Monsieur Vénus

I spoke too soon! I will be in the Académie de Lyon!

@madamoiselle I have to wait to hear from TAPIF to get my placement, but I think it should be this week! I'll keep y'all up to date because this will be my first time in France and I'm gonna need all the advice I can get, haha

@madamoiselle Thank you!! I am so incredibly psyched. But at the same time it feels so weird that I now know where I'm going to be for the next (at most, I hope) 8 years!

Hey y'all, I can finally make my decision! I've officially been selected for a Fulbright grant to spend the next school year in France as an ETA, and UMich has graciously offered to defer my admission to the following school year! So France this fall, then Ann Arbor the next for me!!

I think UMich is still at the top of the pile for me right now based on faculty fit, interactions with current students, funding, and other personal reasons. But I just visited Boston yesterday, and it made my decision a little harder. I really like it out here on the east coast, and I've never been able to live in a big city before. Plus the program seems like it would be a really great place to specifically study theory, which I love. I was, however, thrown off a little bit by the fact that the 500-level courses here are composed of a mix of undergraduate and graduate students when I sat in on a course. But Boston does have the advantage that their courses are in French. Then again, Boston has the disadvantage that they have a pretty strict policy against deferring admission, which is something I'm going to be looking into if I receive the Fulbright. As far as Rutgers, I'm having a hard time gauging my interest. Because I was really interested in the program, in theory, by reading about all of the faculty there, and they've offered me the funding per year out of all three programs (not adjusted for cost of living, though). But I also feel like I can't really get to know the program enough to make a decision since I won't be visiting.

I'm so happy for all of you that are making your decisions! Unfortunately my decision is only becoming more difficult. I missed a call while I was in class from a professor at Rutgers saying that a spot has opened up for me (with funding) if I want it. I need to email him about what their funding looks like, but Rutgers was definitely very high on my list of potential schools when I went into this application season. PLUS I have yet to hear about my Fulbright ETA application, but I have a strong feeling (knock on wood) that I will hear back about that this week. Then I will just need to decide on a program and beg them to defer my admission (if I'm accepted by Fulbright, of course) ?

@dbookworm hey thanks for the response! I think I'm going to wind up having to wait until I hear if I'm actually accepted to figure this out because there's really very little info online. Fulbright's Health Benefits doesn't really seem like it's actually *insurance*, and it seems like it's a possibility that I would be just as eligible for state health insurance as a TAPIF worker because I am still receiving the same TAPIF stipend from France's ministry of education plus the Fulbright stipend? I don't know, it's all very confusing and terrifying, haha

Hey y'all, here's a question I've been wondering about in regards to the French ETA (maybe a little TMI but I don't really know where else I might ask this). I have RA and need my medications to not be in constant pain. I know people teaching in France through TAPIF receive French health insurance while working and that the ETA is basically an extension of TAPIF, but do people working through the ETA still get that health insurance? In other words, I'm poor and rely on state health insurance. Can I expect some kind of health insurance while I'm on a French ETA (if I'm selected at all)?

@Green.Mango I think I know what course you sat in on (the professor who teaches it is also the professor for one of my undergrad courses and mentioned that potential students were sitting in on her grad course, haha). That course is cross-listed with the theater department, correct? I hadn't realized it was taught in English! The grad seminar I'm currently in here is entirely in French

@Green.Mango I can't remember if they said *all* classes were in English, but I certainly got the impression that a class in French is *very* rare. It seems like it's largely due to the fact that the number of French PhD students in the department is really small, so they need to get more enrollment from other departments. Their explanation was also that, because UMich is a really "interdisciplinary" (I can't count the number of times that word was repeated, haha) where students are encouraged to take lots of courses in other departments, they couldn't truly be interdisciplinary if only French-speakers could take the French courses. I'm trying to grapple a little bit with how big of an issue this is for me because, in some ways, I could probably better succeed in an English-language classroom, but I did notice in a course I sat in on that allowing people to work from either the French original or an English translation seemed to create some difficulties for having a conversation that really closely analyzes a text both because of language differences and different paginations in different language editions. I still thought the conversation I observed was very interesting and very intelligent, but it was pretty different from almost every other literary course I have taken wherein staying as close to the text as possible has been largely enforced.

Finally home from the UMich visit! (I hope your flight home was okay, @Saltshaker!) I really enjoyed it, and the program there seems great. Classes are in English, which isn't what I was really looking for, but that's really the only con for me so far with their program.

@awhiterussian that might actually be good news for you if you still haven't received a rejection from Duke! @HomewardBound You're right, I'm very happy with my options! I wasn't able to make it to Boston's recruitment day (they scheduled it for the same day as my only two midterms of the semester, womp womp), but the graduate assistant was very accommodating and scheduled a private visit for me a little later this month! I'm excited to get a feel for their program in general, but I'm ESPECIALLY excited to sit in on Dorothy Kelly's seminar on gender and sexuality in 19th century literature. @everyone my visit to UMich is coming up this weekend and both my excitement and anxiety levels are skyrocketing every day. Is there anything I should absolutely remember to bring? Should I bring copies of my CV or is that a silly idea my nervous brain has made up?

Anybody else finally receive a rejection from Duke? All that's left for me to wait for now is Rutgers, where I am on a waiting list!

@Green.Mango I completely get where you're coming from about prospective job opportunities. All of the professors that I consider to be my mentors here at my undergrad have had conversations with me about the dismal nature of the current academic job market, but I just know that there's nothing I want to be doing more than teaching AND doing research. On a slightly more depressing note, I've also just noticed that growing up poor has given me an outlook on my future career (that is probably not healthy) where I just sort of say to myself, "As long as I'm not as poor as I was growing up, I'm happy!" So really for me it's all about the fact that I've loved being in academia thus far, so if I can find any way at all to stay in it, that's the direction I want to go. Back to a lighter note: Enjoy your visit to IU! The weather here has taken a turn for the better, although it's started to get chilly again. If you have any down time and need recommendations on places to check out or eat at, let me know and I can share some of my favorites.

Could you explain how you broached a conversation about moving expenses with programs some? This has been something I've been wondering about because the cost of moving to any of my programs is going to be so daunting, but I had absolutely no idea whether asking for help with moving was allowed and was just about to decide to give up the thought entirely!