virmundi

I feel you, Goldie -- I have one more chapter to crank out and just under a month to do it...! Erp.

I feel you -- I like all of the programs that I'm still considering. There is definitely an absolute forerunner, but each program has its own ultra-compelling leg-up over the others. I'm hoping that after I visit the last two this month, it'll be easier to make that final decision!

Sweetness, Goldie -- I hope that this feels like a satisfying conclusion to the end of the beginning of the beginning ;-). Northwestern is awesome! Congratulations.

Peyton Manning is -- or at least was -- a great football player. The guy, however, has a young family. I hope that he'll retire and avoid putting himself in situations where he may end up permanently damaged.

Dear Doctor Whom, I have received an official letter of admission from UCSB -- I think that I got it two weeks ago... I am not sure what their admissions procedures are, however, so they may be doing rolling admissions. It is also the case that my funding is not coming from the department itself, but rather from the graduate school, so this may have played a role in the timing also. Sorry that I cannot be of more help to you and best of luck!

Chime. The "two-body problem" is very real for academics. That people are asking about this may well suggest that they understand academia more than they've received credit for. This only becomes increasingly (and significantly so) complicated as you get older, your significant other's career becomes more specialized and potentially less mobile, and so on.

Hi Karen -- please don't sell yourself short when it comes to the top programs in your field. Those programs are looking for original, creative, and capable thinkers! The lack of a particular academic pedigree or a traditional background does not, by any means, disqualify you from consideration. If your concern is a less-than-stellar undergraduate GPA or something along those lines, this can be largely mitigated by pursuing an M.A. with a thesis option at a decent school (preferably in which well-regarded scholars are associated with the top schools at which you would like to pursue your Ph.D.!)... Aim for the stars and see where you land! Best of luck to you...

Hmm -- if that is truly the case, one can only hope that you are never in such a position. Our field is one in which collegiality is highly valued. To completely disregard how others might feel is certainly far from being tactful.

Well -- Ahmad Jamal is a genius anyway. ;-)

This sort of makes me wonder why they even bothered with a wait list, then... weird.

If it isn't a time issue, wait and see if you are accepted into a program and whether the program's offer is compelling. If so, then find out if you can defer because of your offer to teach abroad -- granted that most programs may not be willing to do this, but it might be worth it to ask. This may well be the sort of situation that would cause a program to offer you a deferred admission, although I truly cannot speak to that. Seems like something to consider anyhow. Good luck with your decision! Sounds really fun.

You are trying to position yourself to get into graduate school, right? You are interested in the professor's work, right? This is *precisely* how I approached my advisor and one of my committee members for the first time, a full 18 months before I had even matriculated at the institution where they taught. They gave me a trajectory and I followed it, and thus when I applied to do my M.A. there, they accepted me (fully-funded -- almost unheard of for an M.A. student at my institution) because they saw promise in me. One of the things that you might as well learn now is that in academia, you must cultivate relationships and you must engage in professionalization -- most of this happens outside of the classroom. Yes, you need to do well in classes, and yes, your work has to meet the standard... but you also have to engage in a wholly different way to what you might be used to in order to succeed in this field My unequivocal advice is to express your interest in working with the professor. If your school offers an honors thesis, suggest that you'd like to do an honors thesis with them, or talk about their classes, or ... whatever! I don't think that it is weird at all.

Well, just set up an appointment to go and meet them, express your interest, and get their take on what your progression should look like. Better to involve them sooner than later -- at least get on their radar. No reason to wait to introduce yourself!

They are a secret vice of mine... the problem with Turtledove is that he *isn't* a good writer. His books are extraordinarily repetitive. Of course, they are a good enough brain opiate that I read two very long series of books by him (the one with Jake Featherston and the one with the lizards)...

Congratulations!

For my part, I will address my future advisor as "Domina" or "Dominus" and approach them while genuflecting and singing the "Laudes regiae" as they enter rooms if this is what they want so long as they give me the professionalization I need and help me open the doors to a job when I'm done. Whether they behave like the Gracchi, Augustus, Diocletian, Gandalf, Galadriel, Andy Griffith, or Lucille Ball is really beside the point so long as they have a sincere interest in aiding me.

TheDig: Start cultivating relationships with professors in your institution who have interests that are similar to yours and whom you would like to write a letter of recommendation for you when you are applying to graduate programs. Ask them whether you are better off having second-year proficiency in Spanish and first-year in a second language, or whether you'd be better off focusing all of your efforts in Spanish (or another language). It is important to get the perspectives of the faculty in your specific subfield -- they are the ones whose letters will make or break your application. Not only does asking for their advice help to demonstrate your seriousness, it also provides you with an avenue for cultivating them as mentors and allies. They'll be able to give you sage advice on how best to utilize your time, language work, etc.

