khigh

I will probably put the first post up this evening. Honestly, winter isn’t that bad. Even -20 is easy to deal with because there is almost no humidity. You do need to start your car a few times a day to let it warm up. Snow is great. We got 17” in uptown on Monday and only had one bad day of driving. They had the highways cleared by Tuesday morning and the neighborhoods by Wednesday morning. The U has a tunnel system, so you never have to go outside on campus if you don’t want to. Minneapolis is the most educated city in the USA. We have more Fortune 500 companies per capita than anywhere else in the US. We are now the most bikeable city, beating Portland and Seattle. We have the most green space out of all US cities. There are ski resorts within the city (well, the burbs) and you can cross country ski on any of the bike trails in the winter. Ice skating is free, including skates, on city lakes. Minne is diverse. We pride ourselves on the way we take care of refugees, so there are large Syrian, Somalian, and Hmong populations. That means great food. Traffic is not bad at all for a major city. I work 20 miles away on the other side of the city and even during rush hour, it’s only a 45 minute drive. You do have to get used to the stoplights on the on-ramps. That’s so people are nice and alternate getting on the interstate. Coffee is Caribou or Tim Hortons (or Dunn’s). We don’t do a lot of Starbucks here. Amazon has a big presence in the city, so we all use Amazon Restaurants. You can have any food delivered to your home from places within 10 miles. In my area, that’s anything from Mediterranean to Chinese to Indian to bar food. I live in the Carag neighborhood. It’s old Victorian apartments. I am three blocks one way from Lake Calhoun and three blocks another way to Lake Street, which is a trendy place full of bars, restaurants, shopping, and local amenities. Target is king here (headquartered in Minneapolis) and Walmart is only in the burbs. I honestly moved here for two reasons. The boyfriend is from Bloomington (Mall of America). And, I was tired of summer. Summer here is great. It’s never too hot. You may have a few 90 degree days, but most of the time, it’s in the 70s and 80s. Sorry that was so long, but I love this place. There is a reason that it is said that it is impossible to get people to move to Minneapolis, but once they get here, it’s impossible to get them to leave.

Summer. Hate it with a passion. Hate it so much that I got tired of it last June when I lived in Oklahoma and started driving north until it was 75 degrees in the middle of the day. And, that, my friends, is how one comes to live in Minnesota!

If any of the UMN admits end up coming to the Cities, let me know, and I can give you some pointers about the city. First thing, give up Starbucks. Sure, we have them up here, but it's all about Caribou and Tim Hortons. Oh, and we may have all of the professional sports (including women's tackle football), but high school hockey is king. Learn to like at least one sport because that is what people will talk about and learn to love talking about the weather- it's how we end conversations.

Someone may give you some good info on Kentucky, but I just wanted to make sure you have looked at the University of Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and UT-Austin. Oklahoma is a great place if you want to do something in Native history or American West. Their library on the American West is amazing.

I've started working on a blog that deals with this. I think I'm going to call it "Southern Girl in the North Country" as a nod to Dylan.

Emma Goldman is one of my favorite people in labor history along with Bakunin and Kropotkin. My paper for Women in Politics was about Goldman and she is fascinating. She escaped deportation a few times and was implicated in the assassination of McKinley, but was never brought to trial because the belief at the time was that a woman was not capable of inciting a man to kill a sitting president.

I'm going to give it until I get a rejection, but I'm getting on the older side if I want a career, dontcha know? I took the LSATs last year and have a fee waiver for UMN-Law, so I might start working on that application next week. I wouldn't be over-the-moon excited about being a lawyer, but I wouldn't be unhappy working in sports law, either. My extracurriculars/resume/CV lean more towards the law side of things. President of Student Government, Higher Education Advocate at the state legislature, Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature, Model UN (absolutely the best experience of my career so far), 15 or so university wide committees, campaign work from 2004-2016, Ok Policy Institute, women's leadership organizations multiple languages, President of Model UN, Phi Alpha Theta, History Club, etc. It does make me feel better that the law school actually wants me and is trying to recruit me or I wouldn't even consider it. One of the hardest things for me is how much I want to, NEED to, stay in Minneapolis. It's home. It's where I want to raise children and build a life. It's far enough away that my parents don't just stop in to visit. And, the boyfriend found a very good job for the next academic year. If I was not geographically bound, I would have applied more places. The only way I would ever want to leave Minneapolis is either for an academic career or to work for the Chicago Cubs front office. I did find out today that I am a finalist for a paid internship in the front office for the Minnesota Twins. They LOVED my paper on the influence of the American West on baseball rules that also included a critique of Spaulding. Most of their people are in analytics, but the person that called me said they are looking for diversity in the office (female historian helps that). I'm also addicted to sabermetrics. They asked if I was okay with the requirement to attend ALL home games. I laughed at the recruiter. I spend every day I have off during the season at the ballpark. We just won't mention that I am a Cubs fan first and a Twins fan second. It wouldn't cause conflict unless both were in the World Series because Twins is AL and Cubs is NL. I may see how the internship goes if I get it. If I like it and don't get into the U this cycle, I will go to law school. If I don't like it and don't get in, I will wait and reapply next cycle.

I only applied to UMN. I'm out this cycle, it seems, since I haven't gotten a response. Now to decide to wait one more year or go to law school.

