Grunty DaGnome

I noticed that CUNY's grant and funding page had links to several organizations that offered smaller grants that could probably be applied to papers and traveling. Some had Jan. 1st deadlines, so check it out soon.

At least you're in London, Orange Man. Could be worse.

This is my favorite part, right here. Before you pathetic humanties types try and attack this genius an point out that deconstruction stuff and your stupid mimesis and stuff, I just want to say that everyone knows that the Simpsons are real and there are no writers of the Simpsons. The Simpsons live in Springfield, where everyone knows, that the Simpsons hates liberal arts and likes to just eat nuclear donuts which is really the highest form of art you don't even half to study for. You are so lame to stay up all night working on that application because you should just eat a nuclear donut and then you could climb walls like Spiderman, who is also real.

Thank you.

Sounds like you feel a cold coming on. *cough* *cough*

Never been in this situation myself, but here's the best advice I have:

Why were you unaware about the drugs in your car? Depending on the reason, if you explain that, that could help.

Either way, address the speeding (as well as the drugs or being in such a situation where you didn't know there were drugs in your car) and talk about what you've learned from the experience. Try to spin it into something positive as much as you can, while remaining humble and without sounding like you're trying to make excuses for yourself.

Hi everyone, this is just a paranoid double-check. I had thought that the application for CUNY grad center was a totally mail-in-hard-copy one, but someone recently posted on here talking about their online application. Am I being retarded? Which one is it? I found their website pretty confusing, so I could well be wrong....

Thanks for the help and solidarity-- CUNY is indeed a pain in the ass!! I now have two other problems: one, I can't find specific instructions for the statement of intent anywhere, like length or what topics they want you to address in it. I've already got a generic SOP pretty much written, but was anyone able to locate specific instructions? Also, I had thought that the LORs had to be in hard copy, so I got them in sealed envelopes from my recommenders and was going to just include them in my packet. But they are supposed to be done online?? ugh... I guess I could send my recommenders a frantic last-minute email asking them to upload, but, does everyone thing it'll be ok if I just include them in the packet??

A list is unnecessary. For this, they have created the Grad Cafe results board, which we will all be checking 10 times daily, starting in January

Sounds like you feel a cold coming on. *cough* *cough*

Yup. I've been working on my writing sample ... and wondering if I will ever read it and not find a number of things that I should've changed for the apps I already submitted. I hope that I don't have any issues uploading and submitting

I hope you told him to GET IT TOGETHER

I like how jrnels categorizes himself as a "domestic male." I would think there'd be a huge market

I just used a general sop for CUNY. I also couldn't find specifics for SOP topics or length. As for letters, you may as well just mail them with the packet and then contact the grad. center and see if they need an electronic copy, then if they do, deal with it later.

So, just an update. I have now officially applied to half of my programs, and I plan to finish the Cornell application tonight or tomorrow morning. I can honestly say that I have never over-thought or second guessed so many things in my whole life.

I have a feeling that programs, such as NYU, that moved their deadlines to Dec. 1st are going to notice their applicants all make many more typos this year than they have in the past.

Want to get in touch?
dr.prajakta.adsul@gmail.com

Sure, he's right in one sense. The humanities are dying - especially at places like Hope College. But they're dying because they've lost the vision informed by Christian theological tradition that grounded liberal humanistic inquiry in the first place. Check out Quality With Soul. And don't study "religion." Read theology and go to church. You'll have a much better shot at finding work in a confessionally moored institution. Though that will require you to commit yourself to having convictions. . . .and, well,nihilists do struggle with that!. . . . Even Jeff Stout, a card-carrying atheist, would agree with the approach that you have to give up being a relativist to get a job.

