ComeBackZinc

I agree with all of what you guys are saying. I should say: I'm someone who is frequently incapable of taking his own advice.

Sorry, was just going through the archive here-- there was someone asking about UMass vs. Madison, or someone else asking about Maryland against another school. Just thought it was funny that, in a forum where we always say that it's about fit, people had very strong and quick opinions about one department over the other without really knowing someone else's particular interests. I'm not trying to stir up trouble or accuse anybody of anything, just thought it was interesting.

So strange to see people who constantly say it's all about fit abandon that commitment when given a binary choice between programs by other posters.

I know that Bartholomae is a boss. My fear with smaller comp programs is that they can suddenly cease to exist, if just a few people retire or take a new job. But they can also be incubators for great young scholars, because they can give personalized attention to smaller cohorts. You might find that you have to work a little harder on the job market to stress your commitment to rhet comp as a discipline, but the basic requirement will be the same as for anyone: be the first or sole author of a research article in a recognized journal. I think you should feel encouraged and happy to be heading there in the fall.

whoops wrong thread

Thanks for that lovely comment, Profolax. Incidentally, vertical transition-- the move from high school to college writing-- for traditionally disadvantaged groups-- is my primary research area.

Unless you have a guarantee of funding, absolutely do not go.

So it used to be that there were three tiers: Stafford subsidized, Stafford unsubsidized, and PLUS. IIRC, Stafford subsidized let you borrow up to $8500 a year with the interest paid by the government until you graduated; unsubsidized, an additional $12,000 a year; and PLUS, up to the difference between your total aid package and a cost of living calculated by the school. Unfortunately, Congress axed the subsidy, so now all Stafford loans are unsubsidized. You can borrow up to $20,500 a year that way. There is no requirement to have good credit or a cosigner. Beyond that, you can get PLUS loans up to the difference between what you've gotten from the school (including things like tuition waivers and such) up to the school's cost of living, which tends to be generous. So if you've taken out the full $20,500 and don't have any other funding, and the school says it costs $40,000 a year to attend, you could take out an additional $19,500 a semester. But please, don't do that to yourself. Those numbers might be out of date, as I was unfunded in my first year of my MA and I'm in my second year at a PhD program now. Hope that is accurate and helps.

1. Don't take out any loans 2. Don't take out Grad PLUS loans 3. For god's sake, don't take out private loans

ninja mode

I really cannot recommend this post enough.

http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-Is-a-Means-to/131316/ Some very important things to think about in here, and a necessary antidote for the romanticized view of graduate school and academics.

i'm usually pretty good about avoiding the internet when drunk

Look, here's the deal: people know rationally that rankings don't matter. But they want to feel validated and justified by those ratings even as they understand them to be bullshit. So they gravitate towards whatever ratings they feel support their own choices and their own path. But why are they off the wall? Where does that opinion of yours come from? Yes, prestige matters. But actual prestige and perceived prestige for those outside of the current academy are very different things. People flip out about the NRC rankings because they aren't the usual "Berkeley plus the Ivy League" stuff that people gradually assume. I'm no expert, not close. But UConn being above Brown is the opposite of off the wall, if you actually look at the quality of the faculty, the recent publication history, and their ability to place students in jobs. Arizona State over University of Chicago? I'm on board, based on who is actually there now rather than on broad notions of school quality that are based on undergraduate exclusivity, which has precisely nothing to do with the quality of an English doctoral program. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that you're assuming that the quality of literature doctoral programs should more or less track with the assumed prestige of undergraduate institutions. And frankly, I think that is a profoundly mistaken perspective, and one that has resulted in an ossified notion of quality in English, to the detriment of people working in the field. It makes it impossible for vibrant programs of quality scholars to advance, thanks to the legacy of what a program once was decades ago. So I guess the question is: on what basis do you justify assuming that UConn is necessarily a worse program than Brown?

A prospective graduate student in English read 50 pages on a whim?!? Alert the press!

Can you give a few more details? If it's not a situation where you felt genuinely unsafe or where the person likely violated an campus policy, I would leave it alone. They likely won't do anything about it, and academia is a such a small world. If it was, like, inappropriate touching, then I would definitely talk to faculty at your current school for advice and pursue it from there. But if it's more vague, it's hard to see that they would remove him from that position.

OK, I lol'd.

Not always. Mutual suspicion is a fact of life in a lot of hierarchies. Honestly, Fishbucket, I don't think that there's a lot of utility to this conversation right now. I don't think anybody is learning much of anything about anybody. It might be best just to shelve it for awhile.

It's looking that way. And, indeed, some schools are either moving into schools of communication and media or education, or are already there. Me, I like lit people. I value them. Sometimes they drive me crazy. But I think of lit people (and English people writ large) as my people. It's like my adviser often says. She could be working in a department of communication or computer science. But she's in a department of English because she admires the values of English people.

By the way, the notion that queer studies is about looking for "what could be gay" in literature is somewhere between laughable and offensive.

Indeed.

I think this is all very revealing, in a variety of ways. Two things above any other: if you're unhappy even with the existence of fields and subjects you don't like (or think you don't like) being influential or respected, please, don't go to grad school. I say that for your sake and for the sake of the people who will work with you. There's a lot of wiggle room in graduate education, but one of the no-bullshit, non-negotiable realities is that people and ideas you don't find that impressive are going to be elevated all the time. I think anybody who's been exposed to grad school, from all across the university and its many disciplines, can tell you that there's a lot of people who are perpetually miserable because they're angry about other people's prominence and success. There's a real "misunderstood genius" problem in the academy, of people who feel neglected because they don't respect the work that's getting published or rewarded. We all feel critical about other people's success sometimes. But for me, that was one of the first things I had to let go. Because it's never going to change, not even if/when you get tenured. If you can't stand the thought of these subjects becoming prominent, you should seriously reconsider if you're a good fit for grad school. Second, you guys keep trying to find some argument by which it's responsible or useful to prejudge entire fields of inquiry while admitting you haven't read them. You can't, because that's juvenile and unfair. You're operating from a position of ignorance and should let it go.