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FruitLover

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  1. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to dr. t in 2020 application thread   
    This is what my department/university is doing or trying to do. Another reason why it's important to prioritize a school with a lot of resources when you're looking at programs.
  2. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to historyofsloths in 2020 application thread   
    Finally heard from Michigan today. They said they're not taking anyone off of the waitlist this season because of financial restraints due to COVID-19. I'm not shocked, the odds were stacked against me (in terms of the amount of people who still had to make their final decisions) and I wouldn't have been able to make an informed decision had they accepted me, but it does still sting a little bit.
    Onward and upwards, I accepted my offer from Indiana University and I'll be moving to the Midwest in the summer! Good luck to anyone else still on the waitlist, I know it's rough with only one week to go, but I hope it's good news.
  3. Like
    FruitLover got a reaction from jujubea in As a course reader am I required to attend the class?   
    At my school, readers do attend lectures. But as the others have said, better ask yours about their expectations.
  4. Upvote
    FruitLover got a reaction from time_consume_me in 2020 application thread   
    Do you guys think it's worth asking the program where I will most likely go if they offer any help with moving expenses? I know it's not common at this level, but I'm wondering if anyone has ever done this or heard of anyone actually succeeding at it.
  5. Upvote
    FruitLover got a reaction from IGoToWar in 2020 application thread   
    Do you guys think it's worth asking the program where I will most likely go if they offer any help with moving expenses? I know it's not common at this level, but I'm wondering if anyone has ever done this or heard of anyone actually succeeding at it.
  6. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to AP in 2020 application thread   
    If you already have an offer, you can ask anything. If there is funding for moving expenses, it might be in the graduate school. A good way is to ask the program to point you into the direction where to find these funds, as opposed to asking “do you give me money to move”. 
  7. Upvote
    FruitLover got a reaction from jocelynbymarcjacobs in 2020 application thread   
    Congratulations!
  8. Like
    FruitLover got a reaction from historyofsloths in 2020 application thread   
    Congratulations!
  9. Like
    FruitLover reacted to historyofsloths in 2020 application thread   
    I've been taken off the waitlist at Indiana! Just received my formal offer today and I have to say that I'm relieved/emotional/over the moon. I'm going to get a PhD!
    I'm still on the waitlist at Michigan and will be sending them an email on Monday to check on my status there and to let them know that I've been offered a doctoral position at IU. Fingers crossed that I can make my final decision soon and start my journey to a PhD in the Fall!
  10. Upvote
    FruitLover got a reaction from anbri in speaking with potential advisors   
    I felt a little uneasy about this as well, but I don’t think it’s a big deal after all. One of my POIs asked me right away what other offers I have and another one asked indirectly. Plus, some other faculty I’d be working with also asked or found out. So if they ask, I think it’s okay to share the information (they can probably even share their thoughts on the other programs or tailor their answers about their program to address why you may want to consider them over the other places), but if they don’t - you don’t have to bring it up.
  11. Upvote
    FruitLover got a reaction from psstein in History PhD to Consulting   
    I know of one person (not personally) who has gone from a top-5 History PhD program on to a high-paying consulting job. That was a couple of decades ago, but he still works in the consulting industry.
  12. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to IGoToWar in speaking with potential advisors   
    Like @FruitLover, I've had potential faculty advisors in one case ask directly about programs, and have in another case initiated the conversation myself. In one case, faculty at one school happened to praise the resources at another school I was considering, without me even bringing it up. Can't speak for others, but I've had a good experience with these frank discussions (so far). The sense I got was that they genuinely wanted me to make the best decision for myself, even if they hoped that I would accept their offer. Of course, it'd be best to gauge on a case-by-case basis: does this faculty member seem open to talking about other institutions? By having these discussions, you may learn some really valuable things about the other programs, as scholars in a certain sub-field tend to know each other. They will also know other things about an institution, such as the quality and types of archival/library resources available there. You can't find a lot of this kind of stuff online, and even current graduate students may not know as much as faculty at different institutions.
  13. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to AP in How do you keep your annotated bibliographies?   
    OneNote. Here are the many times I explained why: 
    https://forum.thegradcafe.com/search/?&q=onenote&author=AP&search_and_or=or&sortby=relevancy
  14. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to historyofsloths in How do you keep your annotated bibliographies?   
    I use Zotero and Evernote. Zotero to save the location of the source, the bibliographic info, and keep them in subfolders so it's not one big list. I use Evernote to take notes on each source. Although Zotero allows you to insert notes for each source saved, I've found that writing all the notes in EverNote and having new "notes" (pages, really) for each source has been incredibly helpful, mainly because I have Evernote on my phone, computer, and I can have it on the tablet I plan on getting for grad school.
