was traveling in Europe between my junior and senior year and got an off hand Facebook message from a one year adjunct from my junior year in my department. His contract was up and we started talking casually that summer. I got back from Europe that July and drove to his state from mine (800 miles each way) a few times to hang out. He moved to Europe and I stayed here to finish my undergrad and we’ve been doing long distance for a year and a half. We’ve met a few times in Europe to travel and he’s coming back here to stay early this coming year. Neither of us was looking for anything or anyone, but we found each other and are planning on marriage and babies in the next few years. In our situation, I told my department as soon as we started dating because I had taken a few of his classes. They had no problems with this because he was gone when we started dating and they had an independent reviewer go over all the work I did for those classes. There was zero favoritism. We talk all the time and make long distance date nights a few times a week and can not wait to spend our lives together. We enjoy a lot of the same things outside academia and he understands the stress of going through the grad school process. Moral of the story...There is always hope and you never know when or where you will find someone. Love will happen when it happens. Sometimes you just have to stop looking and love yourself and your person will find you.

Do you know if UK programs work like the continent in that you aren’t working on your own project, but working on your advisor’s project? If it is, that may be something else OP wants to consider, but I haven’t looked into UK programs specifically.

I have a 900 page book sitting here about the causes of the Anglo-Dutch Wars. After 900 pages, you know what you learn about the causes? “We can’t agree”

Send them an email or call. I know the VU and UVA (mainly because of housing) wanted very early decisions, but Radboud, Leiden, and Groningen could wait until June. If you go to delft, make a point to explore the Netherlands. Zij is een moogelijk land!

Most of my family is in education- my parents are paraprofessionals, my sister and numerous cousins are elementary school teachers. My great-uncle is still working in higher ed in his 80s- he retired last summer from being provost of my undergrad and got called three weeks later from the same uni and got offered a dean position, which he accepted. I was supposed to go into education, either teach K-12 or go into higher ed administration. I will be an historian, hopefully a professor, so I guess I am kind-of following the family line. I do love administration, though, and may keep that as an idea for the future. I was Student Government Vice President and then President, so I was on 15 university wide committees for two years and volunteered as a student liaison at the state capitol. I LOVE being on committees and I love the back-of-the-house work. I also love university functions and being in front of crowds- SGA President leads convocation, speaks at the MLK banquet, and introduces the speaker at commencement.

You won't make it by your deadline. You can only test once every 21 days and it takes 10-15 days to get your report back.

I hate the gym, but I do love being outside. Skiing, ice skating, snowshoeing, snow-kiting, biking, walking, hiking, horseback riding, kayaking, ice fishing, playing softball and broomball and hockey. It doesn't feel like exercise because it's fun. What about team sports? If you're in Canada, I think pond-hockey season starts in January like it does here and even though I'm not the best player or skater, it's still motivating to be out there with other people.

At least then I won’t get weird questions about my FC Hertha Berlin or FC Bayern Munich scarves. I am sure we would have a good talk about the Bundesliga and the symbolism of Hertha using the Olympiastadion for home matches. My dream courses to teach outside my field would be 19th Century Baseball (or the forgotten years), History of Baseball Curses and Superstitions (or black cats, goats, and rain delays), and/or History of Baseball Law (Or, Spaulding was an evil genius). Cathedrals of the Modern Man (stadiums) would also be fun or even ancient ritual in modern sports (Vikings have a lot of this- Skol, the Gjallarhorn, etc).

I would love it, but it's Wisconsin (skol!)...I didn't mean that baseball is a silly or unrefined topic, just that it has been perceived that way.

Historians cannot even decide how or why the Civil War started...WWI, WWII are even more nuanced. Heck, I wrote a paper recently about the humanity of the Nazi party, specifically focusing on Goebbels because, well, historians cannot agree (and will never and should not) that good and bad even exist. It's even more difficult to see "good and bad" when you discuss events further back in history because presentism is a huge issue. Most people THINK they have a general idea of history, but historians quickly learn that everything you were taught is wrong. South slaves/North free is even incorrect because it is an absolute statement. Nothing in history is absolute.

It would be for fun, not necessarily something for the CV. I guess the question is more if we, as historians, can have hobby topics that are sometimes seen as silly. Like, baseball history isn't the most refined or serious topic.

Luckily, my apartment has all bills included (including propane). People up here swear by Northface and Columbia jackets or investing in a goose down coat. I have a bag in my car with snow pants and waterproof boots just in case because I work at a job right now that requires being outside when it snows. I work in luxury car sales right now, so we have to clean the snow off cars each time we get more than 2" of the white stuff. I also recommend a balaclava (face covering) and usanka (Russian military hat). I just ordered a surplus Soviet Siberian coat. If it works for Siberia, it should work for Minnesota. Plus, they have warehouses full of them and they are relatively expensive; officer coats are more fitted and stylish than enlisted. Russian Navy coats are well made and you can easily switch out the buttons. For home, you can get heated blankets and heated rugs if you have wood floors. I also have a buffalo hide blanket and some wool Army surplus blankets (they really are the best, though an ugly drab green). I also cover the windows in bubble wrap and plastic sheeting, which keeps the cold and wind out.

