BlackHatGuy

Hey, sorry for the delay - I'm the person who posted the UCSC acceptance today.

I actually have no idea whether interviews are typically a part of the UCSC admissions process. I did not have a formal interview, but I did speak with my POI via Skype. We had planned to speak shortly before applications were due, but our conversation was delayed until the end of December - and so said POI was able to discuss my application when we spoke. Because I was asked about my interests and application, the conversation felt a bit like an interview at times, but the POI never referred to it as such.

I suspect all admits have been notified by this point, as the graduate coordinator wrote to say that she is in the process of determining who will be able to attend the planned visiting day on February 29. That said, all e-mails I've received have been addressed only to me, so I can't say with absolute certainty that all other admits have been contacted. I hope my suspicions are wrong and that you guys will be notified soon. :-/

I'm sorry; I know this isn't the most helpful of responses. Do let me know if I can answer anything else.

Hey, sorry for the delay - I'm the person who posted the UCSC acceptance today.

I actually have no idea whether interviews are typically a part of the UCSC admissions process. I did not have a formal interview, but I did speak with my POI via Skype. We had planned to speak shortly before applications were due, but our conversation was delayed until the end of December - and so said POI was able to discuss my application when we spoke. Because I was asked about my interests and application, the conversation felt a bit like an interview at times, but the POI never referred to it as such.

I suspect all admits have been notified by this point, as the graduate coordinator wrote to say that she is in the process of determining who will be able to attend the planned visiting day on February 29. That said, all e-mails I've received have been addressed only to me, so I can't say with absolute certainty that all other admits have been contacted. I hope my suspicions are wrong and that you guys will be notified soon. :-/

I'm sorry; I know this isn't the most helpful of responses. Do let me know if I can answer anything else.

As someone who has a very great love for Berkeley, look at the hiring history. You're better off at Stanford. Unless a 40 minute public transport ride to SF is what it takes to make you feel like: OMG I TOTALLY LIVED UP MY GRADUATE YEARS BY GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO AND SEEING OFF-BROADWAY SHOWS AND GOING TO NON SLUTTY INTERESTING LOUNGES AND SEEING ART AND THE MOMA AND ALSO NOT HAVING ANY FUNDING BUT IM A BOSS AND I LOVE MYSELF, and that makes you happy, then go for it. Michigan is still a top department in our discipline; do you think people go to Ann Arbor to have fun? They to go to train to be anthropologists. If location/distractions matter that much for you that you can't sacrifice that much for the discipline now, what makes you think that you'll take the only job offer you get as an untenured professor at Boise State after a phd in anthro? Yes it fucking sucks ass, but that's the harsh shitty reality of higher education now. Either take it, or continue to use it as a placebo against schools you weren't competitive at. Your choice, academe couldn't care less.

I am loathe to get involved in what reads to me as a very mean-spirited disagreement, but as a student of English I suppose it's possible you haven't had to take any Linguistics courses (although I hope that's not true) and are able to ignore the fact that the English language has been in a constant state of flux since its development. For centuries, "proper" speakers have been bemoaning the corruption of various words, the creation of new words that they considered unnecessary (in this context, we already have the phrase "more fun" so you don't see a purpose of or need for "funnest"), and the general "decline" of spoken (and written) English. There are several great books out there about this ongoing issue, PM me if you're at all interested in reading some of them, and I think you'll find it's less stressful to hear words misused when viewed from centuries worth of context.

I mean this in the kindest way possible, so don't think I'm ragging on you: but I'd check this kind of attitude before entering graduate school, partly because your posts, I have to agree, are reading in a rather elitist way. And particularly because I know you want to go into English, and I think you might find that in many circles (perhaps not in the most conservative ones), you're going to find a rejection of prescriptive grammar. The NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) released a position statement on students' right to their own languages back in the 70s: http://www.ncte.org/...CC/NewSRTOL.pdf

I'm going to take this opportunity to jump onto a critical soapbox: Languages are picked up through osmosis by those around us, and speakers from differing social, economic, and cultural groups in the U.S. all tend to learn different ways of speaking. The problem with the idea of a hegemonic "standard" American English is that (a) it doesn't exist and ( it marginalizes other vernaculars and dialects (a particularly robust example being Black English; see also Smitherin's Talkin and Testifyin). These "other" vernaculars and dialects are usually those of periphery groups, and they're usually only seen as wrong because they don't conform to the myth of the One, True Grammar.

Think of it this way: if you heard everyone around you using "funnest" in conversation all your life (I know I hear plenty of people use it), you'd come to see it as an accepted part of speech. Further, say those around you understand what you mean when you use it, and you intuit a set of "rules" for using it (it denotes something is "the most fun"): you even realize that there are occasions when you can use it (chatting with friends) and occasions when it seems to be looked down upon (writing a paper). Why is this more "wrong" than operating within the rules of "correct" grammar? Deployed within the correct kinds of rhetorical situations, it isn't wrong at all. Just different.