jasper.milvain

Actually, the school that I'm attending didn't require a writing sample at all. But for my other apps, I used one or both of the papers I wrote during my MA that directly related to my period, 1880-1920. The things I did that I think worked (although who knows?) include: -Showing methodological consistency over my samples and my SoP. They all dealt with material criticism and thing theory. As I result, I hope I looked like I've thought through my methodology and seriously engaged with a body of criticism, rather than bouncing around from feminism to Marxism to new historicism. - Citing current sources. With the exception of early criticism that I needed for context, all of my secondary sources were from 2002 and up. - Citing my supervisor/letter writer. Luckily, she had a very relevant book published recently that cited and was cited by other critics I used. - Showing historical interest. For example, in my Oscar Wilde paper I used his talks on interior decorating, and dug up various other Victorian style guides. It shows that I think outside of the canon. It also follows through on the logic of my methodology. - Showing a breadth of primary reading. My other paper is on H.G. Wells, who is the focus of my proposed dissertation, and I think I have 8-10 Wells sources in a 25 page paper, from his letters to his novels to his juvenile science writing. Hopefully it comes across that I've thought through his career in detail instead of just finding one really cool book and running with it. (Although that happened, too.) Given that grad committees are going to be reading katrillions of the damn things, I'd assume that having quirky topics might have worked in my favor.

A good friend of mine who is on pace to finish in four years recently decided to shoot for five instead so that she could line up a library/archive fellowship for a term, and focus on publishing a couple of really great articles. She's absolutely capable of finishing in four, but her advisors agree that taking the extra year to really bulk up her CV is worthwhile. That being said, I had a grad chair for a while who did a three year PhD and was tenured by thirty. I daydream about that sometimes...

I think the problem with UHaul is that there's not much control or consistency across different franchises. There are some great ones, and some horrible ones, and you never know which one you're going to get. I had a great experience with the head office, but the franchise owners... aiyayai.

Our deadline was November, but I was given one week's notice that if I got mine together for early October I could be considered for the department's Vanier nomination. So I worked day and night through the flu from hell to get it done, only to not get nominated. It was totally worth it, though. I got most of the work done in that week, and didn't have to do much before re-submitting it in November. I did so much concentrated work on it that I'm sure the whole ordeal made my proposal much stronger. I also hit what a friend of mine calls "The Effort Sweet Spot", where your supervisor is actually worried about your health because of how hard you're working. Anyone want to start a pool on when we'll hear? I'm betting Ontario residents will get their letters Monday the 20th.

I want a permanent, full time job at a small teaching university in western Canada that allows for at least *some* research and is reasonably family friendly. Pretty ridiculous that even that level of success sounds like a pipe dream right now.

The last time I used a U-Haul for a minor in-city move (like, hauling a sofa and taking stuff to the dump) they managed to be a forty five minutes late after telling me I *had* to be there super early, did not apologize, had a broken internet connection and had to phone my credit card and driver's license number to some random dude with a working computer, couldn't give me an estimate because of the internet thing, gave me a vehicle with an empty gas tank after having me sign a contract saying it had half a tank, were incredibly rude and unhelpful generally, and then overcharged me by $75. Thankfully, the phone center people were lovely and fixed it. When my husband used a U-Haul to move cities, they didn't have the truck at the location where he had reserved it. They sent him to three different locations, including (swear to God) one that was parked by a cabin over an hour outside the city. When he arrived in Vancouver, they told him to drop the truck at a location that ended up being closed. They gave him the address for another drop point, but didn't tell him that he needed to go to 12345 Main street in NORTH Vancouver, instead of 12345 Main street Vancouver proper. It took three hours of driving around to drop the fracking thing off. They were never apologetic or even kind, just consistenly snarky and rude. Hate hate hate.

Every single time I or someone I know has used UHaul, it's been an absolute unmitigated clusterf*ck. They are satan in rental truck form. That's all I have to contribute at the moment.

Then you're at week 27 out of 29 instead of week 23 out of 25, which gives you a shiny 93% waiting completion rate.

I got early notification of my MA SSHRC, so I can say that at least some schools get the info before the students. I can't imagine that SSHRC gives info to some schools and not others, though, so my best guess is that the schools who don't give out early info tell students that they just don't *have* it. Can't blame them... I wouldn't want dozens of anxious grad students calling/e-mailing me every day. The other reason I can think of for the different information is that people are getting them from different levels of the administration-- looks like awards administrators in the department of grad studies get the info before departmental grad secretaries. We're almost there! If your deadlines were in early November like mine, you've waited for 23 weeks and only have 2-3 left. That's 92% of the waiting over and done with. Good luck to everyone on the thread. I hope we all get good news.

Yup, all still waiting. I'm not expecting anything until at least late next week, though.

I live in a city with tons of colleges and small teaching universities, and make extra money by taking on contract marking gigs from them. They pay up to $20 an hour, and it's easy work. Usually about 50 papers to turn around in a week or two.

The post-doc results are out, so MAs should be next up. (I think.)

Of COURSE you should feel proud! You went at least 2 for 3 and got acceptances at a couple of great schools. Think of all the people who didn't finish undegrad, let alone high school. You clearly have talent and perseverance to get this far. You're just having a moment of imposter syndrome, that's all. Wait until you start in September and begin producing good work, learning to teach, and participating in the grad community. If you're not proud right now, you'll be proud once you start accomplishing awesome things at the grad level. The fact that this process has uncontrollable elements doesn't make your two acceptances meaningless. Clearly you ARE a desirable applicant. Now go kick ass.

