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StrangeLight

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Everything posted by StrangeLight

  1. i actually don't think that's a safe generalization at all. like, not even a little bit. i think you'll find when you're in a grad program that your cohort rarely "is" what they study. very, very rarely.
  2. average in grad school is good. it's not undergrad anymore, you're not competing to be in the top 1% of your class in terms of your GPA. you just want to do the best research possible.
  3. TAships and RAships take up, in theory, 20 hours of your week. at my school, anyway. i know a friend at another school who is TAing and they're unionized, so they're not allowed to work more than 12 hours a week. at my school, no union, so our contracts state we have to put in 20 hours. whatever. my point is that even if you were funded with a TAship, you'd still be working and distracted from your own classes and research. if you can find a part-time job that will give you 20 steady hours, and that pay is good enough to cover your tuition AND living expenses (no loans!) then it's worth it. if you're taking out loans to help yourself, make sure you're entering a field where that'll pay off financially, i.e. NOT academia. if your post-MA career is going to land you a big salary, then the loans and some part-time work can be fine. if not, then really, really consider not getting the MA. i know you've tried twice already, but if you can't make the finances work for you in the long term, don't do it.
  4. i took a seminar last spring called "gender, ethnicity, race, religion," and we did exactly that. read books and articles that spanned 1000 years and most geographical subfields but all dealt with gender and/or sexuality and/or race and/or ethnicity and/or religion. usually multiple identity categories in a single study, examining how they influence and are interconnected with each other. complemented by some key theory pieces (barth, butler, bourdieu, brubaker, other B's) that offered different strategies for analyzing the multiplicity of categorizations. hands down the best course i've taken in graduate school. i could send you the syllabus if you're interested.
  5. 1) transnational history is already pretty big. so is atlantic/world history. most job postings i see, in any subfield, demand that applicants demonstrate they can teach world history survey courses. in fact, it's pretty rare when i see a job listing that doesn't mention world history, atlantic history, or transnational history. if anything, in 10 years' time there will be a demand to return to national histories while applying the new theories that a transnational methodology has offered us. i too think/hope pacific history will expand, as will indian ocean history. 2) the internet age searching is actually pretty damn easy. KEYWORD SEARCHES. they will save your life. dealing with paper documents, you end up actually typing all that information into databases so you can conduct keyword searches on them. if only they were already digitized... and the fact that the net makes quantitative analysis easier doesn't mean that's the only type of work people will do. 3) i feel like presentism is already fairly well accepted. i mean, some people are definitely really against it and always will be, but there are probably just as many who embrace it. i don't really see this shifting in one direction or the other. 4) i don't know that military history will come back. the social history of military incursions, the cultural history of the military institution, etc., will definitely be big, but the history of battles and stuff? i can't see that being big, outside of public history/state department sort of stuff. 5) queer history - already its own field. the history of gender and/or sexuality is already really, really big. and the exciting place it's starting to go now is using queer theory or gender theories to apply it to heterosexuality or men. some of my favourite work on gender has been examining the roles of straight men and the construction of masculinity. amazing what you can learn by spreading the theory around. the same way race theory or ethnicity theory applied to white people or dominant groups can uncover really interesting new angles. and i'd have to echo the sentiment that it's kind of ridiculous to think only women do women's history (not true at all) or only LGBT do queer history (also super-not true). 6) "pure" history dying out - what IS pure history? historical anthropology, historical sociology, and historical geography borrow so much from history, and history borrows so much from anthro, sociology, and geography that the distinction between disciplines isn't really that clear anymore. historians already borrow all of the other disciplines' methodological approaches as it suits them. i can't think of a single "pure" historical methodology. content analysis? even that's heavily influenced by/borrowed from lit studies. 7) neuroscience entering historical methodology, rather than becoming a historical subject, really, really scares me. there's too much opportunity for biological essentializing there. 8) comparative history of US and continental europe... seems like something that should've been done by now, if it hasn't been. but then i feel like comparative history in general is kind of on the way out, in favour of "connective" histories like world, atlantic, transnational, etc. 9) present reconstructions of the past - seems like a cool new slant on stuff. deals with memory and re-creating and all that, which has been big for about 5-10 years now. definitely a growth field, i think. 10) my prediction for next big thing: shifting scales/units of analysis. not microhistory, not world history, not national history, not regional history, but constantly shifting from one size to the other. and the other next big thing (this one's mine, you can't have it) is to abandon studies that "want to look at race in the 20th century US" or "gender in 19th century cuba" or whatever. rather than defining the project around race or gender or ethnicity or religion, it'll be defined around something else (voting, participation in social clubs, residence in shantytowns) and then race or gender or ethnicity will play into that. so you still ultimately study those social dimensions but you don't define your research design around those categories. them's my 10 cents.
