fall-11

I never liked the Backstreet Boys, but suddenly "Quit Playing Games With My Heart" seems kind of appropriate:

Feel free to add more!

REM -- "Everybody Hurts"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudOFG5X6uA

Is this a joke?

...You've got to be sh*tting me.

To echo Safferz, what it comes down to is not a matter of which school wants you more -- I think it's more about how secure YOU feel about yourself. If you were able to get those great offers, you are obviously VERY smart and talented. But if you can't believe in that yourself, then all the fellowships and awards in the world aren't going to make you feel good enough / special enough / smart enough, etc. You obviously ARE all of those things, but that belief has to come from within yourself, otherwise no amount of external validation (e.g. fellowships) will ever suffice.

That's an understandable fear. But given the high stipend they're paying, I'm guessing this is a well-funded private school, so their teaching load will probably be 1 course per semester, which should be pretty manageable. Also remember that they will probably have a fairly thorough TA orientation/training before the semester starts, where they will likely also provide a lot of the materials you will use in class, plus there will be support available throughout the semester as well. Everybody going into this for the first time will be just as scared as you are, so don't just hide away somewhere -- if you're having trouble with teaching or with time-management, talk to others in your cohort, talk to older grad students, etc. It'll help to get advice from the seniors, as well as share the burden of fear/anxiety with others in your cohort. You'll make it -- everyone does.

Okay, if you're really asking for advice, I'll try not to sound insensitive, but honestly you're making a huge deal out of nothing. If the committee said they loved your application -- well, that's why they accepted you over hundreds of others, right? As for fellowships, only one or two people get them out of those 400 or 500 that applied. We all would like to be special -- and you're already special enough that you made it into the 10 or 12 spots they had out of something like 400 applicants. To ask for even MORE specialness, to want to be that ONE person out of 400 who gets a fellowship -- well, isn't that asking for too much?

Once again, I'll reiterate that I'm not trying to sound mean or insensitive, if this truly is bothering you as much as you say. But please remember also that many of us here, including myself, have not gotten ANY offer yet, and hence are feeling very un-special indeed, so you may not really get too many sympathetic responses. Seriously, it's not healthy to let such a small thing bother you so much. Try to put it in perspective, and be grateful for the amazing offers you've gotten.

Congratulations on those admits, and good luck with making your decision.

Okay, if you're really asking for advice, I'll try not to sound insensitive, but honestly you're making a huge deal out of nothing. If the committee said they loved your application -- well, that's why they accepted you over hundreds of others, right? As for fellowships, only one or two people get them out of those 400 or 500 that applied. We all would like to be special -- and you're already special enough that you made it into the 10 or 12 spots they had out of something like 400 applicants. To ask for even MORE specialness, to want to be that ONE person out of 400 who gets a fellowship -- well, isn't that asking for too much?

Once again, I'll reiterate that I'm not trying to sound mean or insensitive, if this truly is bothering you as much as you say. But please remember also that many of us here, including myself, have not gotten ANY offer yet, and hence are feeling very un-special indeed, so you may not really get too many sympathetic responses. Seriously, it's not healthy to let such a small thing bother you so much. Try to put it in perspective, and be grateful for the amazing offers you've gotten.

Congratulations on those admits, and good luck with making your decision.

I'm closing this because I truly thought I would get advice.

Fair warning--This is not a "chin up, I got rejected by 5 programs before getting a funded offer" story.

