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thedig13

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Everything posted by thedig13

  1. My two cents: Take some time off, which is always a good idea between undergrad and grad school. In the meantime, try reading a few seminal books in your two fields of interest. If one set of books excites you more than the other, it might be a sign. This may also give you a few ideas regarding where to apply to pursue your interests.
  2. I use MS Word for anything that I'm planning to eventually show to others (e.g., dissertation chapters, prospectuses, course assignments). I use Google Drive to keep notes on everything I read in graduate school (e.g., archival materials, book-reading notes).
  3. I've heard similar things about the admissions process. Professors at different universities will call up their buddies and be like "Yo, if you send an admit to student X, I won't, because he'd probably go to your school." Or, "Student B is easily the best student to apply here, so we won't admit him because he'll probably accept an offer elsewhere!'
  4. I will say that one of my advisors was ~13 years out of college before she herself started graduate school. Age itself isn't an issue. As others have mentioned, however, it may behoove you to keep in touch with old professors and make sure they're up-to-date on your plans. If you ask for a letter of recommendation from someone who hasn't heard from you in 5-10 years, it's unlikely they'll remember you well enough to write anything substantial.
  5. Good luck breaking into the historical profession, where the very definition/meaning/purpose of "objectivity" has been thrown into question. All interpretations of anything are subjective. The very notion of "objectivity" was invented by white European men trying to argue that their own knowledge systems were more valid than those of nonwhites/non-Europeans/women.
  6. I used to think this (especially about my own project--am I making any new arguments?), but the more time I've spent in grad school, the more I realize that there's plenty still to be done. Only this week, I had another (minor) breakthrough in my dissertation's intervention. I'm now convinced that every generation of professional historians feels like the well is running dry, but every generation has also had a revolutionary breakthrough (see: social turn, cultural turn) that reveals another untouched layer of historical thinking.
  7. The fields that I'm crafting for myself are as follows: 20C US (major); Race in the City; Nation/Race/Empire; US-Pacific Transnational. PM me if you want to peek at a (tentative) list of my readings.
  8. Aha. Yeah, I hear you. Novick definitely veers towards the Americanist/modernist. Not sure he'd be as helpful for people outside those categories.
  9. I suspect that's part of it. It's also a really great introduction to the politics of the historical profession and its defining pretenses. Out of curiosity, if you needed to introduce a first-year grad student to the historical profession, what would you assign instead?
  10. Peter Novick's book is bomb as all hell, and there's a reason it's the most frequently assigned state-of-the-field monograph for first-year historians. I hate theory as much as anybody, but over time, you pick up enough here and there to be able to engage in those conversations (and even employ a tiny bit in your own work).
  11. That's kind of what I was ultimately trying to get at.
  12. I will agree that your former advisor seems like an asshole, and will also add that graduate school kicks everybody's ass. Nobody completes a year of graduate coursework without losing all confidence in their abilities. I'd speculate that your problems were more imagined than real (i.e., perhaps you didn't do as poorly as you think), and it doesn't sound like your mentor was particularly helpful either. If you must address your performance, I'd try to spin it as a positive (as you have done here): you tried your hand at graduate school years ago, you had some difficulties, it turned you off from academia; however, you retained your love of history, have intellectually matured a lot, and are ready to give it another shot. Don't say anything negative about your mentor (you never know who your former mentor might be close to, and an application isn't the place for politics anyway), and keep it short and sweet--you only get 1-2 pages to really sell yourself as a prospect, and an SOP is really supposed to be less about your previous forays into academia and more about your interests and your ability/training to pursue them.
  13. Here's a question: why are you so disinterested in taking language courses? Anybody who's vaguely familiar with history programs knows that foreign language training is usually par for the course among History PhDs, so I'm curious to know why you're trying to get around this requirement.
  14. I suspect their record of successful placements has something to do with the pressure to pick up TAships. Teaching experience is becoming more and more of a must-have on the job market.
  15. As a follow-up to my previous post, what Klonoa experienced is pretty common in grad school. Like I said, students feel like they're stupid/inadequate/underprepared/falling behind all the time, regardless of what their actual level of competence/ability/experience/performance is. For me (and others I know), one of the big challenges of being a first year was getting over that paralyzing sense of inferiority so that you can buckle down and focus on getting work done.
  16. Sure. Among the programs I'm familiar with, there are two types of courses: research seminars, which seems to be what you have experience with (e.g., propose a paper, research, write, edit, present), and reading seminars, where you read a bunch of books and then write a literature review, the Human Centipede of Book Reviews. The reading load in these courses vary by professor, but I'd guess that I read about 1.3-1.5 books per week per class (e.g., a book and maybe 1-2 additional articles or selected chapters). When I say that graduate-level writing has been different for me, I mean that in two ways. First, as an undergrad, I'd never really been challenged to think about readings in metahistorical ways. In other words, I read for content/facts rather than the historians' underlying argument and his/her relationship to other historians/arguments. However, most of the writing I've done in grad school has been reviews rather than research, so this has essentially forced me to start thinking (and writing) in metahistorical (rather than content-based) ways. These new ways of thinking/reading also bleed over into research, and the way I organize and conceptualize my research papers has changed. Secondly, my first year of graduate school really challenged me to grow and change and evolve as a student. As a consequence of this, pretty much everything I did as an undergrad (including my thesis) feels like it could've been pulled off by a high school freshman. Essentially, what I was insinuating is that, even if Klonoa had written some fancy 25-page paper, he/she would've looked back on it after a month in grad school and been like "Wow. This was garbage. What was I thinking?" I remember being really, really, really proud of my own undergrad thesis, then taking a peek at it mid-grad school and feeling like I could've done it so much better. What I'm getting at is that graduate school is a challenging experience for everybody, regardless of what your training as an undergrad was like. It makes you feel like you're stupid and that you're lagging behind, even when you're not; it was certainly a humbling experience for me--I used to think I was some badass, Sherlockian genius; now I know that I'm just okay and that I need to work a lot more to become great. Whether or not you wrote a 25-page research paper as an undergrad, graduate school is meant to train you to think/read/write in new and different (and perhaps better) ways. Writing my thesis was a good experience at the time, but grad school forces you to move on from those previous accomplishments very quickly.
