Eli-

I ended up calling mine "'A Good Serviceable Fiction': Capital, Form, and Carpenter's Gothic" - though a better title might have been something like "Hope You're Comfortable: This Paper is Ass Long."

This is my second go round. Last year I applied to 6 English/American lit Ph.D. programs and received 6 rejections, though I did receive 2 offers of admission to consolation-prize (i.e., unfunded) Masters programs, which mostly sort of pissed me off. I was just finishing up an MFA at a school whose Ph.D. program happens to be pretty darn good, and my professors were all like, "Good heavens, Eli, of COURSE you'll be admitted..." blah blah etc., which of course did not help matters come April, when I received my final rejection letter.

I'm of the sort who always has an extra plan in his pocket, but all my proverbial basket-eggs had been crushed, and I had no idea what else to do. I was bitter and irritated with myself for ever wanting to apply (even though I've wanted to for like 10 years). To make matters nastier, my engagement broke off around prime rejection-receiving time. I spent a few months doing a lot of Scotch-based research. But I was able to finagle summer teaching at my MFA institution, and then, contrary to what everybody and their ugly uncles were saying about the job market, I found university teaching jobs at two amazing institutions for the fall semester and was pretty jazzed, even though adjuncting = super unstable lifestyle. I was just happy not to be working in a grease pit (again), you know?

It wasn't until July or August that I could even really think about applying again, and when I did, it wasn't so much "Oh gee, time to think about applying" as it was "Hmm, I really feel like parking my tush in the library tonight and reading about xyz." Soon I was so damn interested in XYZ (yes, the same XYZ I'd applied to study before) that I couldn't help but want to reapply. But I feel differently about it now, in these ways:

* The writing sample I submitted last year had been written for a grad seminar that was utterly coincident with my interests - but it was too short (14-ish pages) and sort of facile in its theoretical orientation for the simple reason that I hadn't yet had the opportunity to research deep enough into my subfield (which I guess you could call post-emergent?). It contained some decent close-reading type passages, but it wasn't complete in itself. And it wasn't very entertaining.

* Teaching as a faculty member and not as a TA has made me a lot more confident about both teaching and about finding jobs. I just moved across the country (long story...remember that break-up I mentioned?) and picked up two classes at a university here, plus another interview (results tbd) within a WEEK of moving. It's not an ideal situation, but I now know that 1) it is possible to USE the master's degree which everyone said was so useless, and 2) the job-finding process is a lot less scary than I thought. Though I know that tenure-track jobseeking and -landing is a lot more involved than finding adjunct spots, there's a certain kind of professionalized interfacing involved and experience with that can't be bad.

* My interests are more focused, and I was able to fit the arc of their development (as in MY LIFE) more thoroughly into my SOP. I think. I still feel like my SOP sucks...

* I had more time to research programs and faculty, and I care a LOT less about things like reputation and bigshotness. What I do care about: 1) fit/ faculty; 2) funding; 3) library facilities!; 4) placement rates.

I'll be bummed if I don't get in to any of the 11 ($!!) programs I applied to, but whatev. Lots of good life to be lived outside the academy, I'm told... The real problem right now is that I'm itching to make my next move, and I can't do that if I don't know for sure that I'm rejected/accepted!!

Keep on truckin, y'all.

No prob. That was me. Call from DGS @ 1:04pm EST. 5-year funding package (referred to as the "something fellowship" - I was about to pee myself and couldn't hear straight): 2 years no teaching, 3 years TAship (1 class per quarter) at somewhere around $17,000/yr plus summer funding for the first year (I think that's what he said). Offer to match other offers.

Sorry to be so flustered. I'm in shock, pretty much. DGS said an email would be sent today; I can be clearer after I get it.

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

It's like a photograph of my soul.

I think I'm going to blame the Super Bowl. Who wants to read my lame application when there are beers to be chilled and little sausages to be toothpicked?

I think I'm going to blame the Super Bowl. Who wants to read my lame application when there are beers to be chilled and little sausages to be toothpicked?

I ended up calling mine "'A Good Serviceable Fiction': Capital, Form, and Carpenter's Gothic" - though a better title might have been something like "Hope You're Comfortable: This Paper is Ass Long."

I ended up calling mine "'A Good Serviceable Fiction': Capital, Form, and Carpenter's Gothic" - though a better title might have been something like "Hope You're Comfortable: This Paper is Ass Long."

I ended up calling mine "'A Good Serviceable Fiction': Capital, Form, and Carpenter's Gothic" - though a better title might have been something like "Hope You're Comfortable: This Paper is Ass Long."

Totally down for some Bloody Marys - in honor of my like $2k sacrifice for tests and apps...