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indy4ever

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    PhD English

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  1. I just got one of those as well. Considering that I want to stay in study and generate some better writing samples and get some better references, it would be a good place to do it. I know it would be great to be in a department with such a fantastic rep. But I was wondering - is the MA acceptance a consolation prize they mail out to, like, a hundred people in the hope that ten or fifteen people will say yes? Or is it genuinely competitive for entry? I am sure it would be great to go to NYU, but I wouldn't want to feel like a second class citizen in the department (this is assuming I even found the money to take up the place).
  2. RE problems with GRE scores, I thought I had sent mine in to Duke (other universities I sent them to at the same time certainly received them). But for two weeks in a row, their automated status updates said they hadn't gotten them. The updates stopped on the 23rd with no mention of their ever having received them. I was too intimidated to call because every English department website says you shouldn't bother the staff. I wonder whether they got them? Hope I haven't just wasted a whole load of money with an incomplete application. Is it worth contacting them?
  3. Being able to form links with other people is critical in academia (I know, I hardly believe that people who live in the library/lab need social skills, but there you go). A fresh faced youngster who has just finished their PhD who can't, say, go to a conference and get other people interested in their work, or who can't convince a publisher to bring out their thesis in book form, or who can't negotiate with other faculty members about how a department is run... (I could go on...) Someone like this is not going to do well in future, so you should give her the heads up before she is in too deep. Remember, for your peace of mind, that in the unlikely event that this girl gets into a school that you don't, it is highly unlikely that she took the place that would have been yours. There is a chance, but it's a slim one, not worht bothering about. I hope that when I see people listing 'Accepted' for programs I applied for, I'm not going to curse those people for stealing my luck. And if I knew they had cheated, I wouldn't waste my time cursing them. I think going to the Department Head was the best thing to do - leave it in his hands. If he thinks nothing should be done then ask his reasoning. If it is good, then leave it at that. One more thing. Show this girl what those on this thread think of her - it is important she knows how seriously her actions are taken. This is not just a little white lie she told.
  4. I went to Bristol, and when I decided to apply to the US and worried about funding issues while abroad, the Careers Service were enormously helpful. Their website, I think, is mainly jobs related, but they should have advice for grad/postgrad students. If you have already been accepted then they will probably be willing to give you guidance if you contact them. http://www.bris.ac.uk/careers/
  5. That's me exactly! I start work at a magazine on Monday, hopefully that will distract me for a while. Or maybe I just won't do any work because I will be on this site all day... Uh oh.
  6. I was going to post the amazing failblog but that's already gone up, so I will put up a few links, probably you know some. All my university friends appreciate read these: http://www.metafilter.com --> the best site on the web, IMHO, which compiles the best of the web. Look at their AskMe site as well. In fact, you might want to search the questions and answers about doing PhDs, there are a few professors who are members of this community and they have a lot of interesting stuff to say. http://www.xkcd.com --> one of the best cartoonists around. Although he can draw, he usually doesn't bother with anything more technical than a stickman. http://www.phdcomics.com --> grad student life. http://wondermark.com/312/ ---> Wondermark - strange Victorian comics. A little bit hit and miss, but makes me crack up. I've linked to my favourite one. http://www.lackadaisycats.com/archive.php ---> A Prohibition era speakeasy. Run by cats. No, it isn't another LolCatz, it is a superb comic (It has amazing artwork, story and dialogue, it's just a part time pet project by a great artist.)
  7. I don't think this is the right time to be talking about regrets. Wait until you're holding ten rejection letters. Wait until you're four years into a thesis at a program you hate. Keep waiting - it might never happen. I have applied to ten schools that are a real stretch for me, in the firm knowledge that if I don't get into these ones then I would probably not want to continue down the academic path. I know also that I made my applications as good as I could make them, and that I applied to schools that seemed like the right places at the time. Whether or not my applications were in fact rubbish, or the schools were in fact not the right ones for me, is almost besides the point now. I had to take a decision, and I took it as best I could. Even if I end up holding ten rejection letters, I know, most of all, that I would regret it more if I hadn't applied at all. If I hadn't explored this option and applied, I would still have this romanticised view of going off for further study. Especially after all the stuff I have read about what life in academia is really like - it's as hard or harder as all my other options. There are a few things I could have done better with the application (I already know that now) but regrets? Come on. You don't really know, after all, whether these other programs or better than the ones you actually went for. Take another example - my personal statement. Could I have written it better? I had four or five people (some of them pretty good professors) go over my statement, and although they all suggested changes, the actual statement didn't change much. Nor did any of them make similar sugestions. Some of them flagged as bad things that others flagged as good. So who's to say that the statement could have been substantially better? Who's to know whether you could have got into X if only you hadn't wasted energy applying to Y? Maybe you only got rejected from X because X's DoG wasn't paying attention when they read your statement, or one of the committee members thinks you are intelligent but randomly dislikes your field.
  8. I believe this poll to be a postmodernist critique of scientific knowledge, by taking their supposed 'data gathering' techniques and subverting them for its own ironic ends. Well done, Professor Ridgey. Have some funding.
  9. My undergraduate degree consisted of eight subways a week, plus pizza. One day I failed to turn up at my local Subway at the usual hour, and the guys behind the counter asked my friend: 'Hey, where is your friend? The one who likes all the meat?' They looked scared that their cash cow might have run out. They had a certificate on the wall saying they sold more sandwiches than anywhere else in the South-West. I think about fifteen percent of that was me. I didn't realise until I read this thread that if I fail to get into grad school it may be a blessing in disguise, both for myself and people around me. When I have a lot of work, my junk food habit reaches murderous proportions (I'm not kidding - if I have an essay due the next day, I'll kill you for pizza without a second thought).
  10. You are angry because it made you feel something? Isn't that the point? Doesn't that mean it was good? I dunno, you're probably joking. It's just that I used to live with a girl who always had to talk during films. What really got her going was when she saw people in any form of emotional or physical distress - 'Why is that necessary?' she'd cry, 'How can this film be good?' She's not as bad as the people who I'd have in seminars who would decide that they hated a book on the grounds that they wouldn't want to be friends with the main character. 'He was so creepy, urgh, it was a terrible book.' Erm, you were reading Lolita... I think that's the point. Right now I am reading Lord Jim by Conrad, which is fantastic. But it has taken me eight weeks to read just over two hundred pages! I used to read two or three novels a week, plus criticism. The worrying is getting to me - Conrad's prose is quite winding, if you lose track of something you have to start the whole epic paragraph all over again. I have also re-read all my Alan Moore comic books. They go down much more easily.
  11. I'm worrying about the same thing right now. I am going travelling for a few weeks in mid-February (bad time to be doing this sort of thing, no?) and I am terrified my parents are going to throw away the all important bits of paper that come through the post box. Or even worse, I get sent a late offer by post that arrives some time in 2011.
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