  17. As for writing more lengthy papers, I wouldn't worry too much. Even if you had done longer research papers before, it's not quite the same as the work you'll be doing in graduate school anyway. In some ways, I've had to re-learn how to write academic papers. (I speak from my own experience. Others' mileage may vary.) In other words, you'll figure it out over time. It also helps to have good mentors who are active/supportive and able to offer close readings/criticisms of your writing drafts.
  18. Honestly, I think you'd be superbly competitive. I myself was a student with a high GPA from a non-prestigious program. And, from what I've seen and heard, admissions committees are often on the lookout for applicants that can help diversify their student pool, whether that means by personal background, race, gender, or whatever else. Plenty of older applicants get into solid programs; thus, I don't view your age as a big disadvantage, and if you spin it the right way, it could even become an advantage. Moreover, you have the grades and language training to impress professors. Not having to worry about your income and financial stability takes a lot of the pressure off; many of the graduate students you'll be joining are going to spend time bouncing from location to location working low-paying, one-year contracts while barely feeding themselves. Moving forward, I'd encourage you to start on a senior thesis (preferably something involving at least 20-35 hours in a research archive), to strengthen your GRE scores (that math section might be a hindrance), and to pick up another language (maybe Russian). It's also necessary for you to think about who you might want to work with at the graduate level--you seem to have a somewhat defined area of interest, which is good; it's time to figure out who the heavy hitters are in your field, as well as how you're going to pitch yourself and your interests to them and their colleagues. Feel free to send me a message with any more questions or concerns.
  19. If you can't get into a PhD program during your first admissions cycle, I'd go for an MA. Maybe or maybe not your particular school's BA/MA program, but definitely something somewhere. A student with a mediocre undergrad record can often "make up for it" (in the eyes of a committee) if they have a strong MA record. I'd also consider, as others have suggested, taking time off between undergrad and grad school. I didn't, and sometimes wish I had. Beyond that, admissions committees seem to favor people with "more experience," whether that means "life experience" (whatever that means) or graduate training; in fact, while I was an undergrad scouting out prospective PhD programs, one professor whom I contacted openly advised me not to apply because they generally don't accept people right out of undergrad.
  20. I'd encourage you to drop by nearby academic conferences/talks/lectures that are relevant to your prospective fields (maybe two for Early Americanists and two for Medievalists?). That'll give you a sense of what scholars in these fields are actually thinking about, and whether or not it meets your "romantic" notions of what the field constitutes. Just a thought.
  21. I concur with previous statements: two of the advantages of a non-online education is experience with the interpersonal classroom dynamic that most graduate programs rely on, and avoiding the (perhaps unfair) stigma attached to online education that will hurt you. I should mention that it's possible (albeit maybe difficult) to transition from STEM-based undergraduate schooling to a graduate program in the humanities (maybe go for an MA before you go for the PhD). I think you'd have to demonstrate (via your statement of purpose) a strong familiarity with existing debates in the profession, which will in turn require a familiarity with the big historians and the big history books in your field. Demonstrating a level of engagement with existing debates will also show application-readers that you're not making this leap blind and that you already have some comfort operating within the field. If you're interested in a future in academia, may we inquire what your intellectual interests are and what languages you're comfortable with? (This will help us recommend some books and readings to start you on your way.)
  22. Is there anybody in particular whom you have in mind?
  23. The introduction/prologue to Jacobs' book was so fricken intense, I had to put down the text and take a few deep breaths every 2-3 pages.
  24. Now that this decision is a year behind me, I can offer you the criteria that, in retrospect, I would have used if forced to make a decision again. They are, in no particular order: - Funding relative to cost-of-living: There are programs out there that will throw money and resources at you, and there are programs that barely keep students above the poverty line. You want to be in the former kind; it's a lot easier to read and write when you're not worried about bills and you have the institutional support to do things. My school's library/librarians, in particular, have proven insanely helpful in securing obscure monographs and tough-to-find materials. - Program prestige: As much as it totally and completely sucks, the reality is that 50% of all tenure-track positions in History are occupied by graduates of top-10 programs. In an oversaturated job market, you need every edge you can get. - Dissertation Committee: Are they big names whose recommendations will go a long way in getting you a job? Do they have a reputation for protecting/helping/standing for their graduate students? Are they people you want to work with? Are they people who are qualified to help with your project? - Cohort: This was the criteria that mattered most to me a year ago. Do you "click" with the people you've met, as well as those in upper years? Are their projects interesting and compelling? Do you want to hang out with them more? Don't underestimate this one; you'll be spending the next 6-7 years with these people. Fortunately, the decision I made was ultimately the right one either way, but hopefully this first-year's perspective can help incoming students make more informed decisions. PS: I realize that some of my criteria/explanations make me sound jaded and cynical, but I really feel like I should emphasize that I've already benefited tremendously (and will no doubt continue to benefit) from institutional advantages and resources that most programs simply can't offer. Unless I had some very, very, very good intellectual or ethical reason to do so, I would not trade these away.
  25. Updating my current reading list: Margaret Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race (possibly the most gripping and emotional introduction to an academic text I've read) Donald Ritchie, Doing Oral History Naoko Shibusawa, America's Geisha Ally Alice Goffman, On the Run Gerald Horne, Fire This Time Andrew Needham, Power Lines
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