coffeeplease

This week my school posted fall classes. I did this:



I am so freaking excited.

This week my school posted fall classes. I did this:



I am so freaking excited.

I don't know if anyone is still on this thread, but I found it SUPER helpful. I rejected some programs last night and accepted my top choice. A couple of rejections were sent in personal e-mails to POI's who had been recruiting me and had been super friendly, eager, and welcoming. I tried to make sure they knew I really hated not being able to work with them. Because I really wish I could go to all of these programs! I am avoiding my inbox like the plague because I feel horrible. Even though I know they won't be nearly as emotional about it as I am... I'm feeling extremely anxious about this all even though my choice is at a top school that is a great match for me. Anyone around who can relate??? (I know this is a good problem to have... I still will feel rotten for a couple of days though)

He's Just Not That Into You: Graduate School Edition

Seriously though, I know what you mean. If/when you get off the list, though, don't sell yourself short because you were waitlisted (or your peers, obviously). That's all I meant.

If we're talking teaching writing/comp, I use two required texts - Hacker's A Writer's Reference (mostly for grammar and citation styles) and Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein's They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. The latter is an awesome starting place for freshman writing students, particularly those that aren't wild about the thoughts of spending 16 weeks "writing stuff." It hardly looks like a reference text, and is approachable, well-written, and organized into easily-digested tidbits for the students that haven't thought about their own writing and the "moves" academic rhetoric requires.

Don't ever give up your dreams for a man. You are still quite young and will undoubtedly still be able to find/create your 'dream family'. Your dream career needs to be built NOW. You can't do it after raising children.

However, you may not get everything that you want. It will be very difficult to find another highly paid husband, work hard to get tenure, have children, be a young mother, AND have time to raise them/have your partner be at home with them. Understand that you will be trading your PhD for part of the dream family. Will you sacrifice your husband with an amazing job in order to have a husband who stays with the children? Will you sacrifice tenure to have more time with your family? Will you and your husband need to pay a nanny to stay with your children most of the time? Will you sacrifice tenure at a prestigious university to have children in your early thirties?


There are a lot of things to think about, and I hope you make the right decision. Your boyfriend's rigidity on this issue gives me a great deal of pause; are you comfortable with this?

HAHAHA, got interview invites from all my schools and have even gotten accepted from 2 of them (the only ones i've interviewed at). SUCK IT!!!!!

he never said that it wasn't specialized or prestigious. get over yourself. are you just bitter? maybe you go to a no-name school...

So, this thread has gotten way overheated and far too snide, but ANDS! and the rest of the posters are right about the threat of trying to get the program's accreditation pulled. Additionally, even if you were able to succeed in doing that, think about how negatively that would affect the other students in the program, and the program's grads. You would effectively be invalidating their hard work over a few people's bad behavior.

A suggestion is to go to your university's ombudsperson and arrange some kind of mediation, since you are unsatisfied with the way this has been handled internally, but obviously it is possible that this will have repercussions too (as you say, academia is small). Is transferring an option or are you too far into the program?

If you pursuing your dream is a deal breaker for HIM, he isn't worth it. But if he's supportive and you think he's the one and you love him, a Ph.D. will never come close to that.

I know very few people in any industry who think they have "the best job in the world." I know people who enjoy their work, feel passionate about it, and find significant meaning in it, but most of them won't deny that there's drudgery to be found in any employment, and some days work just sucks. For me (and perhaps for us) the life of an academic is the most rewarding career path I can imagine (much like, for my cousin, being a mechanic is the most rewarding career path he can imagine, and believe me he is both successful and financially stable, but most of all, he's happy. The man lives and breathes cars the way a lot of us do literature/language/rhetoric etc).

And I agree that there is an an aggressiveness that borders on vilification in a lot of the attacks on the humanities. I wonder how much of it is rooted in fear, bitterness, cowardice, or resentment, since clearly it's not actually based in any sort of concern for graduate students or their well being.