Small price to pay if you ask me. Or no price at all.

if your PhD program provides you with full funding, that is your job. grad school isn't school, it's work. you work very hard for relatively little pay, but the trade off is that you're spending your day doing something you love, in theory.

the implicit argument in these articles is that grad school requires you to put yourself in debt (it doesn't) and that you're not earning an income or working for 5-7 years (you are). being a PhD student in a humanities program will be my job for at least the next 5 years, maybe longer. after that, if i get a job in academia, great, and if i don't, that's okay too.

now that i have an offer that i've accepted, i'm going to be relatively secure for the next 5 years. not rich, but not worried about losing my job either. can't say the same for professional journalists.

edit:

but beyond that, i agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments of both of the chronicle pieces. the "i just love it so much" argument for pursuing grad school is a bit silly and speaks to someone that hasn't thoroughly considered what they're doing with their futures or why. really and truly, my goal isn't to be a professor. it's to inform people about issues (relating to latin america) that i think are critical and that not enough people are paying attention to. a PhD will hopefully give me some measure of expertise in that area. if i can spread knowledge in a classroom, good. if i can spread knowledge in a policy advising capacity, good. if i can be in the field, getting my hands dirty, good. if i can report to newspapers, good. talking about poverty and sustainable development and race relations and migration, all of that matters to me. what form that takes matters far less.

i hope that this is a good reason to still do a PhD. but again, if i leave after 5 years and need to start over in another career, that's not a big deal. people change careers 3 or 4 times in their lifetime, people start over at much later ages than 30.

he's right, though, that entering grad school expecting to end up somewhere, anywhere in academia is the wrong way to go about it. have other plans that will hopefully still make use of the knowledge and skills you gain with a humanities PhD. i appreciate that he's not trying to sugarcoat it.

Indeed. People often refer to "close reading" in English departments very colloquially as if it is a theory-free alternative to critiquing a text. Actually, formalism -- as you so correctly call it -- comes with its own host of theoretical and ideological problems. I think what people mean these days when they say "close reading" is that remnant of "New Critical" formalism modern high school English teachers rely on after stripping away all the problematic theoretical issues associated with it; that list of definitions that are useful for describing meter, verse, speakers, narrators, and so on.

It's also interesting to think about how critics like DeMan, with his endless observations on "vertiginous" language grow directly out of New Critical attempts to limit all criticism to the poem itself. I recently reread Wimsatt and Beardsley's critique of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," which attempted to argue in all seriousness that it should make no difference to the critic if "Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song" is an allusion to Spencer or completely "new" language strung together poetically by Eliot. A critique that so squarely frames the inadequacy of a "four corners" approach to reading, is practically a gold-gilded invitation for post-structuralists to set up a tent city in the University quad and declare a movement.

Haha! While I can understand (and appreciate, in some sense) this guy's mission, I must agree: he is pretentious as all hell. The feedback on the article is absolutely nauseating; this guy is not a hero, just like Chrisopher McCandless was not a hero.

Herein lies the problem. It is not the Ivies, but what society considers to be a "cherished reward." I have been lucky to attend institutions that taught that the cherished rewards were found in standing with the oppressed and fighting Power. Perhaps this is why Harvard, Yale, etc are simply "interesting" schools to me, not places I'd ever be likely attend.

I was going to say trust your advisor, but then I noticed you are in the UK. Are you applying to American schools? Your advisor might be less in tune, but I suppose that isn't necessarily true.
I can suggest applying to WUSTL, if they seem like a good fit for your research, as they have a tremendously large page limit for their writing sample.
I think no one is sure what to submit, because every University is different. You are lucky to have so many good samples. I would say --- without knowing anything, just like everyone else --- try and fit your Statement of Purpose to the individual programs and then choose the sample that seems to best demonstrate the intersts you described. That is, if one of your programs is stronger than others for poetry, submit the poetry focused text to them, and the intellectual context section to the program that emphasizes theory more, etc.

I gave in to ETS.....780! Spending my weekends for the last two years reading endlessly has paid off in something haha.

For every action there is an equal or opposite reaction...that is how I feel about any and all questions asked and actions taken during the application process. I'm hoping for the equal!

Hahaha I love this.

I'm kinda sorta having one of these days. I mean, not the whole genius thing, but I've been working non-stop on my writing sample for the past few hours, preparing it for my first deadline (tomorrow, eek!), and I'm feeling good about my application as a whole. I'm really happy with the way my writing sample has turned out, and I've gotten really positive feedback from LORs on my most recent SOP draft. So now all I have to do is crank up the guilty pleasure music (T-Swift gets me pumped to write about Samuel Richardson every time) and get this stuff polished!