StrangeLight

yep, if your goal is to teach at a small liberal arts or community college, you'll need the PhD. those jobs are extremely competitive. you may know someone with only an MA teaching at a community college somewhere, but odds are they've either been there for a decade or more (before the job market got really ugly) or they're being paid by the course ($1500-3000 per course you teach). if it's the latter, it's not exactly an ideal long-term employment plan. even for the museum gig, you'll be competing with people who hold PhDs. while it may seem like an easy transition to either teach college or curate a museum, they both require rather specialized training. a museum won't care if you TA'd for 2 years. a college won't care if you did an unpaid internship at a museum. but getting a teaching job without TAing, or a museum job without some internship experience, is nearly impossible. to have a good chance of pursuing either of these options, you'll have to be sure to take advantage of opportunities pertaining to both careers. and we need to know what kind of history you plan to do in order to be able to give you advice or recommendation on your school list. what do you want to study?

just out-hipster them.

get out of the library and onto the street. the only way to get any street smarts is to actually go outside and live. you won't learn it in a book and you won't learn it on an internet forum. you'll find many graduate students (and even professors) still have plenty of book smarts and a real lack of street smarts. it's not something that comes with age, it comes with experience, so you have to be willing to put yourself out there. you're only 19. it's actually pretty normal to have never had a girlfriend yet. a friend of mine in undergrad was/is gorgeous. she was actually a professional model, mostly did runway. she hadn't even kissed a boy until she was 19, never had a boyfriend until she was 19. you'd think guys would line up to date her, but it just didn't work that way, and it's got nothing to do with how fun she is (very), how smart (very), or how attractive (very). she met someone in undergrad eventually, and while you've already been through your undergrad years, you were younger. even if you were ready to date then, you probably seemed too young to all the girls you were around, even if they were only a year or two older. that's no fault of your own. there's a big difference between 16 and 18 or 20 and 23, especially when the girl is the older of the two. if dating is important to you (rather than just important to the people that tease you), go out of your way to make time for activities that you know people your age will attend. join campus clubs. find a running group or a yoga class. volunteer. it'll take time away from your studies, but in grad school, we should ALL be scheduling some time for ourselves and our hobbies anyway, just to stay sane. tailor your hobbies to things where you'll be around people closer to your age. things will happen. 19 is still very, very young in the grand scheme of things and, really, there is no rush.

it depends. some people in my program are very social and outgoing, and others i have still never actually seen, even though i've been in the program for two years. if you do archival research abroad (mostly a social sciences thing), then it can get very lonely during those research periods, especially if you're moving to different archives a lot and don't have a chance to make friends with the staff or other researchers (if there are any!).

i would strongly recommend NEVER complaining about the difference between an A and an A+.

not getting an A+ is not a reason to complain about a professor. i hope something else was actually going on.

but i would also still suggest trying to convince your husband to move schools and transfer his credits. i really don't see how 3.5-4 more years of school living with his wife (if his current credits don't all transfer) is worse than 3 more years of school living apart from his wife. he's going to have to realize that in this particular situation, his education isn't the priority; yours is. highest degree = highest priority.

check http://www.kayak.com it searches most other airline websites and travel search engines at once and pulls up the best fares. you can check way in advance and get email alerts when the fares drop. of course you wouldn't see flights regularly under $300 if all you ever do is check one or two airlines' fares. i guess you guys don't travel abroad for research? everyone i know lives on these websites checking airfare months in advance.

i bring up working on those other regions since many people who work exclusively on other parts of the world write entire books about the influence of US culture, politics, and attitudes on those regions. in latin american historiography, for example, there are several works on the role of US politics in central america (see greg grandin's the last colonial massacre and the empire's workshop) or about the influence of US consumer culture (see john soluri's banana cultures). a colleague of mine is an eastern europeanist, and his dissertation is all about the influence of shell oil and cold war politics in romania. i merely brought up being an africanist or russianist because you will see many people that define themselves as such (or at least not as americanists) that are working on some of the same major themes and issues you're interested in. but if you ultimately want to teach US history and take your comps exams in US history, then by all means still be an americanist. regarding your initial question on languages, however, the same stands... the more you have, the better, if you already have them. regardless of how many languages your program expects you to master for the degree, you will need to be able to read every language that your particular dissertation project demands. my advice would be to ask some of your undergrad profs to give you their thoughts on your ideas and which languages they think might be relevant for you to know. if you can get reading knowledge of the language before you send off applications, that'll be a big bonus. if you can demonstrate in your application that you'll have the reading knowledge eventually, that will help too.