The University of Houston's economics Phd program made me an offer of admission. AFTER I HAD ALREADY MOVED TO HOUSTON AND JUST A FEW DAYS BEFORE CLASSES WERE TO START IN FALL 2009 IT REVOKED THE OFFER OF ADMISSION. I COULD NOT START IN FALL 2009 BECAUSE IT REVOKED THE OFFER OF ADMISSION BUT I HAD ALREADY MOVED TO HOUSTON AND PASSED UP OTHER OFFERS.

THE CLAIM WAS THAT THE DEPARTMENT HAD MISUNDERSTOOD THAT I HAD ATTENDED JOHNS HOPKINS ADVANCED STUDIES M.A. IN APPLIED ECONOMICS AS THE DOCTORAL TRACK ECONOMICS PHD COURSES. THE MISTAKE WAS COMPLETELY THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS SINCE I DID NOT MISREPRESENT MYSELF IN THE ADMISSIONS PROCESS. THEY DIDN'T CARE IF THE MISTAKE WAS THEIRS AND THAT I HAD ALREADY MOVED TO HOUSTON.

Also, expect to:

-Find internships/positions to help you gain professional experiences
-Get on the English Committee, or whatever equivalent your program has; get involved in service opportunities
-Get acquainted with CfP sites and attend a conference
-Meet regularly with professors and advisors; find reasons... seriously... you want to ingrain your face in their minds.
-Prepare drafts early to get extra academic style help and feedback (this is their job and you have a right to use them!!)
-Join professional organizations; smaller ones tend to be better. MLA is not particularly impressive.
-Become immersed in your focus; think about it day and night and as you're falling asleep; be tortured by Deleuze & Guattari.
-Make the library your home
-Annotate all things ever
-Become aware of the most recent developments and conversations; hone your focus down to the most specific thing possible
-Take said specific interest and make it understandable to as many people as humanly possible across disciplines. Make it so a 4 year old can understand it, even if it's "Rhizomatic ecclesiastical offerings in the postmodern world as explored through H. Rap Brown's Die Nigger Die!"

Zyzz, run in the directors office and let them have it, since you stand upon a firm bedrock of principle, err whackaloonery!

Well then by all means, craft personalized emails for these instructors you have had these substantive conversations with who I am quite sure will remember you in 5 or 10 years.

The situation with employers might just be me, then. On the other hand, my employer also used some very shady business practices and treated me like crap anyway, so take what I said about work and school with a grain of salt, I guess. I just love how my program is called a "program for working people," but with all the crap they load you with for homework, I don't know how they expect someone to have a job/career AND do all this nonsense. I don't even have a job and I can barely make the deadlines.

And unfortunately, I cannot address UnlikelyGrad's comments without sounding too snarky, and I don't want to derail the topic. psycholinguist, I've been so bloody busy with not only school work (hello six projects due for July), but also two clients who want work done and a family friend who needed their site updated. Gah, I'm surprised I even have time to use the bathroom! But sadly, no progress being made...mostly because there's even more drama in the house as of late (not my doing) and it's making things even more difficult.

I'm probably going to be the buzzkill here, but I honestly hate being in grad school. This is mostly due to the fact that I am not only here against my will,but also because I cannot afford to be here. Besides that, a master's degree will probably be more detrimental to my job search than helpful. I am getting a master's in illustration and I have zero intention or desire to teach at any level - my mother is the one forcing me to attend because she feels a master's in art will help me land better freelancing jobs. And this is quite the opposite because people seem to think "freelancing" is another word for "slave labor" - I've been told by potential clients that eight bucks an hour is too much money for professional artwork.

So when people see I have a master's degree, they're going to realize I will want too much money and thus will not hire me. I also think employers will see the MFA and think I am overqualified for the job - why do I need a minimum wage job at Wal-Mart when I have a master's degree? They'll give the job to the high school dropout who has no future and who is too dumb to realize how bad they'll get screwed over.

