TheOtherJake

It's kind of like when you're waiting for a package and you check the status over and over again. It doesn't make the package move any faster. Watched pot never boils situation, you know. Then again, I'm so bad at cooking I burn water.

I don't know if this is true in Engineering, but since I'm sure everyone is interested in the money in academia, I know that in the Humanities, the ranks go from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor to full Professor. You have to work your way up with time, experience, publications, etc. An Assistant Professor in English makes somewhere in the 40k range to start, and then the salaries increase with time to the 80s or even six figures if you're a professor long enough. All ranks can be tenured and, for all intents and purposes to students, are professors - a few of them put their full rank on syllabi and stuff, but most of them just put their names (at Illinois, Champaign). Full Professors are supposed to be the eminent "experts in their fields."

lol'ing

Yeah! Like a GradCafe Wiki, with a featured article article everyday, and occasional pranksters who claim your favorite professor died.

That's the style!

I totally agree. For the past few years, my life (as a teacher) has been a sustained run of work, pressure, and more work, with barely enough time to sleep or eat. My well-being has suffered, and I find myself in a daze a lot of the time. I feel this has prepared me for the rigor of graduate school, but also, I hope very much there will be lifestyle changes. When I had a vacation a short while ago, I started feeling human again for just a short while - actually enjoying some activities I used to enjoy, like reading and writing, and not having a headache 99% of the time. It was like finally getting rid of a long, stifling hangover. I imagine graduate school can be like that too, if you let it. Work is important, but so is living life. And balance probably makes you more mentally apt, anyway. To quote Barbara Bush paraphrasing Ferris Bueller, "Find the joy in life, because as Ferris Bueller said on his day off, 'Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you're gonna miss it.'"

I got one of those too! Psh, they were giving them away back then like slankets in hell. Yeah, that simile works.

I thought that too, but one professor mentioned - and so did a few blogs and other anecdotal sources - that the lack of many jobs is actually increasing grad school applications a lot. I suppose if you're smart and motivated enough to go to graduate school, and there don't seem to be any jobs available, it seems like a good idea. Or at least a place to chill out until well-paying jobs are available. Too bad for those of us who always wanted to go in the first place...

Probably best to distract oneself with even more imperious preoccupations, by such as, volunteering as an air traffic controller at a busy airport, or joining an underground mercenary Fight Club to the death, with no-holds-barred matches of barbed wire and mace weaponry prowess. Whatever works.

From what I've seen on the results board from previous years, Interviews can happen in Feb-March, but Ph.D results usually come in March. Some Masters' programs are the only ones responding this early.

Hey, SV650 is a nice bike. I was jonesing for a Kawi Er-6n lately, but will instead be selling my Vulcan 750 if I get into a Ph.D. I will be sad to see her go. It's winter now, and ice everywhere, but I can just picture going down the road in Summer time. Not being encumberered with work! It's a stress reliever indeed. =/

"Hey, check out this thread on Grad Cafe where people guess what we are saying about their applications." "Haha, as if we sit around and talk about these peeps as if they were a focus of our lives or something." "LOL! Pass the Chinese food please." "Did you just say 'LOL'?"

Hi everybody. I've been lurking for a while so I figured I'd say hello. Even though I've been planning to go to grad school for years and years (I was one of those English majors who wants to change the world and affect people and so on), I finally applied at the somewhat-last-minute this year. I'm currently teaching high school on the South Side of Chicago (and this is my first year teaching by myself as a full teacher), so I only had time to throw together a handful of applications. I did my best though. Fingers crossed! But if I don't get into a Ph.D, I plan to do an M.A. and just try, try again. Applied to: Columbia, Ph.D English (Yeah, right) NYU, Ph.D English CUNY Graduate Center, Ph.D English (can you tell where I want to live?) Rutgers Newark, M.A. English Northwestern, M.A. Literature