We are officially halfway through February. There are those of us (like myself) who have received rejections but no admits. There are those of us who have heard nothing from any program at all. It's easy to stress out. It's easy to picture across the board rejection. We start to picture spending a year waiting tables. In horror, we see ourselves getting forced out of academia and onto the bottom rung of the economic world of "real life." We start to question our intelligence, our worth and our futures. I know. I've been doing it. Today I stop. Today, I recognize that going to work for a year is not a bad thing. Today, I realize that even if I never get a funded offer for a PhD, my life will have meaning because I will have a life. Before I started my MA degree, I spent four years as a high school teacher. I received an e-mail this afternoon, letting me know that two of my former students were in a car accident last night. Both of them graduated last year. Both are 19. One, Mark, is a United States Marine, and he is currently fighting for his life in a shock-trauma center. The other, Ashley, is dead. At 19 years of age. After receiving this news, my perspective on this whole process was forcibly altered. I still hope for a funded offer to continue my work on Shakespeare. I will still get a little goofy every time I hear the beep of a new e-mail arriving in my inbox. I will still check Gradcafe often enough to qualify as an addiction. I will no longer dread the notion of going 0-11. I will no longer get all dramatic at the concept of a year outside of PhD work. Whatever I do over the next 12 months, whether it's starting a PhD program, applying again, working a job I love or working a job I hate, I will be alive to experience the highs and lows of that year. Whatever happens, I will remember that. Our "worst-case scenarios" would look very enticing to Mark and Ashley right now. I intend to remember that over the coming weeks and months. I apologize for the depressing tone of the post. It doesn't make any sense to me when kids die. It makes even less sense when they're my kids.

I never liked the Backstreet Boys, but suddenly "Quit Playing Games With My Heart" seems kind of appropriate:

Feel free to add more!

I never liked the Backstreet Boys, but suddenly "Quit Playing Games With My Heart" seems kind of appropriate:

Feel free to add more!

Ooo!!! I want to try!



The Brief Email

so much depends
upon

a brief e-
mail

glazed in sweet
consent

in my in
box

Haha, well, this is pretty bad. But I had fun messing with it.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many an email server that I had just checked before.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some interviewer,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Oh but I am such a bore!

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of worry - worry that had filled my core-
For the many horror stories that make up the adcom yore -
To whom my heart and soul I swore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Not an interviewer entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
A letter there, and nothing more.

Now onto that paper peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the thickness gave no token,
And the only word there written was the number on my door.
“Shit!” I whispered, closed my eyes and slammed the door.
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
The letter called me so much louder than it had before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is good news within that packet;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis good news and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the letter, and, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a kindly reject, condescending to the core.
Not the least allowance made it; for the hours spent in torture;
But, in fifteen fucking seconds, to the ground my dreams it tore -
“With great regret,” and “we are sorry,” brought my future to the floor.
“With great regret” and nothing more.

Shouldn't that be: I fall at the feet of adcoms! I plead!

Wonderful! A bit of doggrel to add (may Donne's ghost not haunt me for this desecration):

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we heard? were we not wean'd till then? 
But suck'd on games of waiting. childishly ? 
Or snorted we in the Grad Cafe's den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any acceptance I did see, 
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of university.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls, 
Which watcheth the results page out of fear ;
For waiting all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little email an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new programs have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess at least one acceptance ; each hath one, and is one. 

A letter in thine eye, one in mine appears, 
And true crazed waiting does in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better universities
Without sharp TA load, without declining stipend ?
Whatever result comes was not mix'd equally ;
If our two hopes be one, or thou and I 
Wait so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

Shouldn't that be: I fall at the feet of adcoms! I plead!

Shouldn't that be: I fall at the feet of adcoms! I plead!

The heart asks acceptance first,
And then, to not have heard,
And then, that awful waitlist,
In limbo, awaiting the word;

And then, to go to sleep,
The fragile nerves to ease;
And then, a gentle arrest
The weakened heart to seize.

A pamphlet, you say?

Presenting!

a preview!

Front side
Back side

I remember it was about 9am and I was brushing my teeth. I heard a "bing" from Outlook - new email. I rushed back to my computer, toothbrush in mouth. Before the popup window completely faded, I made out part of the email address...something about grad admissions. I felt my heart pounding as I opened the email. The first thing I read: "Congratulations."

I ran to the front yard to tell my mom the good news. I ran past the landscaper, who gave me a funny look. Toothpaste was foaming around my mouth. In the excitement of it all, it never occurred to me to set the toothbrush down - or even take it out of my mouth! I approached my mom, who just so happened to be standing on the front lawn with a neighbor, talking about landscaping stuff. My mom spotted me, smiled, and said, "Nice look! What's up?" I said "I got in!" but it came out more like "uh buh gih" - like dental patient gibberish! While she said, "I'm not sure what you're saying," I swallowed and then exclaim "I GOT IN!"