it's part of a professor's job to write LORs. if they're cranky, it could just be their personality. or you might not be giving them everything they need. are you giving them copies of your transcript, a few old papers from their past classes (so they remember you), your SOP, your writing sample? they should get all of that information at some point after they agree to write the letter so they can actually say something specific. vague LORs are the kiss of death. if you really do have to pull teeth to get them to agree to write the letter, it's probably because they don't want to write one for you. ask them if they can write you a STRONG LOR. if they say no, thank them and ask someone else.

yeah, most translation exams let you use a dictionary. every school is different, but i'd say the majority let you bring a dictionary in with you. for many (but not all) programs, americanists are only required to have one foreign language, not two (or more). this doesn't apply everywhere, but often enough that most americanists can assume they won't need two foreign languages for even top programs. the languages definitely don't hurt, though. in general, these are just minimum numbers of languages. in all cases, you will be expected to know (or learn) whatever languages you need to complete your particular project. many students (and many more professors) redesign their arguments so they can avoid acquiring new languages, but i'm of the opinion that we should go where the sources take us. in my own program, i know a latin americanist that learned german, an indianist that learned portuguese, and an americanist that learned italian, polish, and yiddish, all because that's what language their sources were in. if you go with the algeria project, you'll need french and arabic. for the russian one, probably russian and french. for sierra leone, you'll need whatever language the business documents are in (my gut would say french and german, but that's a guess). so basically... it makes a huge difference which project you want to do. i'd also suggest considering applying as an africanist, a russianist, or a world historian rather than an americanist. those fields would serve your interests a lot more than being a modern americanist would.

my friends are great. i met them in college, and most are either in masters programs, PhD programs, or law school now. a few have "real jobs" but they're all either friends with or dating/married to someone in academia, so they get it. my family are not great. my dad never finished high school and failed his GED program (what do i win?) so he can't even comprehend the type of work i do. but that's okay, because he doesn't try. just asks me how it's going, asks how many more years it will take, and then gets angry when i tell him, even though i always shave a year or two off how long it will actually take. my mother tries to be supportive but she's really, really, really bad at it. i decided after my first year to simply stop talking to her about my work, because most conversations would end with, "if you keep saying that, i can't talk to you anymore, because you're really not helping. that is the last thing i need to hear, you're making this worse for me and i need you to stop it." now i just read articles while i listen to her drone on about reality tv or some annoying thing my grandmother did. i remember i told her my friend got a job. it's in oklahoma. her response was "oh my god, you wouldn't apply for that, would you?" of course i would. especially since my other friend, in the same field, wasn't able to get a job at all, and will be out of work with a newborn baby in january. i'm going to apply for any and every job that i can. "that's good. but you don't want to end up in oklahoma. i wouldn't apply for that." extended family are worse. they constantly ask me when i'll be done, why i'm even doing this, what kind of work i could possibly get. i live a 6 hour drive away, so they constantly pester me to drive home every weekend. i never do. and i never will. if i'm going to lose an entire weekend without getting work done, i will be doing it to have fun, not to listen to people denigrate what i do or ask when i'm going to make babies and get married or tell me i should take a job at the community college near their house, as if that was even an option for me.

heh. i put in a minimum of 60 hours. i will cancel plans and evenings out to make sure i get at least 60 (usually closer to 65) hours done. anything less and i'd fall behind in some aspect of my work. for what it's worth, the average professor works 65 hours a week. if we ever hope to become the average professor, best to get used to it.

conversely, if your girlfriend or your husband or whomever is really your soul mate, then you can easily survive 3 years apart. if you trust each other and you're both whole enough to get through a day to day routine without needing another body next to you, then you'll be fine. it'll suck, for sure. and you'll miss him/her, for sure. but when you do visit, the sex will be awesome. you'll also learn to prioritize your conversations and your gripes. you'll learn to let a lot of small stuff go because it's not worth arguing about when you're miles apart or only have two days together. i guess i just bristle at comments like "i would never give up my soul mate for my work." you don't have to. moving away doesn't mean an end of your relationship. to be completely fair, i'm projecting from a conversation i had with a friend who is considering breaking up with her "soul mate" because he "insists" on leaving town for 8 months to do his dissertation research abroad (he needs to go, no "insisting" about it). but, anyway... a few years apart does not have to end a strong relationship. all that said... tell your husband to just transfer. or give up the bachelor's. i don't want to be insensitive, but you said he's been going to university since before he met you. but by going full-time, he'd still have 3 years of classes to complete. was he taking 1 class a semester for 5 years? at that rate, it would take him 15 years to finish the bachelor degree. it would be unfair of him to have you give up or severely hinder your goal of a PhD because he's crawling through a BA and doesn't want to lose those credits. if he's actually thinking of going full-time to finish up, wouldn't it be better for him to do 3.5 years or 4 years at a university close to you than live apart for 3 years because of his fear over transfer credits? even though he's been going to school forever, he is still VERY far from finishing. he may as well start over and live with his wife.

