vordhosbntwin

well, i'm really glad you got in, enzian. and it was good to meet you! i felt bad that i wasn't as enthusiastic about the program as others, but i am enthusiastic about your enthusiasm... very happy for you

do they not notify all candidates at the same time? i'm just assuming that i was rejected, based on the fact that i left the weekend before it was over...

wow yeah, when i found out i was accepted to yale, my desire to do a fulbright drastically decreased... research at the adorno archive in frankfurt, and my host institution would be goethe universität, under christoph menke. i basically had some ideas about some things that may be in adorno's philosophical notebooks, so i was going to mess around with that for a year and try to expand on menke's aesthetic work on derrida and adorno. also, are you coming out of undergrad? and what will you be doing at yale?

i see that you are a fulbright applicant and will be attending yale... i am in the same boat, having decided to attend yale and waiting to hear back about a fulbright research grant to germany. are you going to defer yale for a year?

i am feeling some major post-acceptance stress, or depression. i'm kind of worried about myself. it's an extreme case of impostor syndrome that i can't seem to shake - i just feel like i'm unworthy of the schools i got into, and with every school i get rejected from, that feeling intensifies. i dunno, i can't help but to think that i misrepresented myself in some way, and now i'm just feeling very depressed. am i alone?

got it

i dunno, we didn't get in; just try to move on.

jesus

as i've further researched my potential future schools, i've started to hear that yale comp lit is less highly regarded than it once was... several have pointed out that few faculty in the department are publishing regularly, and that the department may not be as active as it once was. is anyone on here under the impression that yale is no longer one of the top comp lit programs? or does anyone know of any additional causes to be wary of the program? i appreciate any feedback offered...

thanks for the heads up!

that's what my other AY decisions have also looked like

hmmm well, i don't think i'd attend columbia anyway, but acceptances are always nice...

i'm starting to wonder whether columbia may notify a few more acceptances, given that the rejections seem to have stopped. or perhaps they could be making a wait list. idk, even if they did have 700+ applicants, it's not very difficult to send out 650 rejections within a 24 hr period. or, as i just realized, my application may have been passed on to the MA program.

i hope comp lit comes out soon... has anyone heard anything on this, or are you all english folks?

see you at yale!

it's not so bad! http://www.yale.edu/graduateschool/academics/profiles/englishlanguagelit.pdf

my POIs at hopkins were lisi, hent de vries, and marrati; lisi actually got his PhD from yale comp lit, and he's been my contact at hopkins throughout this process. the theoretical fit at hopkins is almost too perfect; unlike almost any other lit depts in the u.s., the hc really emphasizes philosophy, and not just in terms of literature. in fact, three or four of the faculty have appointments in both the HC and philosophy dept. but de vries does continental philosophy of religion, which is right up my alley, marrati does derrida, and lisi does the relationship between philosophy and literature, with an emphasis on kierkegaard. i studied abroad in denmark during my sophomore year, solely because of my love for kierkegaard, so that was another reason. finally, the first and only adorno society is about to be launched at hopkins (march 2nd), and i would love to play a role in it, considering that i've written on him more than anything else. hopkins would be perfect, except it doesn't have the modernists that yale does, nor the resources (libraries and collections) that yale does. with respect to practical matters, neither city would be that great, though i hear baltimore has an interesting counterculture scene, and new haven is only about an hour from new york and on the other side only a few hours from some of my favorite places in western mass.