  6. doesn't sound nuts. if you want to do something else... go do something else. grad school isn't the be-all end-all. good luck!
  7. when you're apart, have an open relationship. just kidding. not really kidding.
  8. as someone taking a break from grading my undergrads' exams right now, may i offer my perspective? i'm fairly certain that the professor owes you nothing. unless his syllabus explicitly stated that one of every student's exam scores would be dropped from his/her final grade, then there is nothing binding that forces him to switch your grade. even though he said in an email that he would ignore that test, he doesn't have to. and other than appealing to him as a fellow human being, there's nothing you can actually do. it was indeed your fault for missing the test and your grade is a consequence of that. appeal if you want to, but you will lose. instead, approach the professor directly and explain your future career plans and try to reason with him. that's the only avenue that might work here, and even then, the prof is well within his right to just say no to you. as for your chances at grad school (which i realize you did not ask about), many programs will overlook online classes anyway, so your C may or may not ultimately matter. but if all the classes you're taking to get background in your new field are online, if this admissions cycle doesn't pan out for you i would suggest enrolling in traditional college classes for your field. good luck with your admissions and with getting your grade changed.
  9. holy crap, good luck with that 100 page thesis. i could probably write 100 pages in that time but i don't think they'd be 100 good pages. damn. reading for a class or comps is different from reading for your research. if it's a class/comps thing, then i do my very best to read every single page. depending on the length of the book and how much else i have going on, i can usually read 3/4 of it closely and skim the last 1/4. doing that for three books a week (three classes, 1 book each) pretty much takes up 50-60 hours a week for me. reading for your research... start with the table of contents. are there chapters that hit on exactly what you do? read those. if not, read the intro and conclusion. go to the index and look through the key terms. anything that seems relevant, look it up and read those sections. when you haven't read the whole book or article, be VERY careful to NEVER say "this author didn't...." you don't know what the author did or didn't do because you didn't read all of it. if the book or dissertation or article is on your exact topic, you have to read all of it. no way around it.
  10. yep. admissions to history programs will be more difficult. if the history MA is terminal, then it'll put you in pretty much the same position for PhD admissions as the studies MA will, and it's almost certain that you won't get into the PhD program at the school where you completed the terminal MA. that's just how they work. if, on the other hand, you're accepted into an MA/PhD program for latin american history, then you could obviously stay on at that school for the PhD. in terms of curricula, a LA studies degree won't have that many history courses. you'll do a lot of public policy and/or culture, maybe some linguistics courses. odds are high that most of your classes will be geared towards the present. in a LA history program, you will take a decent number of courses that actually have little to nothing to do with latin america. historiography, historical methodology, courses on atlantic history or the african diaspora or eugenics in the west. depending on the strength of the department, you'll probably get a few readings about latin america in some of those courses, but expect at least 1 or 2 courses a semester to be about something other than latin america. some of the really big (and by big i mean many faculty members, not high prestige) LA history programs may be able to consistently offer 2 or 3 courses on something in latin america each semester, but that varies with the size of the department and the LAist cohort.
