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virmundi

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Everything posted by virmundi

  1. My takeaway from this? Poor grandma.
  2. I haven't yet (but not at home to check to see if it came in the mail today). Did you receive something?
  3. virmundi

    DAAD

    My portal is also much more explicit now. Perhaps this means that a decision is nigh!
  4. I also wasn't able to find "Fulbright Germany 2015-2016". Any chance you'd be willing to share a direct link here?
  5. Right on. Congrats. Glad you didn't have to wait too long.
  6. Thank you very much. This forum has been the thing keeping me sane/insane (both in equal parts) for weeks now and I really appreciate it, even if I've only been a lurker.
  7. I also was just accepted to Germany at 13:22. I'm so relieved that I'm shaking. Good luck everyone.
  8. It may depend somewhat on what your goals are, but a tried and true strategy for someone who has been out of school for a while is to take a few graduate level courses in your field of interest (this can be done in some programs as a non-degree seeking student) and then try to get LORs from your professors for those courses. This is not, generally speaking, a cheap option but it may be the best way to get solid academic references after you've been out of school for a while.
  9. Fantastic news. Congratulations! I can hardly even imagine the relief, excitement, joy, and anticipation that you are feeling right now.
  10. virmundi

    DAAD

    http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Dissertation_Fellowships_2014-2015 http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Dissertation_Fellowships_2013-14 Last year and the year before that they seem to have gone out on March 28th, so maybe the wait won't be quite as long.
  11. You were in Germany, right? If you don't mind me asking, where? (Also -- sorry if I missed it earlier in the thread).
  12. Fingers crossed for you. For all of us, too, but in this moment especially for you.
  13. This is hilarious (and I agree 100% with the sentiment of that facial expression)!
  14. virmundi