Heck, Oseirus! I don't have a horse in this race -- I was just pointing out my personal (and thus far, successful) approach. Part of my approach to titles, formality, respectfulness, deference, etc. is based on the realization that I am very much *not* enculturated from birth in the academic world, so I take my queues from the people who (literally) can deep-six my career if I get on their bad side. My efforts to be sensitive to the preferences of others has, by the by, also served me very well in negotiating research trips to countries where formality is still very much a norm (and built into language, accents, etc.)...! Obviously, if I end up going to a school where all of the professors are commonly referred to by their first names, I will adopt that convention. In my mind, it is about being adaptable and sensitive to others -- I see far too many graduate students at my current school who come from informal cultures elsewhere and get really upset or self-righteous because a professor tells them that they prefer to be referred to as "Professor such-and-such" and allow this to distract them from the real prize, which is their degree and their future career. Edited to add: I see this phenomenon particularly in older graduate students who see themselves as peers with the professors. As an older graduate student, I am very much aware of the fact that it is up to me to *prove* to my professors that I am worthy of being considered their colleague and peer. It doesn't serve me at all to get wrapped up in an equality discourse just because the professor that I'm TA'ing for right now is younger than I am and wants me to call him "Professor Lastname..."! He's a great guy and he's earned the right to go by the moniker of his choice as far as I'm concerned. If/when I'm a professor, perhaps I'll change my name to "Doctor Professor" and then confuse people by telling them that I don't care whether they call me by my first or last name as long as they don't refer to me as "Professor Professor!"

Thanks Goldie -- it has been a long journey already (with years and years left to go!) and it would have been impossible without the many people who've seen promise in me. Frankly, I'm a little terrified now that all of the visiting days are coming up.

While I am not "angry," I do disagree that it is necessarily pretentious for a Ph.D. to go by doctor (although I will concede that I am on the "call me by my first name" part of the spectrum -- even with my undergrad students). The title of "Doctor" has only recently, relative to the antiquity of the word, come to be used to refer to physicians. The extension of the amount of schooling necessary to become a physician or a lawyer was a post-bellum phenomenon that was driven to a not-insignificant degree by the desire to exclude African-Americans from these careers, albeit this was not the sole determinant. If a someone who has earned a Ph.D. wishes to be called "Dr. such-and-such," I have no opinion about it -- they've earned the right. Now if this same person goes around proclaiming their status and acting as a jack-ass, then that's altogether another matter. I've never seen that happen, however. I, too, come from a non-academic background, by the way. About as far as one possibly can -- neither of my parents finished high school and I am the first to attend community college (much less continue on to graduate school, etc.). As such, I can certify that my opinion is not the product of a pretentious upbringing or some other sort of blue-blooded thingamabobbajiggered opining.

I have never *ever* had any problems referring to a Professor as "Professor Lastname," even when they've signed their e-mails with their first name (I do revert to first name usage if and when they specifically have asked me to do so). I have, however, seen a professor excoriate a graduate student who presumed that it was acceptable to revert to first name usage. In short, my own policy is definitely to follow the lead of the other students to *some* respect, but I have had nothing but success by being deferential to professors. They'll let you know if they don't like you calling them "Professor Lastname," in my experience.

My recommendation is A: to speak to people in your field at Yale who might be able to provide some guidance; and B: Google the trip distance. According to Google, a train commute from New Haven to New York can take up to 2 hours (at least for the trip that I was looking into) and I doubt (based on having driven from New Haven to Providence last fall) that you'd be able to make it to/from Boston much more quickly. Now -- granted that I may be wrong about this, you'll want to be really certain about what you are getting into commute-wise. It's entirely possible (particularly if you are used to this kind of commute as many Californians are) that this might not be a deal breaker for you... but in my field and where I attend now for my master's degree, my 45 minute (each way) commute is not something that I want to repeat again. I'll be sticking to housing *very* close the university if at all possible.

Oh -- okay -- thank you! I did something similar for my M.A. comps (albeit a bit more in depth because of the lesser load of texts!)... I read intro and conclusion, then did a five sentence outline of each chapter... Needless to say, this didn't feel adequate either -- although I passed my comps and the grade is all but forgotten, I suppose, now that I have moved on to writing my thesis where the real scrutiny lies... Comps sucks, and I don't look forward to doing them again -- but I will admit that they have been extraordinarily useful in terms of preparing me for the kinds of utilitarian pillaging that I need to perform on texts for my thesis.

Strange -- if you don't mind my asking, how do you do the 3 books/day thing? I did 100 books in 90 days for my M.A. comps, but that was basically 1/day which was still somewhat of a strain... Knowing, as I do, that Ph.D. comps often involve three times as many books and not necessarily a lot more time to prepare for them, I am wondering if you would be willing to share any ideas that you've picked up...!

This is an excellent time to take that language coursework that will burnish your application. Five-week intensives will make the language stick far better than a language course that drags out for a long time over ten weeks.