I think you will come to enjoy winter. Depending on where you are (and even in places you didn't think about), there's skiing, snowboarding, ski-kiting *look it up, popular activity here*, hockey, snowshoeing, hockey, broomball, ice fishing, oh, and hockey :). Bonus is you can live in a place where you can laugh at southerners when they talk about it being sooooo cold at 40 degrees (try windchill of -25 to -40 for Christmas Day here). Then again, I'm that weirdo that moved north because of winter. It's really not as bad as people say and here at the University of Minnesota, they actually have an underground tunnel system for campus so you never actually have to go outside. Downtown has a Skyway, so again, you never have to go outside. Also gives a new meaning/facet to the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Love, love, love Braudel. I'm also a huge fan of Peter Geyl and Burke (Reflection on the French Revolution). Ben Kaplan and James Tracy and Jonathan Israel are go-to's for me. Molly Greene is writing some of my favorites recently in Mediterranean history. I love, though, reading philosophical interpretations of "what history is" and that means Heidegger, Hegel, Spinoza, Sartre, Hegel, etc. I've added a few more from your list to look into. I can't get past your recommendation of Schama, though. It's been drummed into my head by more than one Dutch historian that he is a "history channel" historian and has really dumbed down the 17th century Dutch to make it appeal to a wider audience but hack off "real" Dutch historians. I may have to try one of his books.

This is what I was about to say. I would have little problems answering questions about 17th Century Dutch topics/modern Netherlands/Dutch politics/language and law, but I couldn't discuss much about the Civil War or the 7 Years War from the perspective of an American (I'm American, but a Europeanist). Let's talk Dutch ships in the Mediterranean during the 80 Years War, but let's not talk about Southeast Asian art (unless it's Dutch East Indies). The only topic outside my field of interest I'm even remotely okay at is 19th Century BASEBALL. That's it. Not tennis, not football, not cricket. Just baseball. Historians don't have simple discussions. I would think you would find our discussions to be complex and, at times, heated. There is more theory than you would probably think and I've seen discussions over theory or even qualitative vs quantitative research to get very deep. We are passionate people and without the "simple discussions" of historians, we wouldn't have a lot of the science people study today. It was the historian that revived the Greek and Roman ways of thinking. We can also go on and on about, say, how phenomenological research is superior/inferior to ontological or why Braudel's studies are/are not a superior way to view the Mediterranean. Nothing in discussing the past is simple or easy.

Question for y'all. Would you publish or present a paper at a conference outside your major/minor field? Something way outside what you normally would do? I've been revising one of my papers from last year about baseball rules in the late 1800s and would love to submit to and possibly present at SABR's 19th Century Baseball Conference in 2019. However, my field, if I get into grad school, would be more 17th century European politics. Does it either help or hurt grad school chances or people's perception of you in grad school? Or, does it not matter either way? Is it okay to have a "guilty pleasure" side project?

Thought it may be an interesting discussion, okay, something to get some people's minds off the application process/quals/dissertation research. What theories of history do you prescribe to? Which historical historians do you look up to or do you model your work on? Do you read philosophy and/or apply it to your approach to history? If so, who are your favorite philosophers? On a more serious note, which theories of history are the most en vogue currently?

Made the mistake of looking at my SOP again. I left out the article 'the' in one spot and misspelled Utrecht in one spot. One part did make me smile, though, so that counts for something. I love the word phenomenological and got to use it in the SOP. Hopefully being able to explain the phenomenological approach to history makes up for the misspelling and missing article.

I'll be 32 when I start. The boyfriend will be 40 if I go back. My peers would be in their early 20s. It's just weird because they don't yet understand a house with bills, divorce, jobs, etc. I've been on my own for 14 years now and I don't do roommates (other than the boyfriend) and that's odd for the group around here because rent is so high. We'll be giving up our only steady stream of income and will honestly need to use student loans even with the stipend because even our modest lifestyle will not hold. I would be giving up a very good paying job, so that's a little nerve wracking and we are also to the point where if we don't have any children in the next few years, we likely will not have any. I started back at my undergrad when I was 27 so I know a lot of the struggle of going back after being established, but the average age of students there is 28. It's in a military town, so most of the students are military spouses, retired military, or active duty soldiers doing Green to Gold. We all knew life outside and had families and bills and houses to take care of. I see you're in Chicago. I can't wait to visit there, but I promised the boyfriend I would not until he gets home from researching in Berlin. We are both lifelong Cubs fans and I have never been to Wrigley Field, so he wants to see my reaction (probably a lot of crying). I finally got to see them play in Milwaukee, but that's only Wrigley North. I'm from a more southern state, but Minneapolis has really grown on me. I caught myself saying "oh, fer cute" today and that's the moment I knew we would be staying here.

I applied to one program because I love the city I moved to and want to stay for quite awhile. This has me both excited and freaked out- freaked out enough that I have woken up crying. It is really my last chance, first year applying, but I'm getting too old to chase this dream. If this doesn't work this year, I need to buckle down and just work. I know it's not the end of the world and won't kill me, but I want my PhD more than anything. I took a gap year this year, so there is nothing to concentrate on other than going to work, coming home, reading, taking care of the rabbits, and trying to find time to be outside when it's still light (sun sets at 4:00 this time of year). I should find out within the next month whether or not I will get in.

Do you qualify for voc rehab? Honestly, a very good source for you might be to talk to someone from the Student Veterans Association.

I applied to one program. The only reason I know their numbers is because I live close to campus and have visited a few times and specifically asked about it. I love the department and the uni, but it's frustrating.

That's good to know. The only thing I had heard about was a get-together in February and inprocessing in August.