  15. Upvote
    FruitLover got a reaction from Manana in How do you keep your annotated bibliographies?   
    I am trying to think of the most efficient way to take notes on the books I read and keep it all in one place. Usually, I take hand-written notes, but I would like to move to an electronic note-taking system so I can access it from anywhere and search by keyword. Do you have any tips on convenient ways to do that? Please share your note-taking experiences.
    I know there have been some threads on note-taking, but I'm particularly interested in how you keep record of books in your field and those relevant to your research.
  16. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to KinoCat in Questions for POIs after cancelled open house   
    If you're not planning to already, make plans to talk on the phone/skype with professors!  And students if they're open to it!  I managed to have two visit days just before all of this started, and even though in person meeting is definitely invaluable, I feel like I had most of my questions answered and information given on phone calls. 
    Questions:
     - Could you describe the structure of the program? Classes? Timeline? Basically just asking them to give you their spiel. Getting multiple professors to do this can also be revealing.
    - What makes students successful in the program?
    - What's the department social atmosphere like?
    - What makes this program unique?
    - Could you go into more detail about the funding package? When would I get paid (by semester? every few months?)? How negotiable is funding? (especially if you have other offers)
    - How live-able is the city with the stipend (better question to asks students)
    - How does teaching and research assistantships work? What kinds of classes would I be TAing? Are they all in my field, or would some of them be less related?
    - Any additional paid work opportunities outside of the funding package?
    - What kind of funding is available for conference and research travel?
    - What's the job market like? (This question also reveals how optimistic/realistic/helpful their advising might be)
    - Would you be able to provide financial assistance for moving costs?
    - How would the department be able to support [your specific research interest] (This also gives you a chance to talk about your topic/interests and see how knowledgeable/helpful they are. Basically, how does it feel to talk about your ideas with them?)
    - If your doing Art History, is there a good art scene in X city? (Gives you a chance to learn more about the place.)
    FOR STUDENTS (in addition to the above questions):
    - How is the faculty? Any to avoid? Ask students who are working with your POIs how they are as advisors/supervisors.
    - Are there any politically oblivious faculty? ( a way of asking if there are any profs who are racist/sexist/oppressive to avoid)
    - How livable is the place with the stipend? Where do you live? With roommates or partner or alone? Do they have financial support outside of the stipend (ie family, partners, etc)?
    - Hows the social atmosphere with your cohort? With faculty?       
    - How is TAing? Did you get to choose the classes you TA for?
    - Talk about your work and their work. (Gets a sense of how you might fit socially/intellectually there)
    - How did you make your decision to come here?  DEFINITELY ask this to multiple students if you can - is this a place people go because they want to be there? Or because they were accepted?
     
    Again, I would really stress trying to have a phone call or a skype call to talk to people!  A big part of visiting is just getting the vibe, which is very hard over text!  You can tell a lot in a phone call!  And in their willingness to correspond with you too!
    Hope this helps!
     
  17. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to historyofsloths in 2020 application thread   
    Just received my first acceptance! I've been offered full tuition plus a TAship at Lehigh for their MA program. I've also just sent emails to my two waitlists to see if it's worth it to take this offer. Relieved I have one offer on the table now. 
  18. Upvote
    FruitLover got a reaction from jocelynbymarcjacobs in 2020 application thread   
    Oh, I see. I’ve never heard of stipends with no tuition waiver before...
  19. Like
    FruitLover reacted to jocelynbymarcjacobs in Reaching out to programs for feedback on my application?   
    I haven’t yet—they asked that these requests be sent after April 15. I plan on taking advantage of this offer, so I’ll update when the time comes. 
  20. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to psstein in 2020 application thread   
    Whether or not it's fair, if you're more than 2-4 years out of a PhD program and haven't won some prestigious postdoc (or VAP-ship), you're probably not going to get a position. Far too many adjuncts think all they need is a few more classes to "prove" to the department that they can handle a TT position. Sadly, for most of them, that day never comes.
    I would also bet, @FruitLover, that the position receiving 12 applications was either in an extremely niche field or at a university in an incredibly undesirable area (think something like Mohammed Bin Salman College of Petrochemicals and History).
  21. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to gsc in 2020 application thread   
    Honestly, though, modern British history has been going this way for 20 years. The imperial turn is not new; it's almost now a baseline requirement to seriously engage in British studies. And it only takes one or two trips through the British studies conference program to see this in action. Nearly all the new up-and-coming scholars have some imperial/global angle or edge to their projects, if not projects entirely about the empire.
