fall-11

Oh my goodness! Why didn't you go??

Ha ha, I'm researching toads so I can write a poem about them Well, I should explain. I'm supposed to be working on my MA thesis, part of which is on Marianne Moore. Bonnie Costello's book on Marianne Moore talks about Moore's famous phrase "real toads in imaginary gardens" and I was really amused by Costello writing that "Toads ... have their own literary history" and then going on about toads for a page and a half. I thought this is a great idea for a poem, and started looking up and taking notes on literary toads. There's Larkin's toads, Heaney's frog spawn, and so on. Even Wilbur has a poem on toads. Not to mention, I'm inspired by all those weird animal poems by Moore -- and the animals she chooses are often ugly & unusual ones too (like the pangolin and the paper nautilus). Can you tell how nutty this process is making me that I'm finding TOADS fascinating??

That's great -- congratulations!

Honestly, if an adcom can't see that this is an incredible candidate despite her slightly-less-than-3.0 GPA from 14 years ago, that's really not a school she should go to anyway. As far as I can see, it's the school that's missing out on someone who would have done them proud.

Hey, who're you calling a koalaface?? Just kidding I love koalas and all manner of fuzzy critters

Ditto -- I'm applying with an MA, but since my undergrad was in an unrelated field, I definitely want to do as much coursework as possible.

That's downright sadistic. What school is this? Maybe we should all boycott them.

I'm hoping that's not the case. Looking at the results page for previous years, it seems they accepted some folks in the first or second week of Feb, and others at the end of Feb, so hopefully they're not done yet.

Oh my goodness. I have no idea what that was all about, but I'm sure you can publish it somewhere! Wow, and if you can come up with all that, you definitely deserve to get into grad school.

I'm doing an MA as well, and I applied for poetry/poetics and literary theory.

UC Irvine has one that's specifically targeted at teachers: http://www.humanities.uci.edu/sma/

Thanks for sharing all that, and congratulations on both the acceptances!

I don't see why it has to be one or the other. If he really loves you, he should be okay with a long distance relationship for a few years, since afterwards you'll be together for the rest of your lives. I've been with my SO since 2005, and since fall 2009, we've been in grad school in different places (midwest and southeast), but we see each other whenever we have breaks or long weekends, and while that's not perfect, there's no question of breaking up just because grad school is keeping us physically distant for a few years. Grad school is only a few years, but the relationship is for life. Editing to add: in case you're wondering, we did coordinate our grad school apps as much as possible, and applied to a lot of schools in the same cities/states, but unfortunately we ended up getting accepted in totally different places.

Thanks for responding -- and congratulations again!

The results page shows a couple of acceptances from Ohio State -- if you're reading this, congrats! Can you please tell us if you were an internal or external candidate? Thanks. I'm an external applicant, and it still says "In Review."

The only way I can stop the email and Gradcafe obsession is by literally forcing myself to go somewhere. E.g. yesterday I forced myself to go grocery shopping. At least it killed a couple of hours. And the bad weather in the north is really annoying me because I feel like it's slowing down the process and delaying notifications from schools in that region.

This sounds like it would be a fun party Sorry, I have a dirty mind

Yeah really, with this level of maturity, these folks are planning to start grad school?? Or maybe they've just gone nuts because of the waiting

I love this thread!!

It stands for Associated Writing Programs. They have an annual conference for writers and creative-writing folks: http://www.awpwriter.org/conference.

Is your friend the same person who posted the UGA acceptance on the results page? I've started freaking out as well, because that's one of my schools and I haven't heard a peep...

Okay, now that my curiosity is piqued, I looked at the UCLA website to figure out how their credit system works. Turns out they don't have fixed 3-credit courses as is standard in most places. Most of their undergrad English courses seem to be 5 credits, some 4 credits. You can see the course listing (with credits) here: http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/schedule/catalog.aspx?sa=ENGL+++&funsel=3. However, even with 5 credits per course, you would still need 12 courses to make 60 credits... I don't know why I am wasting time figuring out UCLA's credit system instead of working on my thesis, but I just can't concentrate on the thesis or on anything at all until I hear some good news from someplace

Well, the 20-62 credits per quarter cited in the Wikipedia page references the following article from the UCLA website: http://magazine.ucla.edu/features/smart_set/, which does have those numbers. I'm not saying I understand how it can be humanly possible, but just pointing out that it's not an error on Wikipedia's part, since it's on an official UCLA webpage. Yeah, it's mind-boggling how that can possibly work.

Along the same lines, according to Wikipedia (which links to this article: http://magazine.ucla.edu/features/smart_set/) Franco took 20-62 credits per quarter while doing his undergrad at UCLA, the normal upper limit being 19 per quarter. Then after graduating from UCLA, according to Wikipedia, "He moved to New York to simultaneously attend graduate school at Columbia University's MFA writing program, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for filmmaking, and Brooklyn College for fiction writing, while occasionally commuting to North Carolina's Warren Wilson College for poetry." How do you "simultaneously" do that many things??

If you aren't clicking with this particular therapist, or don't find him helpful, do consider trying someone else. Sometimes you have to try a few before you find one that clicks with you. That's definitely been my experience, back when I was in college and dealing with depression. Therapy was really unhelpful until I found the right therapist. Regarding the GRE -- as others have said, the GRE score is not the single or even the most important determining factor. The fact that you've done research and have even published a paper counts for far more. Those are the things you should focus on in your SOP. I'm sure there are lots of people who have test anxiety and don't do well on standardized tests even though they are extremely well qualified candidates -- and I'm sure adcoms know that. So don't freak out! Just take it easy and good luck.