mandelbulb

@velvetcactus welcome to the thread and best of luck! i know i wouldn't be a great therapist lol i've been working in psych research long enough to know that. i'd probably get an msw from uw, stay in seattle, work in research. it'd be fulfilling work, i'd get to stay close to friends and family and a beautiful city, and i could switch up my job every few years if i got bored... which is not something that i could really do with a phd so that's a plus side i suppose. this plan b is pretty much keeping me sane and reducing my anxiety by a large margin. my relative lack of excitement for this route, though, is why i know i made the right decision to take another stab at phd programs.

one of my closest friends is australian, and i promised to visit this year if i don't get into grad school lol same concerns! tbf, i've always had one plan in place that'd relieve any feelings of "wow my life sucks" after a potential shut-out. i applied to a writing workshop residency for june-july a few years ago, and while it stressed me out that i was having to coordinate moving in my head, it also would've been really great to get my mind off of the fact i hadn't gotten in (if i hadn't). the year before that, i had a trip to paris planned. this year, i have a few small trips planned, and a potential big one should the stars align with income tax lol don't hold off making some plans if you don't know where you'll be. you can always rearrange or cancel if you get good news! but it's better to have it all set already if you get bad news, imo

notre dame, uchicago, and duke also interview

you are both beautiful individuals and will surely find the right someone for you when the time is right for both of you ❤️ one way to get out of talking about apps is to announce that you won't talk about apps unless you hear positive news. this has been my strategy this year (and last year), and it's worked well enough for the most part. there's always someone who wants to talk about apps because they have good news.

i don't think they pair scores with applications until after the deadline, so that might be part of it

welcome to the thread i haven't been doing anything in particular. just the same grind as always, which helps normalize the whole thing. work, cooking dinner, cuddling the dog while i watch american gods or the final season of a series of unfortunate events, gathering potentially useful research-y things for the future, sleeping. sometimes i add in dinner with friends or a movie at a theater. i'm old and boring.

it may just be that they haven't updated their system yet. i didn't find anything on their website that says you shouldn't email them (for example, ucla cinema & media studies explicitly says on their website: "Please do not contact the department to check on your application, as we cannot update you on your application status or materials"), so you probably could just ask nicely

i don't even think remember taking the gre anymore lol

@mwils15 welcome to the thread and good luck to you, too!

@j.alicea sometimes i didn't include my transcript for the language classes i took because it seemed unnecessary. for schools with more strict second langauge policies, i did include it. @dangermouse congrats to you! @pdh12 it's true; there's almost always a living option for what you can afford in any area. i've heard that notre dame's stipend is great for the area (i know someone attending there now! do you know any of the phd students?). uw's stipend i believe is about the same, and while it's livable here, it's a different quality of life for sure. at this point, i'm not really thinking about the particulars of livability because that'll end in apartment hunting and too much wishful thinking lol @fortschritt22 welcome to the thread! and good luck to you :) what are your research interests and what schools are on your list (or which ones are your top choices)?

@aporeticpoetic yeah, it seems like it's an across departmental request (history, comp lit, english). @pdh12 congrats!!! you'll do fine!

i got this email, too. and i'm not in comp lit (or history)? lol edit: and i filled out the form without including old english because i'm an idiot........

@kendalldinniene i can get more details from my friends who own, but as far as i know, the market is pretty competitive and everything in the city is pretty expensive. the market has been slowing down recently though! god this really reminds me of how little i'm looking forward to actually moving, even if i'm excited by the idea of learning a new city and starting a new chapter of my life...

there are no other tips lol

Dean Spade!!! good call. i can't wait to go through all these articles this weekend. yeah, i work at UW right now (and i did before my MA too... i can't escape), over at Harborview. how're you liking their program so far? i've heard so many mixed things about the department and their funding situation that i almost didn't apply, but i love Seattle so much and my entire support network is here so i gave in despite the drawbacks i've heard.

@dilby i'm also out of reacts, otherwise you'd have one too!

@dilby that may just be the best thing to come out of this application cycle...................

@pdh12 as long as you sign into google, you should be able to upload at will ?

seriously, it really is. did she have any idea while she was alive how many scholars she would impact even after death? a former professor of mine who's at princeton now worked with some of sedgwick's contemporaries while she was in grad school at emory, and that felt so special to me. sedgwick's touch passed down through generations of scholars.

oh man that reminds me that Anzaldúa's Borderlands is beautiful if anyone's up for it, feel free to drop your favorite PDFs in this little folder? https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TyCdpFDWdXFpwA21aX39b7SxFnKcnxZC?usp=sharing

this brings up a great topic. favorite articles/chapters anyone? things you end up referencing frequently in your work? i found the introduction to the affect theory reader (written by Greg Seigworth and Melissa Gregg) to be beautifully written. i also love the introduction of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Touching Feeling. i have PDFs of both if anyone wants them!

i begged my roommate to call the English department and ask about the interview invite lol they have not sent out interview invites yet! they're still reviewing applications. we can continue to collectively hold our breaths ? it's silly to lie about things you can just call to confirm about...

this is the hardest lesson of them all, isn't it? this is a paragraph i'm sure i'll be repeating to myself every day for the next three months.

what an appropriate metaphor lol

i had this incredibly stupid dream right before i woke up that i'd received an email from harvard asking me for an additional (recommendation) letter detailing how i would represent the department/school both internally and externally. in those half-lucid moments right after i woke up, i debated who'd write that letter the best. ...there of course was no such email sent, and that seems like a rather absurd request to make at this point post-deadline lol what a bizarre stress dream. it wasn't even particularly stressful, but it also did nothing to make me feel any better about this whole process. that said, if any of you were asked to provide such a letter, do you know in your mind who you'd ask?