Bopie5

@The Wordsworthian The 1975! I'm so excited--their new album is insanely good. Lots of really interesting juxtapositions both lyrically and musically. I'm going with 7 of my friends and we're gonna be in the pit!

This is totally unrelated, but I just got tickets to see my favorite band in April! Having something to look forward to on the other side of whatever happens with decisions has put me in a really good mood this morning.

@dilby Hahahaha! That killed me. Brought a good bit of laughter to this boring and slow moving afternoon. If only it were so! In the meantime, just finished submitting some poetry to 3 magazines, and am now headed off to yoga. Anything to speed up the days... Is anyone else finding that not knowing about grad school is making trying to plan future endeavors increasingly complicated? I was talking to my mom, and realized that if I stay in CA for grad school, I won't want to drive my car back (where my family lives) for the summer, but I also can't assume that I will stay in CA, and therefore cannot buy my plane ticket...

Idk about all of you but I’m getting pretty tired of the fact that I experience time passing at a normal rate! Wish I could just KNOW decisions already and move on with my life one way or another.

Penny’s take IS amaze, what a good analysis!!! Love it when some Halberstam is thrown in I share a lot of her critiques of the series (esp about the MAGA episode (who thought it was ever an emotionally safe and good choice to make Karamo have to engage with the MAGA guy?!) and the veiled presentation of money as solving all problems, and also the reliance on the “if only we all just talked and met each other in the middle” variety of reconciliation, which ignores systems and power almost entirely) but I also appreciate the joys of it, and the Jonathan of it haha! A flawed work still worth appreciating for sure. Also it was ENDLESSLY relatable when Penny said that she enjoys doing power critiques of normal media. As a theory person, my friends are always saying things to me like “You don’t need to analyze it, just enjoy it!” and I’m over here like “Uhhhh analyzing it is part of how I enjoy it.”

Wow, thank you to all. ❤️You all are too kind. A change in structures of comfort is a good way to phrase it. The change was definitely needed, but hard to make the choice to change it, ya feel? For now, consoling myself with Netflix Queer Eye, drinks with friends, and blasting The 1975 (and scream-singing along) every time I drive anywhere. All of that sounds like THE DREAM! I love when you can just feel the text just sweeping the audience away. There's really not much like theatre for simultaneously conducing feelings of connectedness and aliveness, in my opinion! In Imogen, one of her estranged brothers was played by a deaf actor, and the reunion at the end of the play involved Imogen and Cymbeline speaking sign language to each other. It was such a beautiful and powerful moment where a language not normally used in theatre conveyed a lot of meaning. The audience was buzzing with emotion!

Ugh, I'm so sorry that happened to you. I can imagine how that would make the year off seem less ideal. Just remember that those who really love you will support you and want what's best for you, and will want you to pursue your dreams! You deserve more than someone who tries to dissuade you from things you love that make you excited. But I feel you there--I just broke up with my boyfriend this week, in part because of thinking about next year. It's hard for sure. Re: telling people, I made the silly, silly mistake of posting the fact that I'd finished my apps on my instagram story...every time I see ANYONE I tangentially know, they ask me if I've heard back yet.

Ugh this is an AMAZING outlook. Gonna keep this in mind for sure. And, as a fellow theatre-lover, excited for you to maybe do Cymbeline (although I hope you get in and won't need to!). It truly is such a blast--all of the wildest things and tropes smashed together into one! I saw the Globe's Cymbeline remix, Imogen, in London in the fall of 2016, and they made it feel really fresh and modern.

YES! I'm literally either apartment hunting near Hyde Park or being like "Hmm, guess it maybe wouldn't be all bad to sit at a desk for 9 hours a day..." and trying to find the pros in not going. My thesis advisor didn't help much when she put the comment "Cut this section of your thesis--it's an interesting field beyond the scope of this paper. Save it for next year in grad school!" Love to feel affirmed, love to imagine doing research forever, feel sick to my stomach when I think about telling everyone that I got rejected from everywhere...

I’m an English/Theatre double major and I’m still in undergrad, so theatre stuff is eating up all of my time! For my senior project, I’m directing a piece of devised poetic theatre using poetry by TS Eliot and Anne Sexton as the text, and that is passing the time sooooo quickly. Being in rehearsal every night really makes the days slip by! Also got a yoga studio membership, and am going to class 3-4 times a week. That helps a lot with self-compassion, relaxation, mindfulness, and also passing the time haha.

