jasper.milvain

Ok, folks- since clearly the PhD results will be out tomorrow and everyone's grad studies departments will be nothing but forthcoming with the news and there will be no further delays and/or fuck-ups because SSHRC will have realized how much we need this info and ponies made of rainbows are going to fly out of my ass and scatter lollipops and funding packages far and wide across this great land of ours... ...is there any info that the SSHRC geeks on this thread would like to see from people as the results come in? I would love it if people would be willing to share a few things along with their results, along the lines of: Department: # of years into program: MA SSHRC yes/no: Strengths of application: Weaknesses of application: Research contributions/Publications so far:

At the lovely, wonderful, incredible department where I did my MA, they would have a SSHRC workshop every year. They'd gather 10 or 12 professors for the afternoon, students would bring drafts of their proposals, and you would go around the room getting ripped to pieces by as many professors as possible. It was so incredibly helpful. Old profs, young profs, all different areas of the discipline... every school should do it.

I'm in English and got four offers this year: - $20 000 / year - $22 000 / year plus $7000 entrance award - $27 000 / year plus $5000 entrance award And the winner: - $45 000 for my first year, $35 000 for year two, and $28 000 for three and four, with a tuition waiver (not the norm for Canadian schools, where tuition is ~$5000 a year).

They get access to all winners, as far as I can tell. When my school wouldn't give out MA results ahead of the letters, I got the information from the DGS office at a completely different school, where I had not applied or attended (but where I had a friend). I think it's not a 'list' per se, but access to a central database. As far as publications go, I know many, many people who got PhD SSHRCs without publications. Some people get published during their master's, but the work likely isn't of super high calibre, or in super prestigious journals. I don't know how much good an online grad journal publication would do you, for instance. I listed two graduate conferences and three 'guest talks' in courses I TAed for under my research contributions. We'll see!

Jesus Christ, people! Stressing over the wait is no reason to start cannibalizing!

When I got mine, I had to give the notice of award I received in the mail to the graduate studies office before they'd start paying me. So have whoever is checking your mail open letters from the government and run the notice of award over to campus for you. Then get them a bottle of wine.

I hear you. I couldn't let it go until I had the letter in my hand, even though I knew my result. I just wish that I had! In retrospect, it was so much stress for no real purpose. So I guess I'm hoping that other people can be less neurotic than I was. Life's too short.

If you're on the alternative list for an MA, you will only get the grant if someone turns it down. This happens fairly often--people don't go to grad school, they go somewhere that they can't take the SSHRC, etc. Alternative lists are usually very short. At the school where I got my MA, forty people were forwarded and five were alternates. BOTH of the alternates I knew eventually got the award, but not for MONTHS after the initial results. Alternates, you have a fair-to-middling shot from what I know. A-listers, you're in like Flynn.

Vanier winners are incredibly important to schools in terms of prestige. MA students are not. It's not fair, but it makes sense. Besides, A-listed MA applicants are shoo-ins, so you really don't need to worry. The people who don't get MA SSHRCs after being forwarded have some horrible blight on their records. Unless you're secretely Argentinian instead of Canadian or have a year of straight Cs due to a crack addiction, you're FINE. I was in your shoes last year, and I spent way too much time worrying needlessly. Enjoy spring! Leave the house! Start planning how to spend your money!

I'm not entirely sure (maybe you could link to the information you're talking about?), but it sounds like they're faculty positions for people on the job market to look at. Not related to financial aid, then.

Other grad students are usually worth listening to, but in this case you might want to think about whether it's worth it for a potential placement advantage. In other words, I'm just as unsure as you are. A lot of your problems seem to center around queer theory. Are the reasons that your advisor gives for minimizing your use of it compelling? Are you able to defend it based on contribution to the field and research potential, in addition to your passion? It sounds like the root of your dislike is around the challenge he's posing to the core of what you want to be doing. It could be a fair criticism on his part--if he's really a placement expert, he might be worth listening to IF there's a way that you can shift your work and still look yourself in the mirror.

It's going to be Monday. We've heard from two different grad studies admin workers that it will be Monday, and they heard it straight from SSHRC. Given that 1. the Vaniers are out, 2. the MAs are out, 3. they told the truth about when the MAs were going to be out, and 4. we're nearly a week into the pay period, I don't see any reason to doubt that the admins and SSHRC were telling the truth about PhD results.

We're still talking MAs, right? Congrats all.

My husband and I are planning on having a kid once I'm ABD (All But Dissertation). I've talked to a whole bunch of academic mothers and fathers, and am pretty sure that we can swing it. My time will be flexible, so we can avoid daycare and its costs as much as possible by not taking our weekends on the same day. Hopefully I'll get federal funding from the Canadian government, which comes with paid maternity leave. I'm getting my PhD where both of our families live, so we'll have tons of support, my funding is stable, and my husband isn't in academia, so he won't be going crazy at the same times of term as I am. I'm just scared of the physical risks, and navigating difficult work with 'pregnancy brain'. I'm flakey enough as is.

Me too! My MA supervisor offered to help me see my graduating paper into print, so I'll be re-working it in light of the questions I got at my defense and seeing if anyone's interested.

I heard the same piece of news from an awards admin worker- database access for FGS workers around the 11th, with letters to follow.

It depends on the staff in your grad studies office, and on your grad chair. Ours certainly doesn't pass on the information. They got all confused about who was supposed to pass along the information that we even got FORWARDED, and it left people waiting for weeks and weeks while their friends slowly got acknowledgment e-mails from SSHRC. I'm expecting to hear by letter first. They're pretty tight lipped around here.

If it's for a class that's way outside of my research interests and it's a text I'm not presenting or writing on, absolutely.

This is a fair point. I think that a lot of people go into early reading with the mindset that they're 'getting ahead', though, and just wanted to say that it's not the case. Reading course books early with the expectation of reading them again is dedicated and potentially useful. Reading course books early with the expectation that you won't need to re-read later on isn't smart, IMO.

I agree with all the people suggesting nice breaks, with some independent reading. The potential downside to reading ahead for your courses is that many seminars combine a certain topic with a certain methodology. If you read Middlemarch to get ahead and read it through your default lens of feminist criticism, you may have to read the damn thing all over again when it turns out that you're discussing it alongside Marxist, materialist, or new historicist criticism. I found that some of the courses I took during my MA totally transformed the way I read. I ended up re-reading assigned books that I thought I knew inside and out.

I always go in to the summer with good intentions and then end up drinking wine and playing guitar on the beach. Not that I'm complaining. This year I think I have a better chance at actually reading, since I got much better at independent study this year. I got a big box of books from Amazon that are directly related to my proposed research, as well as some that were recommended to me long ago that I haven't gotten to yet. I'm going to work through them to try and keep myself from freaking out about my sudden lack of access to online journal databases. Of course, my research is on novels, so it's more fun to do some extra reading for me than, say, a computer science student.

I just dropped mine with a nice card in their mailboxes, and followed up with an e-mail.

Ah, but since unsuccessful Vanier nominees automatically get a CGS, their results will have an impact on the rest of the doctoral pool. Thursday would be nice... I could live with that.

Nicely put. I usually hear this sentiment expressed as "You can publish your way into any job, but you can also publish your way out of it." Timing of publication probably varies across SSHRC funded disciplines, but in English it's almost unheardof for MA students have a legit publication in a grown up journal.

I think your major point is right--that research activities count more at the PhD level--but I know a handful of people who won SSHRC in the first year of their PhD before they had published anything, and one or two people with CGS Doctoral SSHRCs who had no publications and only grad conferences. I think letters, other activities, and your research proposal can all help correct a weakness in formal research production.