    But I also think that a good advisor (certainly a hands-on advisor) won't let you design a project that's 20 years out of date using methods everyone's seen and done before. This goes for any field. It's one thing for a second or third year student to not yet know what is interesting/innovative/new in the field and what isn't. But your advisor does, and should step in before you spend five years on a project that's not going to get you anywhere professionally. Even if you really do want to study a topic that is not, in itself, On Trend, a good advisor should help you find a new angle or method for the topic that distinguishes it from the rest.
    And not to mention that everything in academia snowballs, so a project that's designed to be compelling from the get-go will attract funding and grants, and funding and grants attract more funding and more grants, and more funding leads to a stronger project (because more time to research or write), and a stronger project backed by lots of research and institutional funding will lead to a stronger job market application... etc, etc.
    Ah yes, the old "I'm a British historian and Britain had colonies in the Middle East so I'm obviously qualified for this Modern Middle East job!" switcheroo. The idea that British historians should respond to the job market crisis by applying to regional studies jobs has always struck me as somewhat neo-imperialist. 
     
  22. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to AP in 2020 application thread   
    It truly depends on many, many things. I want to be clear on something now that I've been hired and that I've participated in a search at my institution. There is no formula to get a TT job. THERE IS NO FORMULA. Like when applying to grad school, many things are unknown. I can assure you the job market is incredibly less straightforward than grad school admissions. At my institution, an R1, research is very important so conversations swirled around originality of argument, the literature candidates were engaging with, the possibility of grants, the possibility of cool courses. Needless to say, research production such as articles is evidence of cool research. 
    [Tip for Americanists: please, f*cking engage with the literature of your topic outside the US. Eg: if you study gender in urban settings, do engage with scholars that study Europe and Latin America, for example]
    So, there's no golden time between time of degree and time of job, though if you've been out and you haven't taken a VAP, postdoc, or NTT, it's harder to come back. This is incredibly unfair to women, of course. 
    Always take the TT offer (minus the exaggerated caveat proposed by @telkanuru). You might be able to negotiate postponing a TT starting date for a prestigious postdoc. This usually happens at institutions that do not need you right away, so it's the exception, not the rule. 
    It's always best to do your research, though I can tell you that coming from abroad I had no idea what fellowships were least of all what I should be applying to. Peers and advisors walked me through that in my first and second years. 
    Re: online presence, you've noticed that it doesn't matter. However, know this: people will look you up so having online presence gives you control of what they find. I've been very active on twitter and thus was able to find out about opportunities (conferences, fellowships, archives) that I could have missed. I even organized an entire conference with twitter friends. Again, I came to the US with no network so for me my online presence was a way to creating my niche. 
  23. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to dr. t in 2020 application thread   
    I'm going to temper @TMP's advice slightly: it depends on the VAP or postdoc. Something like the Harvard Society of Fellows is something you should take over a TT job at University of South-Central Alabama's third satellite campus, to give an extreme example.
  24. Like
    FruitLover reacted to IGoToWar in 2020 application thread   
    Related to the questions above, and directed to currently attending grads/post-grads:
    For someone deciding between programs and about to undertake a PhD, would you say it is important to have a clear roadmap/plan/timeline for what grants and fellowships to target, conferences to attend, and people to meet before beginning the program? Or from your experience is it harder to plan/foresee opportunities without understanding your field and department more after being enrolled for a year or two?
    Also, both from online digging and from personal connections with other grad students, I notice a wide spectrum in terms of PhDs/scholars that one can find very little information about, and scholars who have meticulously maintained social media platforms and websites, which detail publications, conferences, and research interests. What are your thoughts on having a kind of public profile that makes you easily searchable and "connected" on the internet? Is it more practical to do so, both in terms of eventual job prospects (in/out of academia) and just for research networking? Is it a waste of time?
  25. Upvote
    FruitLover reacted to psstein in 2020 application thread   
    There is some preference for students who finish PhDs in shorter times (i.e. 6-8 years) over students who take much longer. Of course, that depends heavily on sub-field. It would be unreasonable to expect a medievalist to finish in the same time it takes someone specializing in 20th century US history.
    As for the jobs: the market is so bad that it's very tough to turn down a TT job, even if it's in a less desirable place to live. It's likely that the TT job you get will be the one you stay in for the rest of your career, based on the way the field is trending.
    As for @telkanuru's point about adjuncting, it's not called "adjunct hell" for nothing. Far too many PhD students (and recent PhDs) end up something I call the "teaching experience trap." What I mean is the idea that "I just need to teach 1 more course to be a competitive candidate/to get a TT job." I don't call it a "trap" lightly. On the balance of it, though, it's probably more worth devoting your energy to finish the dissertation than it is "just teaching 1 more course."
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