Basically, I think my program is a waste of time, effort, and money. It will not help me in the least and will only bum me closer and closer to six figures worth of debt. All I can say is I hope my mother is happy when I can't afford $1500 a month in student debt and the government takes her house (since she's my co-signer). So yeah, my perceptions of graduate studies are pretty negatively colored. If you can go to grad school for free or mostly for free, then I may recommend going. But if you're broke and can't even get a student loan, don't go.

And honestly, just try getting or keeping a job while in grad school. No one will want to hire you or keep you on the payroll when you have to take weeks off to do a dissertation. One of many reasons I was fired from my last job was because I needed three weeks off to go to class and complete a big assignment. And I would need to do this four times a year until 2013. Yeah, employers want you at work making them money the entire year, not daring to take time off to prepare yourself for a better job.

First of all, this draft is a vast improvement over what you had before. Secondly, writing the SOP is a process and many of us went through 23539845 drafts on the way to applying. Well, I did anyway. I've put my comments directly into the draft. I'm pretty nit-picky, but don't be put off by that. Like I said, this draft is better and you're headed in the right direction.



I think you should take some time to think about your specific research questions. I know they can be hard to articulate; maybe look at old papers you've written, or articles you find interesting for inspiration. It's a very important element of the SOP, and I don't feel like I know what your exact interests and plans are after reading through the essay.

Hope that helps -- keep at it! You're making good progress.

Academics do not tolerate academic dishonesty. When you signed your application you agreed that you answered all questions truthfully. Your lie will inevitably be outed, either by technology, which makes it easier to investigate when suspicions arise, or by gossip among academics in your field at conferences where grad students' names and faces are introduced to the field at large. If you aren't outed until after you receive the degree you can expect the university to rescind the degree, and to inform local press that it has done so, because universities like to pay lip service to preserving their integrity. Nothing pisses academics off more than cheating, and they derive a special satisfaction from flogging the dishonest in their midst. Only you can decide whether you want to invest in building a reputation in your field that can be destroyed at an inopportune time, perhaps not until you risk losing the respect of a spouse and children, the peers with whom you work, and your social community.
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I want to say something about the "cruelest month," but the last few months have been pretty brutal, so I don't want to tempt fate/overuse Eliot.

No. Perhaps in the non-STEM based programs this is prevelant, but I am pretty confident about my choice.

It should factor into the equation, but it shouldn't trump everything else. If the two schools are even in your eyes, then such a stellar placement record could be enough to put that school over the top. I would probably include it at the same level as something like climate, city/rural campus, etc. Fit is key, funding is just below that and everything else tends to work itself out. If the higher ranked program is a better fit with better funding, then it doesn't make sense to decline it for the school with the better placement record. At the end of the day, professionalization is something you can ultimately figure out on your own if you absolutely have to (Greg Semenza's book is a great starting point if you haven't already read it).

Hey, we all feel your pain. There are a couple of things you can do:
-Write to the school where you've been accepted for the MA and ask for an extension. They deal with situations like this all the time and will likely be understanding.
-Write to the DGS at the school where you're waitlisted and ask for some kind of timeline. Likely they'll tell you that if you get off the waitlist, it will be late in the game, but it is probably good to keep them informed (also, it shows them that you're interested and willing to wait on their decision).

Once you've done one or both of those things, go do something to distract yourself!

I say do it. Why not? Structure your CV in a way that puts the most important details first (education, teaching experience, student English organizations, conference experience, publication) and then put that stuff later down the page. The CV is essentially a 2 page supplemental document for all the really important stuff anyway, so I can't imagine they expect to find anything on it that they consider integral to your application. Might as well just give them as much as you possibly can. Like I said though, frontload it. You'll want tiebreakers in case it's between you and someone else who is equally matched in your field of interest.

Ha! For one of my apps, I put 1997 as my year of birth instead of 1987. Yep, I'm a 14 year old genius / 24 year old moron.