i agree with the poster who said to not date within your own department. in my first year, most of my colleagues were already in serious relationships or married and only one department relationship formed. whatever drama they had, they kept it to themselves. but in my second year, we got a host of new singles, all very, very young, and they all proceeded to pair up. every person in my department that was single in september is now dating or fooling around with someone else in my department, except for myself and a 40 year old divorcé. it is very messy. they talk about and compare each other's relationships and spend far too much energy on being in competition with other couples. they're also in competition within the relationship, comparing grades and comments. if both partners are serious about their work, then one's successes can never be celebrated. the less successful half minimizes the accomplishment. if one partner is less serious about the work than the other, then the "serious student" will, in moments of stress, convey that the partner can't possibly understand how he's feeling because his work is more difficult, more rigorous, more advanced. it's a massive distraction and it seems very high school-ish. unsurprisingly, at least one half of all of these relationships is 23 years old or younger. as others have said, interdepartmental mixers are good ways to meet people. so is serving on university-wide committees like the grad student organization. you'll usually get emails about people giving talks in other departments. attend the ones that seem interesting and hang around at the wine and cheese table to chat up the students afterward. for dating outside of academia, you'll need a hobby that brings you into contact with other people. go to concerts at a local club all the time and you'll start to see the same people (i met someone that way). go to local art galleries. volunteer with an NGO. find a running group. go to a yoga class. if you're friends with someone who is dating someone outside your department or outside academia, go out of your way to hang out with them when you know that non-grad students will be there. a friend of mine haunts his local grad bar on a regular basis to be able to talk to people outside of his program. ended up dating the (non-academic) bartender.

if your sources are in your foreign language, you absolutely need to have reading proficiency down to even be accepted into an MA program. if you plan on studying russian history, but you can't really read russian yet, very few reputable programs will take you on. most programs will require you to have two or more foreign languages for the PhD, with at least one fully in your command (reading) by the end of the MA. it's hard to master two languages at once, which is further reason to already have one under your belt. if you're not a native speaker and you haven't taken college classes in the language, programs will still consider self-taught or privately-tutored languages valid, but you need to prove you can use them. if you're an americanist or britainist working in english, don't sweat the language stuff too much, but mention in your SOP that you have reading/writing/speaking knowledge of french or russian. if you're in any other field, even if you think your sources will be in english, you would be well served to give them a writing sample that includes primary sources in the foreign language, demonstrating that you can actually read it. they don't care how you acquire the skill, they just want you to have it. as for what level of training is considered adequate, that can vary. in my own program, 3 years (or 6 semesters) of language training with at least a B in the classes is considered proficient. my school also offers "french for reading" classes where you can get the proficiency requirement in only 1 year. it's supposed to be an intensive translation class, but anyone who takes it has zero command of the french language and can't make sense out of simple sentences without aid of a dictionary, so... in terms of actually helping them learn and use the language, it's completely useless. most programs will require you to take a translation exam, even if you have six semesters or the equivalent in language classes. basically, look for an academic journal in your foreign language. if you can directly translate one page and summarize 2-3 pages, all in two hours and with the aid of a dictionary, then that's considered sufficient.

if you've decided that you don't want help, then why post all of this? the problem is not how you can learn to love your situation. it's how you can get out of it. but this is like talking to a brick wall. it's not your fault. it's full-on stockholm syndrome. but when everyone is telling you that you need to leave, and you say you can't, there's not much anyone can do. i hope you decide, at some point, that you actually want the help you need.

this is... wow. you really do need to just leave home. leave the art program. and quit giving your mother your money. anything less than that will not save you.

i love that probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the "i love my grad program" posts are from people who haven't started grad school yet. grad school is fine. the first year is always very busy, and an adjustment to the work schedule, but the type of work isn't particularly stressful (or at least it shouldn't be). hopefully everyone loves their program after their first year. if you don't, you should get out before your torture yourself with 4-5 more years. the real pressure points come during your program's milestones: the MA/MS defense (if you have one), the comps defense, the overview defense. these are the points where your program keeps you or boots you (and many get booted... that's what these evaluations are for). those are the moments that should be and are incredibly stressful. fortunately, they don't last forever. but the rest of the time, it's not bad. you'll have colleagues with the emotional maturity of a 15 year old or advisors that are never satisfied with work that other professors think is outstanding, but you can find that sort of bullshit in any office or retail job too. it's not merely a symptom of academia. grad school is like any other workplace. anyone who "loves" their workplace that much is either really lucky or really new.