I'm the same way! I don't have many connections in Chicago or Michigan, so I'm nervous about potentially moving somewhere by myself/trying to do a roommate hunt remotely and committing to people I haven't met in person...

Thanks It's a fine line to walk between being too optimistic and too pessimistic...I'm striving to be realistic but there are so many factors out of my control that I don't even know what being realistic looks like haha! That's what I'm thinking--I'm from the Chicago area originally, and I've done some cursory online apartment research, and it looks like it should be doable. And for my CA locations, I have friends in all of these places that could easily be roommates who could help bring rent down. So fingers crossed! I'm also hoping to avoid loans at all costs--I managed to get through undergrad with very minimal debt, and I'm hoping to keep it that way.

My favorite band is coming to my city this spring!

Thank you! I'm surely putting the cart before the horse here, as I don't think I'm likely to be accepted this cycle, but all of the schools I'm applying to have fairly good stipends. I know I'll have book expenses, travel expenses, groceries, fees, random needs, etc, etc, etc, but it seems feasible to find a place to live for $2000/month or less? Like @j.alicea, I'm comfortable living in "less ideal" areas, and I feel like hopefully I'll be able to make it work without taking out too many loans? Maybe I'm being too optimistic haha.

CONGRATULATIONS! That's all I have to say, I have no idea what you should say back, but this is SO exciting! Yay!

Ah, I see. By "suggests" I thought you meant "recommends" which lead me to believe that some elusive and very helpful version was out there somewhere!

Thank you SO much, this is incredibly helpful! I've read the piece by the translators, but haven't heard of the Grosholz one. That digital edition sounds like exactly what I'm looking for!

Similarly worried about paying for housing. Quick question (and maybe this is a totally ignorant thing to ask, but I'm the first in my family to apply for graduate school, so I'm still trying to get a sense of how things work functionally): do people anticipate using most of their stipends toward rent? Or is that not feasible/do you all anticipate directing your stipend toward other channels/needs?

Also, on an unrelated note, I just had a meeting with my thesis advisor, and she was so incredibly encouraging to me. We were talking about grad apps, and she said "Did you know I'm a second-try PhD? On my first cycle, I didn't get anywhere other than one school. And then I got my MA, and then tried again for my PhD. And let me tell you, on my second try, I got into schools that I didn't get into the first time. But guess what else? I didn't get into schools I got into the first time. Admissions is a mixed bag, and there are so many factors at play. There's nothing wrong with trying again, and there's so many factors out of your control."

Yes exactly! And I feel like Butler can feel very unapproachable in her theoretical work sometimes, so it was fun to get to see more of her humor than just postmodern/poststructuralist play. I love Rubin's work too! I don't always agree with her, but I think the way she talks about kinship is still really useful.

@savayPLEASE send all of those PDFs my way. I love Rubin and Butler's work--have you read Butler's interview with Rubin, "Sexual Traffic"? I haven't seen the documentary yet, but now I know what I'm doing tonight! @mandelbulb Would also love to read the PDFs you mentioned, please send my way! For me, I think my key articles would be Stryker's Frankenstein piece, Rubin's "The Traffic in Women," Susan Bordo's "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity," Toril Moi's "From Femininity to Finitude" (as previously discussed), Butler's Bodies That Matter, Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing Is Cool," and bell hooks's "Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression" chapter from her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center would be the key texts for me. As others do, I have PDFs of all of these if anyone wants them. EDIT: Adding my PDFs to the folder! What a great idea.

This is highkey one of my FAVORITE essays out there! I used it in my Frankenstein paper. I reread it every couple months, it's so fascinating and well written, and sooooo quotable in places.

Good news! That is a relief to hear from someone who's currently within the department. Lack of union is definitely a con, but everything else sounds like a dream, especially energy and collaborative spirit!

In terms of long term goals (although these are really more short-term), if I don't get in, I'm planning on moving home for six-seven months (free rent + free food + my dog = good things) and getting certified as a yoga instructor! After that, reapply for the next cycle. Also looking in to some international humanitarian aid opportunities for the early parts of 2020! No idea what I'm thinking if I don't get into grad school on either the 2019 or 2020 cycle though. Maybe move to Scotland with a friend of mine who lives there?

No, don't be sorry! Any and all information is helpful in decision making processing. A program's history surely informs its present, one way or another! Mostly I'm sad to hear that your prof had that experience ? In the end, I guess those of us who end up with interviews or visits will get an actual sense of the program, and it won't matter much for the rest of us, right?