You sound like a solid applicant. Each school gets a pool of those, and then tries to build a cohort that will move their program as a whole in the direction that they're currently interested in. It can be frustratingly random, and totally out of your hands. Maybe they have a couple of new faculty members who they want to 'feed' some grad supervisees, so they pick people in those profs' areas. Maybe a senior faculty member got a massive grant, and they took on someone who will make an excellent RA for that person. Maybe they're trying to stay cutting edge, and your area, while important, is somewhat played out. Or maybe they only had a very few spots and someone had slightly better grades and slightly more award money, with an equally good fit, and they chose that applicant. You say you're not in the US. Are you Canadian? Have you applied for SSHRC? If you didn't get forwarded, that might be your explanation. I wouldn't be surprised if a school chose only SSHRC-funded incoming students, given current funding issues.

I love to know where this imaginary army of people who are holding onto spots just for fun are. :roll: Seems to me that most people who haven't declined yet have good reason, like needing to know how funding will shake out, or needing a safety off a waitlist.

I'm finding the "countdown to April 15th" thread in 'Waiting it Out' works very well as a SSHRC countdown.

I'd keep looking. I live on Renfrew, and most of the new houses around here don't have basements, so the suites are main floor. They're also all the same bloody floor plan, but that's another story. I pay $1050 for a two bedroom, but there's a smaller suite next to me that probably rents for $800-900. I wouldn't risk showing up the last week of August, but if you can swing arriving in the first or second week and living in a hostel until you can find a place, I'd say you have decent odds of turning up SOMEthing.

Letters from professors are absolutely more useful, unless you're applying for a professional degree in a field in which you have relevant work experience. Even in that case, I'd probably use the police officer as a supplementary reference in addition to letters from professors. You may be surprised by how well you're remembered by profs.

I'll second that. I found out by letter for my MA SSHRC. Sometimes grad chairs know early and leak the news, but they're not supposed to. My grad chair told me "not to worry" about SSHRC, and I'm going crazy wondering if that was the *wink wink nudge nudge* kind of 'don't worry' or the 'I'm a nice person' kind of 'don't worry'. We'll know so soon, though! Only a week or two. Or three. Or four. I mean, it IS the government.

Well, if I managed to unsettle GirlAtTheHelm, I guess I'm doing something right! I'm just really interested in the initial question, and not at all in the hijack. Apologies for the bluntness.

I think this is dead-on advice. OP, plan on responding to it, or are you only responding to the posts that don't relate to your actual career plans any more?

Not to be a nit pick, but no, you know that colleges USED to hire them for adjunct work. With more and more PhDs in the adjunct and community college pool, the likelihood that an MA will be easily employable is getting pretty small. I also don't think that adjuncting will allow you to spend the amount of time you want on writing, especially if you plan to be a primary caregiver for future children. A lot of adjuncts teach four or even five courses a term. May not sound like too much, but when you think about four courses times sixty students times five assignments that's 1200 papers or exams to mark every term. At 15 minutes per assignment, that's 300 hours of marking on the conservative side. The people I know who teach with an MA are limited to undesirable jobs, have little job security and high work loads. It's very difficult to publish under those circumstances. It might work out as a job, and you may enjoy it, but it's not the best platform for writing. I'd ask your teachers with MAs how much time they have for writing and see if your goals are realistic based on their answers.

Given that you want to keep a wide range of interests open and admire people who have multiple degrees, I would advise against going for a hardcore research PhD, which is all about specialization. Your post reminds me very strongly of some classmates I've had and lecturers I know, and they've been generally unhappy with higher ed. Since they don't want to shut down avenues of inquiry, they sometimes struggle to win grants, build a reputation, and make it through academic milestones that require intense focus. That being said, you might find that there's a specific research area that really grabs you, and begin to narrow your goals as a result of the professionalization that grad school provides. An MA might be a good way to figure out if it's a fit or not. This isn't to suggest that your ambition to do popularizing work on a range of topics is wrong or bad, just that the academic machine rewards and expects a narrower focus.

Oh, I'm right there with you. I'm lucky enough to be married to someone who works at Ikea (the discount isn't that great, but it's something) who loves assembling furniture. We got married a year ago, and still have some fairly massive Ikea gift cards to go spend on setting up our new place. Since all of our books and DVDs are stacked two deep right now, I'm fantasizing about new shelving units. We're moving from one side of the rockies to the other, and we're probably going to get our stuff shipped, since 1) we hate U-Haul with a passion that burns like a thousand suns due to numerous customer service fuck-ups in the past, 2) my husband is a brand new driver and I don't trust him on mountain roads, and 3) I'm TERRIFIED of driving in the mountains in a car, let alone a truck. Like, I will have a panic attack in a passing lane and kill us all. Of course my father asked how I was going to move, and I told him we were going to get someone to move it. He warned me that I'd have to figure out how much it cost (What? NO! Thanks, dad!) and offered to FLY OUT and do the 20 hours of U-Haul driving for us. Which is sweet and I love my father, but come on! Buying a plane ticket and wasting vacation so that we can save a few hundred bucks? Let alone that there's not space in one of those trucks for my husband, my father, me, and the cats (road trip!), so we'd have to fly someone anyways. Given the hassle of all other options, I'm thinking that splurging on getting our stuff shipped is totally worth it.

I got offers from my top two choices, and money played a part in my decision to go with what was my second choice up until a month ago. I like to think that the high offer just gave me the motivation to really seriously look at the faculty and the structure of the degree and realize that it was really better for me, but I may be fooling myself.