CageFree

Even though you are looking to focus on Late Antique/Early Medieval England, Latin is likely a required language for you and French might be as well.

A MA program would cover many "sins" and would make you a stronger candidate, given history wasn't your major. You could even try doing it in England and then coming back to the US for the Ph.D.

Yes, I was understating on purpose.

History is very text-based and we generally mark up our books too heavily for them to be resold. Checking a book out from the library works sometimes but often we go back to books we've read for reference and to our notes. Historians generally build upon other works and we need to know what's already been written... abstracts and book reviews are not enough to get a good sense of that. I keep all books in my subfield, most in my larger field (those in my thematic interests or that I just think are really good), and a few in areas outside my field (for example, US History). I also keep books in related disciplines like sociology and anthropology. I have been selling off books from undergrad since I no longer work on that part of the world or era... what's telling is that those books are almost 20 years old and I often get 8-10 dollars for them (I paid around 20 for them 15 years ago) because we don't keep updating and reissuing textbooks the way it's often done in the sciences. The knowledge doesn't become "obsolete," though one's interpretation might.

You should probably address those questions to the programs you're interested in. Visit their websites and do some research.

Unless you've taken a number of history classes already, a MA in history would be better than a ME Studies degree. You should have at least some training in the discipline, since history and lit are not exactly interchangeable.

If you need to learn a new language why not learn the one you will use in your field? You can't do Chinese history without leaning Chinese from the era you're working on.

Your wife's degree will be really expensive and she likely won't be eligible for loans. How are you going to finance her education? Subbing won't be enough for that. It's a good way to supplement income but not to support a family on.. even if SB is the "armpit" of SoCal, it's expensive to live, and subbing may not pay as well.

Exactly. Plus, many people go to SF State and live in Oakland or Berkeley. You just take BART into SF and then use buses to get around. I wish there had been options like that when I was an undergrad in LA.

I think people gave great advice, but I wanted to comment on #5. A teaching job in California in the social sciences is a bad idea. There is a huge surplus of unemployed, credentialed social science teachers. The tuition/fees for a credential will run you the same as a master's, and there's no funding for it. It takes one year to get coursework done, and one year to student-teach (which carries NO pay and you still have to pay fees for, except you don't have time to work on top of that). One thing you COULD do is substitute teach while pursuing a MA at SF State. Most districts pay $100/day for day-to-day subbing (no benefits though, unless you get a long-term sub position), and your MA classes are likely to be in the evenings. The program there is fantastic and feeds into many great history programs. Also, to attend SF State you don't need to live IN SF. There are affordable places one you leave The City.

So how did people's predictions pan out? I, for one, am happy to see England, Spain, Italy and Portugal all go home in the first round

There's also another component, i.e. how hosting events like that can help clean up a nation's image. Brazil did this to clean up the image of poverty, and has come down hard on the poor people living in shantytowns outside cities like Rio. In 1978, Argentina used the WC to cover up human rights abuses... it's the equivalent of taking all of your crap and shoving it into a room, then inviting guests so they can see how clean your home is.

It's BOSNIA-Herzegovina. And what makes Cote d'Ivoire a "lame" country, exactly?

Nope. One of my favorite professors relies on bikes and taxis because he doesn't know how to drive. He's elderly and doesn't really see the point of trying to learn at this point. He also only learned how to type maybe a decade ago... wrote most of his books by pen and then paid typists. Somehow I dont think it's "odd."

I played with both Zotero and Endnote and in the end, decided Zotero was better. I am not a fan of drop box, simply because the amount of space they have is too small. Instead, I use Google Drive. It works in much the same way, and if your university uses a Gmail-based email system, you probably have a lot of free Google Drive space as well. Regardless, cloud storage space is vital, IMO. I also use Livescribe for taking research notes... it's a good backup system. I have the notes written on paper but if I ever lose the journal, I will have them automatically backed up electronically... I can't describe how much of a relief that is. Depending on the type of research you do, a good PDF reader and writer might be useful. My research involves a lot of text (newspapers, magazines, etc.), so having a top-of-the-line OCR program has been super important. I use ABBYY Finereader for that. For PDF markups, PDF X-Change Viewer is great. Acrobat Reader is okay but PDF X-Change does OCR if you don't need anything too drastic... and Adobe Acrobat Professional is crap for OCR compared to ABBYY.

I've never seen a truly funny sitcom that was 100% politically correct. For instance, the way so many of you feel about BBT is how I feel about Family Guy. I hate that show. Hate it with a passion. I find it incredibly offensive. But what I find offensive, others find funny... and so it goes. And for the record, I don't think Penny is ridiculous. Neither is Bernadette (who is my favorite character because Melissa Rauch rocks). As far as the "well, the show doesn't match real life" - You can't do a comedy that is exactly like real life because real life is, for the most part, boring. Many of the characters (as is the case, I think, with most comedies) are essentially composites... We all do things that are ridiculous on occasion but no person does them all the time. This is not to say that people don't have a right to their opinions... everyone does, obviously. I'm just saying that in general, the objections many have are issues anyone can have with any comedy that's based on stock characters. It's not a problem with BBT exclusively.

Some profs give talks to up their bargaining positions at their current institutions.

Well, if you are interested in Medieval History, do you have the languages you need for the field? Depending on area and subject, you might need Latin, French, German... if you don't already have those languages done as you finish your MA, I am not sure it's a good idea to go in that direction. It's a lot of languages to learn. The difference in fields raises another question though. What are your interests? Because if you're interested in, say, transnational processes, you don't have to study those in the US context, or in the 20th century context.. you could study them in a lot of different contexts, right? Even medieval. Or you could be a, say, Russian historian but look at transnational processes with the US. Try to define what KIND of history you'd want to write, then think of places that lend themselves to writing it.

That happens with very profession. My partner used to work in forensic science and he'd get asked about CSI. I was a teacher and got asked about movies like "Bad Teacher" and "Dangerous Minds." Doctors get questions about House and E.R.. Etc...

I actually found being an infiltrator easiest for that part. I took Garrus and Kaidan, and used the cloak very heavily. Same with Tuchanka.

ME3 insanity is easier as an infiltrator. I tried playing vanguard once and it was pretty fun though.

You say this like it's a bad thing.

I know people who behave just like that (well, not like Sheldon, but more like Leonard and Howard). It's not so much about academia but about "nerd" culture in general.

Usually infiltrator. Sometimes sentinel.

We must be talking about a different Commander Shepherd, as SHE didn't "bang a lot of aliens." Just one. (and btw, I didn't realize that Khajits, borgs, and all the other fantastical creatures on this thread DID go to grad school).