    New Haven, CT

    Hi Ragneo -- Yale is known (informally) as the "gay Ivy." It has the highest proportion of LGBTQ students of any of the Ivy's, and I have LGBTQ friends and colleagues who are absolutely comfortable here in New Haven.
  15. Preselection at my university seems to be slightly different. Here, two of the applicants are "preselected" and they are more or less guaranteed one of the DAAD research fellowships (although the final decision is still made elsewhere). These candidates, in effect, seem to be fast-tracked through the process to approval and receipt of the award. Other applicants who are not "preselected" here are forwarded to DAAD, where their applications are considered. Our DAAD program coordinator told me that they received 8 applications last year, two were preselected here and a further two were selected further along in the process. As I understand it, however, the preselected applicants did not hear back from the DAAD committee any sooner in the process.
  16. Haha! I hear you. I will say, however, that Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's "Plautus im Nonnenkloster" is brilliant, both in terms of prose, story, and style. It follows Poggio Bracciolini in his discovery of Plautus while he is at the Council of Constance, and is stylistically a masterpiece. I am currently reading a book about mills in Late Medieval England. Ergh.
  17. Annalistasaxo89, Out of curiosity, does the book end with 1300, or at some point in the 1300s? What is the terminus of the book? It is on my list of things to get around to, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to do so -- I'd appreciate your insight if you are willing to share it.
  18. The best place in my experience is abebooks.
  19. A simple comment. No topic is inherently ruled out by virtue of 'fashion' or 'fad'. It is, however, necessary to consider that if you wish to address a topic through a lens that was identified as problematic ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or more years ago, you had *better have an extraordinary reason why that old-fashioned lens is still relevant in the 21st century.* I write this as a medievalist who is studying what seems at first to be a *very* old-fashioned topic that is *very much* out of the historical mainstream on its face. With that said, I am incorporating the ideas, insights, historiography, and theoretical frameworks of the 21st century, which have not only interested my advisor, but also scholars on two continents. The trick, of course, is now to pull it off and convince an audience that is broader than my advisor and other specialists in my sub-field that my work is of contemporary interest and relevance. I am not owed this audience -- I have to earn it. I don't think that Vr4douche is 100% wrong in suggesting that some topics are 'faddish', but it is also fair to note that these 'fads' are very much a corrective of centuries of exclusive focus on a very narrow range of topics and individuals, and that correction is far from over. My topic does not involve race, gender, and ethnicity, but I believe strongly in the importance of those lenses of historical (and contemporary!) analysis. I am determined to convince my colleagues that my voice and my work are part of a broader conversation that *must include at its core* those frames of analysis, even if this particular project of mine does not place them there. In short -- follow your muse, don't play the victim, and enjoy the process while you can.
  20. Thank you for posting this! Sandberg's '_____ for Reading Knowledge' series of books are extraordinary! I own copies of the French, German, and Spanish iterations of that series and they are all wonderful. I had typically not recommended this in the past because of its expense and general lack of availability. Marvelous!
  21. Hi there! If you want to be proficient in reading Spanish, you want this book: http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Reading-A-Self-Instructional-Course/dp/0764103334 "Spanish for Reading" by Fabiola Franco and Karl C. Sandberg is the book's name. This book follows the same approach as Sandberg's earlier works "French for Reading" and "German for Reading". While the focus is exclusively on the ability to read, and thus of little help when speaking, you'll find that this is actually an advantage. The format of the book, the deliberateness of the exercises, and the excellent layout all mean that by the end of the first chapter, you will be reading a fairly sizeable excerpt from an actual, real, Spanish journal article. There is -- point blank -- no better option than Sandberg's "for Reading" series for either French or Spanish (German for Reading has been out of print for a long time, so it is debatable whether it is still quite as useful given the reformation of German spelling in recent decades, although its method is still vastly superior to Jannach). You won't regret picking up this book, particularly since it is currently listed at only $10 and some change on Amazon. If you work hard and do a chapter/day, you'll be reading Spanish comfortably within a month -- comfortably enough to pass most Ph.D. programs' Spanish exams with a dictionary in hand (if you aren't allowed a dictionary, you'll obviously need to do a lot more work to memorize vocabulary et al. )... Good luck! Editing to note that I am in no way affiliated with Sandberg, other than that his approach to reading has saved me a lot of heartache and got me through two of my three Ph.D. program reading exams.
  22. I disagree rather strongly that Korb's (formerly Jannach's) "German for Reading Knowledge" is the best text available. April Wilson's book contains far more comprehensive strategies on understanding the relationship between German and English words, as well as engaging more comprehensively with the subject material in each chapter. At the same time, Wilson also provides a far better overview of dictionaries and how to use them in chapter 17 of her book. As if that wasn't enough, Korb's text is also some $70 more expensive than Wilson's. You won't go wrong with April Wilson plus Pimsleur tapes from your local library. Edit: I'm editing to add that, in addition, the "German for Reading Knowledge" book has been through 7 editions. The 7th edition is riddled with errors (including supposedly being printed in 2014) and is not appreciably better than the 6th edition, although it is far more expensive and is the text being used by a wide swath of German Reading courses these days. It is just different enough from the 6th that you can't be certain that it is safe to use the 6th. There is, in essence, a random re-arrangement of chapters and introduction of "topical" sentences (mainly sentences that reference a recent date so as to suggest that the book is somehow "current") and the like.
  23. virmundi

    New Haven, CT

    I know people who live over there who like it fine... but they also don't go a heck of a lot further west from there on foot. It's not that it is, strictly speaking, *always* dangerous, but those are the areas where crime is significantly more likely, particularly if you look like someone who might have something worth taking (i.e. identifiably a "Yale student" by virtue of dress or something). I'd say, based on what I know, that you are on the edge of the okay zone. I'd say that the Yale hospitals (to the west and south of you) are in an area that I wouldn't go walking around in alone after dark, whereas I'd feel pretty comfortable doing that on campus unless it was really late at night. The neighborhood transitions are pretty sudden in New Haven, so that four blocks can make a pretty big difference. With that said, as long as you keep your head on straight and aren't wandering around the streets in the middle of the night, you'll probably be fine. Yale's 24hr door-to-door shuttle service is pretty darned convenient in terms of keeping it safe too. I've never used it, but my understanding is that as long as one end of the trip is a university location, they'll take you just about anywhere in the New Haven area.
  24. virmundi

    New Haven, CT

    I don't know the property itself, but it is a decent area (although it gets sketchy relatively quickly to the west -- Mansfield is okay, but after that it starts to get rough quick), close to campus and decent. I know people who live further up Prospect (in grad. family housing) and also some folks who lived in nice apartments on Mansfield just about right behind where 276 is -- it's a good area as long as you mind the boundaries, and, of course, it is nice and close to campus. Sorry I don't have anything more specific to offer!
  25. virmundi

    New Haven, CT

    Your best bet is to contact the lister and see if they'd consider letting you take the apartment on August 1st.
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