as others have said, apply to a range of MA and PhD programs. avoid at all costs going to any program that is unfunded. consider offers without funding to be really nice rejections, not real options. it's better to wait and reapply the following year than to start an MA program that you pay for yourself. beyond simply hurting your wallet, when you apply for PhD programs and your CV doesn't explain that you were either a teaching assistant, research assistant, or on fellowship during your MA, they'll know you paid out of pocket, and they'll in all likelihood judge you negatively for it. academia is a very hierarchical system, and if no one is going to give you money for an MA, few will be willing to give you money for a PhD, or a national grant, etc. while i know countless people in history programs that didn't do history BAs (lawyers, "area studies" people, math students!), many programs will ask/insist that at least one of your LORs comes from a historian. since you've only had one history class, and since LORs matter a lot, you should go back to that professor, explain now that you're interested in grad school, and seek his/her advice all throughout your application process. don't ask for the LOR now, just ask him/her about programs, professors they know, if they'll read your statement of purpose, etc. really work on cultivating that one relationship you have right now so that this professor can write you as strong an LOR as possible. for your other LORs, they need to attest to your ability and potential as a researcher, so seek out profs that have seen you perform some type of research. if no one is coming to mind that fits this bill, find the two academics that know (and like) your class work the best. also start talking to them now about history grad school to demonstrate that you're serious about it. tell them about what you're thinking of working on. show them you're interested in research, so they can at the very least write that into your LOR. this is strictly inferior to an LOR from someone that has actually seen you perform research or read the end result of research, but if it's your only option, work it as much as you can. it's also best to get your LORs from academics that do research themselves. a political scientist that publishes frequently on new research is better than one that works in a thinktank or advises on policy. it's too late to do anything about your GPA now (which you know) and the GRE doesn't matter as much as we all think it does (break 600 on the verbal, don't embarrass yourself on the math, and that's pretty much where the score ceases to be a factor). spend this time talking to your LOR writers, working on your statement of purpose (get as many professors to read/edit it as possible), and preparing your WRITING SAMPLE. really, really, really work on your writing sample. this is where you'll demonstrate to adcoms that, even though you don't have a history degree or many history classes, you CAN do history. your writing sample should be a historical research paper that uses primary sources. if you have a terrible research paper but an amazing class term paper, the research paper is still better. rewrite it until it isn't terrible (with the help of that history prof you want an LOR from). if you don't have any historical research papers yet, write one this summer. ask the history prof if he/she will informally supervise you and guide you through the paper, explaining that it's for your grad applications. ask your other LOR writers (if they're poli sci or econ profs) if they'll also look it over, but get the most input and guidance from a historian. THAT (and writing the SOP) is where you should devote your attention, not the GRE or a way to explain your GPA.

i'm in the social sciences/humanities, and the sizing up happens as soon as you meet your advisor and the other grad students. before admissions, after admissions but before the semester, and then during school itself. i've had several experiences where profs asked grad students to take a prospective student out for coffee on a campus visit and then asked us our impression afterward. i don't know what the profs do with that information, but i doubt it's nothing. i also know that the secretaries communicate to students and professors when they're having difficulty with a particular student, either prospective or attending. they don't simply keep tabs on your academic potential. they also keep tabs on whether or not you're a jerk. i've seen a prof get denied endowed research chair positions because the faculty didn't like the prof's attitude during the job interview, so i'd be surprised if those sorts of considerations aren't also at play for grad students, incoming or attending. my program has an informal ranking of each grad student. the DGS claims it's just a "list," not a ranking, but it's ordered in descending order based on grad GPA and awards/fellowships won, and it's used to determine who will get future funding. the people with the awards get the awards. the people without do not. so if you're admitted with a few years of departmental fellowships, you're already higher on the totem pole than the grad student admitted only with TAships.

i started going to hot yoga classes with a friend and fellow grad student a month ago. other friends have started getting into it as well, so if i'm not already at the studio, i can assume one of them will ask me to go once every day or two. really helps with the motivation. it burns a ton of calories (700-800 for a 75min session) and it's really helped with my core and my back (i have a herniated disc).

1. obamacare? really? 2. the school in all likelihood won't give you anything back if you opt out of their health insurance. they don't deduct the cost of insurance from your paycheck, they give you the insurance for "free" and tell you it's valued at a few hundred dollars a month. i tried to opt out of my school's insurance, because i already have great coverage, and their insurance runs the cost of over $200/month. gouged. but they told me i wouldn't see that extra $200 because they technically don't charge me for the insurance.

yep. i get $15K a year for TAing, before taxes, and my rent is in the $600 range. i live alone in a working class neighbourhood. my colleagues either pay as much as $300/month more than i do to live alone in more affluent areas or pay $100-200/month less to live with two roommates. our funding differs a bit depending on whether we're on TA or fellowship years, but people can make $15K work. either they live in affordable neighbourhoods (which are actually way more fun and interesting than the glossy, expensive ones anyway), they live with a couple roommates, or they work summer jobs to afford more expensive digs.

of the marriage?