merry night wanderer

I benefited a lot from reading the statements of people on the forum willing to send theirs to me, so I'm happy to pay it forward and send mine to anyone here - just send along a DM. Good luck everyone!

Just want to chime in to second Bumblebea on the point that you don’t need to have “relevant” job experience. The modern economy changes constantly and is forever inventing new positions and even just new names for positions that sound trendier. (My old position has about three different names, and I made a point of putting all of them on my resume, lol.) It means jack. Everyone, even people who currently have jobs, needs to be updated in a general sort of way about where the industry is going, what the new (and generally idiotic) lingo is, and what software skills are required going forward.

As they say, "Office Space is a documentary," lol. It really sounds like you did luck out, and that's deeply worth valuing and sticking with. If you like the place where you have to spend 40 hours a week, and aren't pushed to spend more, there's not much more to reasonably ask for. I have many issues with the way industry works under capitalism. However, that doesn’t mean that every company will crush your soul or that you can’t find yourself with good colleagues, interesting work, and reasonable working conditions. Your point later is well taken that there’s a big bias against the priva

Everything is a tradeoff in the capitalist hellscape we're in. There's some good advice in this thread. Although I'm absolutely in the "she's a skeeze" camp, both the video and Ramus' posts speak to conditions that seem accurate to me, and echo what I've heard from other late stage grad students or post-academics. It is very worth taking to heart. I know universities are pushing to do alt-ac better, but they're not good enough to be truly helpful yet. I will also say that what Sigada says about the private sector is true. In this, I can put on my own wearied veteran hat, and add: T

Do you want an academic job? If so, a PhD in literature will make you more versatile. However, there's inescapably going to be some creative writing time sacrificed by doing a lit dissertation instead of a creative project. A lit MA before a PhD of any sort is just fine.

Good luck to all of this year's applicants! It was a grueling set of months for me last year, and I can only imagine that covid is making it even more chaotic and uncertain for you. However, I'm very glad I took the chance and applied. And I hope you're all in a similar place come next year. If anyone has any questions about JHU, feel free to let me know.

Reiterating here that JHU no longer requires either GRE.

The Comp Lit department here is extremely philosophy focused, specifically in Continental. I suspect (though a phil graduate student might know better) that English and Comp Lit departments are where Continentals hide out in America these days! I don't know about "primarily" (since you will still have to take literature coursework and be familiar with literature texts), but I plan on incorporating plenty of philosophy into my work and numerous people here are of a similar bent. It seems to be quite possible.

With so many schools ditching the GRE, I would have rediverted 100% of that energy to getting even more abreast of the field and refining my writing sample. To the first point, SEL provides overviews of trends based on era that I found incredibly valuable, though I'd imagine you will already have a leg up as a Master's student, and teachers in your area can help as well. To the second, I'd work on writing sample extensively (of course) and give it not only to your mentors, but to people in the dept outside your area, if possible. I only gave mine to a newly-retired prof in my field and I regr

Just dropping in to mention Johns Hopkins waived the GRE general and subject test requirement.

You found certification programs? Wow. A google search didn't pop up any for me, and I'm not aware of any jobs that require them (maybe K-12?). That's bizarre! You can definitely find funded MAs - there is a spreadsheet floating around here with many of them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XZ7ejtJETaRH7ufh2O1S21HOeTTy9EYgi7Z5vUHCRLI/edit#gid=0

It may feel like overkill, but I don't think it actually is. You've discovered what part of the humanities you want to pursue, and that's all the reason in the world to go for another master's. On top of that, there's no such thing (that I'm aware of) as a "certificate" in English Literature. You may feel behind in English, but in my opinion a broader knowledge base to draw from can make you a more interesting scholar. There are plenty of hyperspecialists in English. Maybe think of ways to do scholarship in English that pulls on your more general Humanities background and sets you a

If you are applying to MFAs, I would also look at the MFA Draft group on Facebook. The subforum here seems just fine but the Draft is extremely active and has plenty of good information (just beware getting sucked into the whirlpool of anxious applicants posting too much, as with anywhere!). Just search for "MFA Draft '21."

I'm also happy to send my SoP to anyone who thinks they'd find it useful.

This is great advice, and actually, almost every school that accepted me mentioned it as something interesting; the people I talked to sometimes asked further questions about how my creative/critical work were intersecting. One prof even said he particularly liked MFA students. I suppose the only thing to mention is that I did feel like I could have benefited from the deep dive of a master's thesis, and for me I had to do my writing sample from scratch. It wasn't quite a seminar paper and it wasn't quite a thesis. But hopefully your lit mentors can help you out here.