  11. the GRE, as much as i absolutely hated it, has a few genuinely useful functions. but first, no one looks at or cares about the AW score. so don't sweat it. adcoms get to know your writing firsthand by reading your SOP and your writing sample. they don't care one little bit about the GRE writing section, i promise. the GRE provides the only way to compare students across disciplines. GPAs vary with fields and everyone has "strong" LORs. when schools are trying to hand out university-wide fellowships, they lean heavily on the GRE. and guess what? when you apply for the mellon dissertation writing fellowships that so many universities offer, you'll have to submit your GRE scores again. until they find a better way to quantitatively compare an english PhD with a sociology PhD, some sort of horrible, evil standardized testing will have to be used. also, the GRE represents a hoop through which prospective applicants must jump. it is the first of many hoops you will encounter in your academic career. dare i say a four-hour test may be one of the least painful stupid, pointless things you will be asked to do as a student, a TA, an adjunct, or a professor. the GRE is really a test of how willing you are to jump and how good you are at jumping. most schools realize this. just because they realize that the GRE doesn't really test your writing ability, that doesn't mean the GRE doesn't tell them anything about you. there actually is a high correlation between GRE scores and success in graduate school. here's something that has nothing to do with your research, but you have to do it anyway, and you have to do it well. sounds like comps. the GRE verbal section does test, to some degree, your language ability. you'll note that the people who really struggle to break 500V also really struggle with grammar and comprehension. the sesquipedalian people who break 700V sometimes use those big words correctly. i think there are huge problems with standardized testing in general, so i am not singing the praises of the GRE here, but when adcoms see that a student took the test three or four times just to break 600 on the verbal, it tells them something. what that something is, i don't actually know. look. it seems like everyone goes to a "top LAC" or a "public ivy" and they've all got 3.8 GPAs. adcoms need to weed through that somehow. most of the weeding is done based on the SOP, the writing sample, your LORs (especially if they've actually heard of your LOR writers), your fit with the program, and whether your potential advisor is interested in you or not. maybe, with all those other factors, they throw your GRE score in there too, but i'd be shocked if it is ever a deciding factor between two candidates when there is less than a 100-point spread between them. sure, all other things being equal, the kid with 720V will probably get in over 520V, and why not? he jumped higher.
  12. really?
  13. i'm finishing up my thesis in latin american history this academic year. this is the second year of a two year program. still doing lots of coursework (next semester i have 3 graduate seminars, an undergraduate language class, and i'm a TA... joy). i finished my first draft of my thesis in early december. 38 pages, i'm hoping the final product will be somewhere between 30 and 35 pages so cutting it down for publication in a journal won't be too daunting. the second draft is due this saturday morning, so of course i'm on thegradcafe instead. my timeline over the two year period has been something like this: - directed study with my advisor on the region/group of people/time period i want to study (first year, first semester) - a rambling exploratory essay with three possible thesis topics and the sources available for each at my school, through interlibrary loans, or in foreign archives (first year, december) - picked one of the three topics, did a broad overview "panorama" essay on everything written/happening on that topic throughout the region (first year, second semester) - found archives, inquired about sources, wrote three 1-2 page outlines of potential theses based on what i expected to find at the archives. (first year, march and april) - archival research abroad. of course, i didn't find what i expected to, but i found a whole bunch of great stuff i didn't even know existed, so i ran with that instead. (between first and second year, june-august) - wrote a two paragraph abstract of exactly what my research question is, how it's different from the existing lit, blah blah. also wrote the lit review for my thesis (second year, september) - wrote version 2 of my lit review and formulated my dissertation project (!!!) and wrote a grant for that, which sort of stalled me on the masters thesis for a bit (second year, october) - wrote a detailed, single-spaced, 5 page outline of my thesis, including my arguments, sub-arguments, and every piece of evidence i was going to use for every single paragraph; painstaking but worth it (second year, november) - wrote the first draft (second year, december) - writing the second draft (right now!) my advisor and i will discuss my second draft right before christmas and then i imagine i'll have a third draft to her early in the new year. if she's happy with draft 3, it will go to my committee members in mid-january for their feedback. one or two drafts for them and then the final written version should be in the can by mid-to-late february. i'll sit my defense at the end of february. that's the plan, anyway. PRO-TIPS: 1) don't compare your progress to that of other students. some people start their programs with years of research already under their belts. they've got their question, they've got their