And even though I looked super funky and the neighbor lady had no idea what was going on, my mom started screaming "Whoo hoo!" and jumping up and down SO enthusiastically. You would have thought she'd won the lottery. Her reaction to the good news was almost as good as being accepted in the first place. Thanks, mom!

I wrote up an exhaustive--and exhausting--list of questions before my visit last year and am pasting it below. Keep in mind that encoded within these questions are assumptions and preferences that are likely specific to me and what I was looking for. Also, though I asked many of these questions during my visits, I also found that, in the scheme of things, most of these questions--or, I should say, most of the answers--didn't really matter in my decision-making process. In much the same way that stats tell you something, but not necessarily something useful, about what programs are looking for and what your fellow applicants are like, these questions often tell you structural things about a department but not what it actually feels like to be there. Everyone's mileage will vary, of course, but I found myself not caring if, say, prelims were written or oral (though I had a preference) if everything else about the program was appealing. In the end, if it's a program you love, you'll jump through whatever hoops it presents. I highly recommend visiting schools, as there were programs at which my instinctive reaction told me everything I needed to know after about 5 minutes of being there. Additionally, visiting schools lets you make contact with people who will be important to your work regardless if you end up working with them directly. Good luck! It's an exciting, if unnerving time, and as difficult as it was last year to weigh the options, I found myself missing the sense of possibility after I had made a decision that I was (and am) very happy with.


-PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK
-Where do most people do their writing and reading?
-What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office?

-LIBRARY
-What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed?
-What are the library hours?
-Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research?
-Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research?

-FACULTY
-Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon?
-Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work?
-Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests?
-Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well?

-FUNDING
-Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t?
-How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships?
-How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably?
-Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding?
-If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.)
-Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips?
-How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?)

-COHORT
-Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive?
-Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey?
-How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class?
-Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially?
-Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned?
-Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice?
-What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time?
-I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program?

-JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION
-What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track?
-What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed?
-How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks?
-Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves?
-If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?)
-How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications?

-SUMMER WORK
-What is encouraged/required?
-If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer?
-Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money?
-Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t?

-LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT
-What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding?
-What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it?
-Given my research interests, what languages should I study?
-When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.)

-LOCATION REQUIREMENTS
-How long are students required to be in residence?
-How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?)
-How is funding affected if you don’t stay?

-Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program?

-TEACHING
-What sort of training is provided?
-What types of courses do people teach?
-Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp?
-How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field?
-How many courses do you teach per semester/year?
-How many students are in your classes?
-How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study?
-How do students balance teaching with their own work?
-Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes?
-How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes?
-What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them?

-METHODOLOGY
-Is a theory course required?
-What methodology do most people use?
-Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading?
-Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken?

-Typical graduate class and seminar sizes

-What should I do to prepare over the summer?

-Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me?

-Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program?

-Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements?

-What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required?

-What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating?

-What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field?

-Ask professors: what have you been working on lately?

-Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students?

-How long are class meetings?

-How often do professors teach graduate courses?

-Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)?

-Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see?


-QUALITY OF LIFE
-Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in?
-Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment.
-What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing?
-When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look?
-Is it easy to find a summer subletter?
-How close to campus can—and should—one live?
-What grocery stores are there in town?
-How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open?
-What do people do to make extra money?
-Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)?
-Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide?
-How far does the stipend go in this location?

Ow, ow, ow, the Wisconsin rejection really hurts

Thought I had a good fit, and really wanted to work with Lynn Keller. I hope it's okay to use this thread to vent our pain & anguish.

I don't know..I just got this really strong feeling that somebody needed to hear that from an anonymous stranger

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Pardon me if you consider this a personal attack, SuperPiePie, but you strike me as being just a lil' bit insecure. Why do you feel the need to repeatedly proclaim the primacy of science and engineering over English? So humanities folks complain sometimes. I'm sure you'll be able to laugh all the way to the bank one day with your gillion-yen hydroelectric dam contract. In the meantime, we in the humanities are perfectly aware that our stature is slipping in what a previous poster so excellently described as the "utilitarian, 'tangible benefits', results-based paradigm" of the 21st century world. No need to kick us when we're down!