StupidBroccoli

Thank you for all your replies. The emphasis made in each post that even in a phd programme I will ,in all probability, be required to take further courses outside the areas of my interest made me think. I am, of course, ok with the idea of teaching or taking survey courses and being acquainted with different aspects of the discipline (in fact I welcome it) , yet grad level exploration is naturally something different and more demanding. I guess it all comes down to whether I am ready to once again adopt critical stances that I am not necessarily a disciple of in order to pass a course or show that I am adept in them. All things considered, at least I now know that I should choose my next programme extremely well, and make sure that I do not end up in one of those that require you to maintain a minimum gpa of 3.7 or even 3.6. The comments here are, for good reason, very cautionary, and I certainly do not think that I will easily land on a great programme- far from it. But since no one yet wrote that I sound absolutely useless, what I read here have somehow gave me hope that I can still find some place where I can fit, and where I can learn to give up my intellectual zealotry without compromising my priorities.

Hello everyone, As get closer&closer to graduating from my MA, I am starting to worry about my prospects for a Ph.d and would like to hear your opinions on whether I can get into a Ph.d programme in English that is worth doing with my terrible gpa. I got my BA from a university outside USA that is not particularly well know but hugely respected country-wide with a 3.37 gpa, and continued into an MA in the same university, of which I will be graduating with an even lower 3.26. The reason why my BA gpa was not very high was that I was only successful in courses that I was really interested in (and I was consistently successful in them) , but did not believe in the necessity of studying very hard (A level) for other core classes that were not my thing, and I cannot say I regret it very much. And later when started my MA, I came to realize that the programme' s structure and content did not fit my needs at all ,and thus being depressed I decided to do the minimal amount of coursework just to finish the degree and ended up receiving a few bad grades. However, one of the reasons why my gpa got even lower was that I attempted to take a completely irrelevant foreign language course with credit (because having a second language is important, right?) and finished it with a very low grade due to the great amount of coursework that it lay on me along with my other courses. To cut a very long story short, I got bad grades in my MA from courses that were not even in the area that I want to specialize in (which yet still fall into the category of "English" studies) and I do not really have other merits to compensate for this fact, either; I have not published yet (though I might), did not attend conferences (because I was not sure whether I finally wanted to do a phd) , yet I find that I am still hugely interested in the area I want to specialized in and I also know that I can be a good student when I want to. Do you think the the wrong path I took during my MA would completely bar me from a Ph.d that is worth doing ? I do not aim very high but I'd like to be in an institution where I could really flourish. And finally I'd like to add that while my MA dissertation is not (whose is?) brilliant, some people find it at least interesting. Any discouragement or encouragement is welcome, and thanks !