sources, they might even have a draft already. no one expects you to keep up with them if you're still trying to find a general topic. at the same time, if their progress motivates you to work, that's a good thing. just don't let the stress cripple you. as long as your advisor is fine with your progress, you should be too. 2) it's okay to be late. the only hard deadlines in academia are for applications: admissions, grants, fellowships, jobs. everything else can be (and usually is) late. you can hide from your advisor or give him/her a head's up on your progress, that's your call. but don't be afraid to say to him/her, "look, this is going to take another week or two." 3) force yourself to write. even when the writing's bad. just put it onto paper. i've got at least 100 pages of stuff i've written that i'll never use because it's such garbage, but i had to get the poison out. i had to clear my head of the swirling thoughts and re-read the trash to realize, "oh, so THIS is what i really want to say." 4) do share your drafts with your colleagues. unless you're in a hyper-competitive environment where students try to sabotage each other, their feedback can be useful. read their stuff too. sometimes you can discover your own mistakes by recognizing it (or the lack of it) in other people's work. 5) don't take it personally. the criticism is designed to make your work better. and if you really care about the work, then you should welcome strong criticism of it. if it's really about you and not the work, then you might get a little bruised up.
  14. my advisor's having me over for dinner with her three crazy/adorable children around the holidays and then we're gonna discuss the latest draft of my thesis (ugh). so i figured i'd bake cookies for the kids, but that's all i'm really doing.
  15. anyone going to apply for the SSRC DPDF?
  16. the graduate committee reads the writing sample. this usually consists of anywhere from 5 to 12 professors and sometimes one or two graduate students, depending upon the university. i know that for cornell in particular, the entire faculty reads the applications, writing samples included, but i think that's fairly unusual. no idea if every program reads the SOP first, but it would certainly make sense to. i imagine they decide if your writing sample is worth reading at all after they decide if your SOP was good.
  17. it also depends on whether your potential advisor will be in town or not. if they're on leave to write, they're usually in the city and you can see them just as often as you would if they were technically "in residence" that year. if the advisor's going to be abroad doing research, ask directly if s/he would be willing to take on a new grad student while on leave. some do, and maintain regular contact through skype and email, and others don't.
  18. this doesn't sound like ADD or ADHD, this sounds like depression. and rather than seeking medications to treat that depression (which you tried, and which had negative side effects), you should try to find a therapist that will treat your depression with regular (frequent) therapy sessions. maybe you can find another mix of anti-depressants that works for you, but first and foremost i'd recommend finding a cognitive therapist that will take your depression seriously and not immediately reach for an Rx pad. second, the adderall clearly IS having an effect on you. the fact that you need to take it just to get out of bed, and that not taking it means you don't get out of bed, means it's doing something for you. if you're expecting to actually get high from adderall, you'll have to crush and snort it to bypass the time-release properties of the pill. but i wouldn't advocate snorting amphetamines. that's not really good for you in general and especially not if you're using it to self-medicate depression. it'll lead you right to addiction. it sounds like you've been misdiagnosed and mis-medicated plenty. there may be other things going on, since we only know what you've decided to tell us, but starting some real therapy and stopping the adderall seems to be in order. improved diet and increased exercise will also help fight the depression, but you'll need to get to the place of wanting to do those things first, hence my recommendation for CT. as for hating your grad program, it happens to the best of us. better to find out now that this isn't something you want than 10 years into your career. good luck with all of this!
  19. yep. a lot of journals' book reviews are 1-2 pages so a 500-word book review isn't that uncommon. it's a skill to distill that much information into such a small space. and when you're writing comps, you'll be whittling entire books down into a single paragraph at most. hell, you'll have to write dissertation grant proposals in 3 double-spaced pages. those will need to include your research question, your argument, the parameters/design of your study, the existing literature, your contribution to that literature, a description of your sources, an explanation of your methodology, an attention-grabbing introduction, and some biographical information (your language proficiency, your coursework/training, the research strengths of your professors, whatever research trips you've already taken). writing concisely is something grad programs look for, so if they're giving you maximum lengths or page numbers, i suggest sticking to those lengths. applying to grad school isn't as intense as applying for fellowships, but fellowship organizations will throw out your entire application if you go over the page limit or make your margins and spacing too small. don't give 'em a reason to toss you by not following their rules.
