kotov

Several of the MAC schools offer funded MAs. Ohio U funds basically all of their MAs, we fund some of ours, I think Western funds a good many of theirs. NIU funds some, and so does Kent St. I think.

I'm not doing anything with it right now (no time/money, and we don't offer the courses). I'm going to study some over the summer at Indiana, and then I'll probably try to do some work overseas in subsequent summers. It's a neat language, though a lot more difficult than the other Romance languages, since it still retains some of the nuances of Latin grammar the Western languages dropped, as well as lots of words it picked up from the other sub and super-stratum groups in the area (Slavs, Turks, Hungarians, Germans, Dacians). I'm going to keep working at it when I can, since that's where I plan to end up doing most of my research. I'm working on publishing my first paper based mainly off Romanian-language sources now, so that's exciting.

I'm already in a program, but I'm bored and felt like doing this. Besides, my pathetic resume will make most of you feel better, since even I got in somewhere. Undergrad Institution: Auburn Senior Thesis: Soviet famine of 1932-33 in the US media Honors Program: Yes. Major(s): History (mainly focused on Russia/USSR) Minor(s): English (mainly focused on linguistics) GPA in Major: 3.93 Overall GPA: 3.5 Position in Class: I have no idea Type of Student: White male, US south, no sort of special status GRE Scores (old version): Q: 650 V: 700 W: 5.5 Research Experience: I have a lot of experience working with archives of Ukrainian-American newspapers (an oddity that I don't plan to use much), as well as with documents from the Romanian State and Military Archives, some of which I obtained copies of in the US (all in Romanian, obviously). Awards/Honors/Recognitions: I was a National Merit scholar, PAT, etc. Pertinent Activities or Jobs: I'm a TA now, but when I applied, nada. Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: I did graduate in three years, though I doubt that mattered at all. Applying to Where: I applied to Indiana, Clark, South Carolina, Central Michigan, Auburn, Georgia Tech, Ohio (MA), North Texas (MA). Got into all but the first three. Ended up at CMU, obviously. Research Interests & Areas of Focus: Modern Romania and Ukraine, particularly the Holocaust and the Holodomor. My dissertation will probably be a comparative study of German and Romanian labor camps along the Bug River in Transnistria during WWII. Languages: English, Romanian (intermediate), German (intermediate), Ukrainian (basic reading knowledge) Letters of Recommendation: One from my undergrad adviser, one from a professor I took a couple of courses on WWII with, and one from my linguistics professor Statement of Purpose: How specific was it? It explained the area I wanted to work in and why there was a need for it, but I didn't have the specific project in mine. Did you tailor it to each program? Not well enough, no. Did you identify professors you would like to work with? For the most part. Should have contacted more of them, and earlier or point more broadly to the program’s areas of emphasis? This is more what I did, especially at the schools that were strong in my field or had a program tailored to it. Writing Sample: Is it excerpted from a longer work? No. It was a term paper I wrote that I presented at a conference. Communication with POIs: Uh. I didn't do a great job of it. Got on great with my adviser here though, so I guess it worked out. Lessons Learned from Application Process: Would have probably started earlier, looked for more specifics in professors, talked to them earlier on, been more specific in my SOP, and maybe have even shot a little higher as far as where I applied (fewer safety schools/MA programs, a few more reaches)

I'm taking a blended approach. I'm going to refocus the paper in terms of the more general Romanian occupational economic policy, while still doing some research on German and Romanian occupation and forced labor for my historiographical paper. I'm trying to get as much overlap as possible. As far as the Eastern Front goes, I definitely agree. I'm hoping that the myth of a Western victory will eventually fall apart, but I wouldn't count on it. I focus more on the Holocaust and matters related to genocide than I do on the war itself, honestly, so I don't know how much I can contribute to that myself, but I'd love to see it happen regardless.

I went to one first semester and I'll be at another one this semester, plus the grad student conference my school is putting on, which I'm required to present at. I feel like this is easily doable for me, since I'm not putting in a huge amount of extra work to get my presentations ready. Plus, it's a chance to get your work out there, both from the standpoint of getting criticism and from the standpoint of people seeing it, so those are both huge benefits in my mind; from that angle, I'd say try and do as much as your schedule/workload/budget allow you to!

I once had a student tell me that Jesus invented the Graham cracker.

The main reason I'm hesitant to do this is to avoid spiders in my own department since it's small and anyone who did any research at all could figure out who I was. Also, I don't know how much information from my own situation would help, since I'm at a small, low-level program (so I'm probably not the one to be taking advice from).

It's not that I didn't have sufficient evidence for my argument, and my adviser even told me it was well-argued...it's just that I don't have an explicit "forced laborers go here" report among my documents. I built a good case, it just isn't bulletproof.