Dorinda, I've lived most of my life near the triangle (Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill), and it is an INCREDIBLE place. Don't let people dissuade you from attending Duke because of the area; on my view, the triangle is one of the best - if not the best - spots in the south. Like any city with a wealthy university population and a poorer local community, Durham has some issues, but they're unlikely to affect your experience at all. Rent's cheap and food's good, and there is always some interesting cultural stuff happening in one of the three cities. It seems that some folks who were rejected from Duke decided to attack its location so as to comfort themselves; it's understandable that they're upset, but don't let their comments cloud your vision - Durham is a great place.

i realize i've asked this before, but i'm still anxious about it and would love to hear the opinion of other... could someone give me some thoughts about yale comp lit versus hopkins humanities center? the funding at the former is 27.3k, 22.3 at the latter, but it increases by 1k per year for two years, then 500 per year after that. the fit at both programs is good, but yale is definitely more of a 'literary' fit, whereas hopkins is more of a theoretical fit. i'm visiting hopkins next weekend, yale in three weeks, but in the meantime, any opinions about either program would be much appreciated. i can't believe how fortunate i am to get into my two top choices, but at the same time, boy is it a hard choice...

princeton told me that it will be the first week of march.

it was american studies, but it would makes a lot of sense if this person was lying; he talked about being accepted by stanford's modern thought and literature program and yale's american studies in front of the duke faculty, which was probably a weird attempt at manipulation. i just figured there would be so few acceptances that it would definitely be possible for them to have gone out without folks on here hearing about it. i tend to trust people when i shouldn't, so i apologize for conveying what was probably a lie.

for what it's worth, i met someone at duke this week who has been accepted into yale american studies, which i think sent out acceptances around the same time that comp lit did. i think you applied am stud (have i seen that somewhere?), and i hate to bring bad news (if indeed you don't already know this), but i thought you might appreciate it all the same.

i do tend to talk about my interests in ordinary situations....but i can say honestly that there's nothing i care about more than the work i do. i'm not interested in the pissing contests, but i am interested in the books i read, the articles i write, and the conversations i have about my ideas and those of others. it seems to me that to survive and to get into a top ten school, an obsessive relationship with your work and interests is a necessity. why enter a world where this will be all that you do, if indeed it isn't something you want to consume your life? you'll probably criticize me for posting this, but i think it's worth quoting anyway: "Few things separate more profoundly the mode of life befitting an intellectual from that of the bourgeois than the fact that the former acknowledges no alternative between work and recreation. Work that need not, to satisfy reality, first inflict on the subject all the evil that it is afterwards to inflict on others is pleasure even in its despairing effort. Its freedom is the same as that which bourgeois society reserves exclusively for relaxation and, by this regimentation, at once revokes. Conversely, anyone who knows freedom finds all the amusements tolerated by this society unbearable, and apart from his work, which admittedly includes what the bourgeois relegate to non-working hours as 'culture', has no taste for substitute pleasures. Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline." - Theodor Adoro, Minima Moralia i honestly feel like the kind of work we get to do is the best kind of all, if simply because, as adorno says, it is a unique thing in this world: the perfect intertwining of pleasure and work. i realize that i'm obsessive, but i would say that this 'cultish obsession' that we all share is one of the greatest pleasures in the world. if you find it annoying, or you see it as a tedious job, i don't know, i'm tempted to say get out before it's too late. there's a converse to its greatness, and i think that's the fact that for folks who might not be as interested (and there's nothing wrong with that), it can be terribly painful; i can't imagine having to spend seven years or so investing myself in something that is so intense while feeling that it is some burdensome task i have to complete in order to get a job.

you should talk to some of the other candidates, who will likely give the program a more positive review. jameson doesn't have much of a presence these days, for one, and he's also the only person in the department that really emphasizes history of philosophy and certain strains of continental. if you want lacan, it would be a great place for you to go, but there aren't a lot of folks doing german idealism, frankfurt school, or other twentieth century stuff earlier than say derrida. in my interview today, three faculty members agreed with me that my interests (modernism and continental philosophy, as they tagged me) were a little more traditional than what they do. there are also some other elements, namely financial, that you might want to consider. and the 'against comp lit depts' came straight from katherine hayles' mouth.

Duke doesn't have complit; just a Literature program and an English program. I was invited to interview for the Literature program. and please, give me your thoughts on the feedback i've sent you. my perspective is a very narrow and specific one; perhaps some things i see as negatives you see as positives.