  20. lots of advisors will have you chasing the wind. i'd recommend really considering what he has to say about your project. in the social sciences, advisors are really just talking off the tops of their heads when they give you advice because they're not specialists in your exact project. in the hard sciences, you're often working on a smaller fragment of a larger group project led by that advisor. in poli sci, you're building that project for yourself, so when your advisor throws ideas at you, they're just that: ideas. one week they'll seem good, and then another week it'll be clear that the idea doesn't really work. that's part of the process. if your advisor is "missing" your argument, that's because you are not stating your argument clearly. get very specific with your research question. don't just have a topic, have a question that you will be able to answer with your research. i myself struggle with research design and i have a great advisor who guided me through the process, but that process resulted in an entire year's worth of writing that i'll never use, outside of a few conference papers. i've had moments where one week she'll tell me to look at X and another week she'll tell me to cut X out once i've fleshed it out a bit. that's how this works. you try things and you discard the stuff that doesn't work out. if your advisor is not reading the stuff you send him on a weekly basis, stop sending him stuff on a weekly basis. schedule more face-to-face meetings, bring notes with you to those meetings, an agenda of what you want to talk about. get his feedback then and there. talk more, write less. if your advisor doesn't want to meet more frequently than twice a semester, tell him you need more face time. make it difficult for him to say no. i've seen FAR too many students tip-toe around their advisors and get zero guidance from them because they're too afraid to demand their advisor's attention. there's no harm in consulting other professors in your department, but don't be surprised if they give you the same feedback your advisor has. confusion is an underrated state of being. learn to enjoy having no idea what the hell you're supposed to do. i definitely do not recommend writing a chapter (presumably of your dissertation?) before you know exactly what you're going to say in it. you need the research design nailed down (for yourself, if not for your advisor) before you can put pen to paper. instead, write the literature review or a detailed outline for the proposed chapter, complete with research questions, evidence, and methodology.
  21. it's hard to find funding for termina MAs in the US, but not impossible. you'll have to do the legwork yourself, researching all the programs and seeing which ones offer funding and which don't.
  22. did you go to toronto? if so, it's fine. if not, you shouldn't have put it on your CV, in my opinion.
  23. i couriered my application from the states and i know they signed for it on the 9th, but i didn't get an email verification of its receipt until the 16th. so give it a week from the date you assume it might've arrived at their offices.
  24. well, it depends on whether your assigned readings are available as e-books, doesn't it?
  25. you're welcome. if you're looking to cut places, UCLA always struggles with funding and they have so many graduate students that it can be difficult to get to know your cohort or get a lot of time with your advisor, unless they only have 3 advisees or something. i almost applied there myself but didn't because their funding was so rough. and don't worry about the prestige of yale. their graduates have just as hard a time as anyone else on the market. but if you want brazil and economics, stuart schwartz is your guy. even though he does colonial era, he may be willing to advise on modern brazil (ask him), and if he is... well, he's a great historian. it'd be worth the application, if you can swing the cash. as for demonstrating that you will eventually be able to read portuguese... i'd say something like "i've done X months/semesters of preparation and will be enrolled in Y classes over the current year, which will make me a proficient reader of portuguese by fall 2011." if you don't have coursework in portuguese and you're teaching yourself how to speak it, do your best to make it sound official... maybe even mention a book that's only been published in portuguese in your SOP to demonstrate that you can actually read it. otherwise, trying to study brazil with no real way to demonstrate that you will be able to read portuguese will definitely hurt you. good luck! (also, on the "pitch one project instead of three" thing for your SOP... that's just my opinion based on my own experience. i'm sure other people will tell you schools like to see a range of your interests but... i think that would be taking a risk.)
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