In my case, where I was applying to a smaller department, it mattered a lot, since my adviser is pretty high up in the department -- he told me there was a good bit of in-fighting among people there trying to get their candidate through, but he won out...your experience may not be the same, but it was important in my case. Can't hurt, right?

Hey y'all. During my first semester as a grad student, I wrote a seminar paper that I was considering submitting for publication. The paper was focused around a particular aspect of the source material I had (labor practices at the Ford plant in Romanian-occupied Odessa during WWII), but I was never able to find the so-called "smoking gun" that explicitly demonstrated the use of forced labor. When I had it preliminarily reviewed by an editor, he told me to revise it to place it more within the historiography of occupation, rather than of forced labor; I see his point, though this would involve a major rewrite of the paper. Now, this semester, I have to do a historiographical paper on a subject related to Europe during this time period. I could choose to do it on occupation, which would potentially help me publish this paper in a decently-important journal; or I could do it on forced labor, which would be more productive for me down the road, as this is the area in which I'll probably end up writing my dissertation. So, what I want to know is, is it better for me to focus on re-writing my paper from last semester, or to focus myself on stuff that's going to benefit me down the road? I see possible benefits to both, but I guess you guys may have a better perspective on the big picture than I do, so which one is going to help me more in the long term; publishing that paper or preparing secondary resources for my dissertation work?

The topic I'm planning to use for my dissertation was something that I read about in a study of one issue that admitted that it warranted a separate study.

I certainly wouldn't do it unfunded. If you by chance got into a funded MA, that may be a good idea. Maybe apply to some of both, and if you don't get accepted and you feel it was your lack of research experience, take the funded MA and try again? I guess yours is kind of a unique situation...if funded MAs weren't so hard to come by, I'd say do it. Do you know of places where you could potentially receive funding for an MA in your field?

I'm not sure what one's role would be as far as the OWS movement itself; I guess that kind of depends on your personal political views (it doesn't do a whole lot for me personally). As far as our role in correcting for social injustice, I think that we definitely have a role as far as review and revision of previous historiography of whatever topics we're researching. As far as political relevance goes, I don't really know; I try to avoid mixing the two a lot of the time, and very rarely does my work address American political issues much, much less contemporary issues like OWS is attempting to address.

There was totally a class on that here either this semester or last. We tend to offer some rather eccentric undergrad courses though, so I wouldn't call it mainstream acceptance yet. I wish I could do more work with meteorology history; if I didn't suck at physics, I may be posting over on the sciences board now...

CEU seems like an awesome place to me. My advisor also has really high praise for it. I think they offer a lot of classes in English, so you should be fine there. If the funding's there, I'd say go for it. It seems to be well-respected generally. Good luck learning Hungarian though...

I know Wayne State (MI) is big on labor history, and some of the people in my department work with people down there on such projects.

I can't really see any good coming of it. I'm from the south so I'm used to a very gun-heavy culture, but I was never that into it. I would think a strong police/security system would go a lot farther to prevent campus violence than a bunch of vigilantes with concealed handguns. That said, it's something I'm ultra-paranoid about, so if there were some hard evidence that it would in fact increase safety in that situation, I'd be all for it.

I know Berkeley supposedly has a good intensive summer Russian program. Also, you may want to look into going to the Summer Workshop in Southeastern European and Slavic languages at Indiana next summer (Indiana would be a good place to apply; Russian history was my concentration in undergrad and that's where our Russian specialist went). I'm probably going to SWSEEL for Romanian next summer, but the main emphasis of the program is on Russian -- it sounds like Russian language boot camp, which it sounds like you need. Taking a year off probably wouldn't hurt you, especially if you could do one of these things and get some additional Russian training in during the year. It's easier to learn than Arabic or an East Asian language, but it's one of the hardest Indo-European languages to master because of the difficulty of the grammar compared to most of the others, so it'd be quite an investment on your part to become fluent.

Our Native American specialist at Auburn went to New Mexico...but that's mostly for the Southwestern Indian tribes, I'd imagine...it wouldn't hurt to look at some of the other state schools in the Southeast; they aren't the most prestigious programs, but they may have something to offer in that respect, and if nothing else, they're good safety schools...

Yay, I might have friends after all!

Pennsylvania.

Turkey Provolone (in generous quantities) Lettuce Mayo Olive Oil Black Pepper Parmesan Cheese on white bread (maybe cucumbers if I'm feeling it)

Reading the news is good. It's usually written at a pretty low reading level and can help you learn a lot of common words. It's helped my Romanian skills a lot. (I did teach myself Romanian, but I already had some background in Spanish, so the grammar wasn't that difficult -- it is more complex than Spanish though).