We joke that if I don't get into grad school that at least we will be a family with only one broke out-of-work professor instead of two. I would have driven myself off the deep end a long time ago without him.

I love the school I went to, also. I went to a regional because it was in my hometown and I could afford it. And you know what? They gave me opportunities I would have never had at a T10. I was Student Government President (and VP my junior year), served on faculty senate as the student rep, was on 15 university wide committees including ones that were only admin with one student and one faculty rep. I spoke at commencement. I had classes in my major (and minors) with less than 5 people in them. I knew my advisor and became friends with him. I still call him once a week to check in even though I graduated in May. I was in his office daily for two years doing research and directed readings. My department chair is also a friend and I know I can call him anytime I need to. I spent a lot of time at the state capitol advocating for higher education reform. I went to several leadership conferences and was president of several clubs. I am in three international honors societies. And yet, none of this seems to matter. My school doesn't rank, so no one on the adcomm cares. Heck, the PoI I've been talking to was on my advisor's committee in grad school and still this doesn't matter. You know what, though? I wouldn't change my undergrad for the world. Not only did I accomplish great things, I met my boyfriend there. He was teaching there on a one year contract. If I wasn't there at that time, I would have never met my partner in crime and love of my life. Had to add...the most touching thing that ever happened was when my grandmother died. The university president sent flowers to the family along with a sympathy card. He only knew because I had missed a committee meeting and had emailed him to apologize for my absence.

We're going to be smiling as we drive Eagles fans into the Mississippi because we are the nicest people. I'm a southern transplant in the North, so I know how to be Minnesota Nice in the most passive aggressive way. "Ja, dear, da game is jus' over da river. Ja, da ice'll holdja." "Oh, Barb, didja see da Eagles fan? Dey can't swim. Isn't that just fer cute!" "Uffda, dontcha know? Dey just can't, eh, but it could be worse."

If you know, let US know that people are retiring. Don't let us apply and then tell us that the only person in our field is at the end of their academic life. My field is already small enough, just let me know it's dying.

You would make a fine Minnesotan. We are the best at being humble.

There are too many variables for one p-value to determine causality. I was a poli-sci minor, so I had to take quantitative research methods. I did a paper on the application of Hofestede's Masculinity Index on the election of women in worldwide parliaments. I hypothesized that more masculine societies voted for more women (opposites attract hypothesis). This ended up being founded. More masculine societies were more likely to elect WOMEN. However, it was not because they were more masculine societies, even though that's what the p-value suggested. There are many other factors, the largest being a UN sanction that bars certain nations from receiving funds through the IMF unless their parliaments are representational of the gender distribution of the population. There is a religious factor- Muslim countries (score high on the HMI) are more likely to elect women. More educated societies are more likely to elect women (High HMI). Countries at war are more likely to elect women (High HMI).My p-value (<.001) was good, but the hypothesis was not. Correlation does not equal causation. P-value can null a hypothesis, but it cannot prove a hypothesis true.

Have you had a chance to read Living My Life by Emma Goldman?

That's good to know. I tried to avoid taking any American history classes (took only the required amount) and my senior capstone class was on the American West. Turner was required reading. I hated Turner, but I came through my program hating American history. We were a very split bunch between Europeanists and Americanists. The Europeanists had t-shirts that said "Turner couldn't even find the borderland." Americanists had shirts that said "History didn't start until 1776."

It's a baseball movie, but one of the best out there. "You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay." To make it even better, Annie teaches English at the local community college.

Have you ever watched Bull Durham? This reminds me of exactly what Annie Savoy did in the movie.

I was able to afford one application this season. That was Christmas money. I wish it were more like law school...those are usually waived if you are poor. What bothers me about reach and safety schools for grad programs is, what if my dream school is your reach...Would I have a better chance at getting an acceptance if people that KNEW they would not accept the offer if they got into a better school did not apply. How many people that get into Harvard REALLY want to go to UMN?

I haven't heard anything either. I'm starting to explore other plans because I have a feeling that I won't get in. The question would be whether to go to law school or wait and apply next year.

Braudel and I get into arguments when I'm reading his history of the Mediterranean. Frederick Jackson Turner is another that I'm surprised people haven't mentioned. I thought his frontier thesis was crucial for study of the American West, but I could be mistaken.

It took me years to understand C&P, but I read it for the first time when I was about 13. I used to go to the library and just grab the biggest books I could find. That's how I also came to read War and Peace. The Memory Chalet, and Les Miserables. I do think, though, that to truly understand Dostoevsky, one should also read Marx and Kropotkin. Das Kapital is probably the hardest book I have ever read. C&P has some amazing quotes. “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

Lolita is my third favorite book after Death in Venice and The Essential Works of Franz Kafka. Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, and Crime and Punishment are my guilty pleasure reads. I'm thinking I now need to read Infinite Jest.

I decided to have a crazier dream than a PhD in history to make myself feel better if I don't get in and have something to work towards if I don't get in. First female GM in Major League Baseball. I mean, that does make a PhD seem a lot more attainable...

Ya'll aren't my field, but I'm sure you all know my go-to book, Rebecca by Daphne du Marier. I have read it several times a year since I was 12 years old and it's almost like a comfort blanket. I have read it twice this application cycle.