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antikantian

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  1. Just a bit of a post to vent. Normally, everyone complements me on my lectures, presentations, etc. Yesterday, however, I was teaching an undergrad class, and it just didn't seem to go very well. Maybe it was a function of me being tired due to a bad night's sleep, I'm not sure. I prepared as per usual, and got through everything I wanted to cover, for the most part. Typically, I teach lecture style, but with occasional questions to engage students. This class, however, practically *all* of my questions were met with blank stares and silence. Mind you, the questions weren't hard, and anyone who even skimmed the text should have been able to at least say *something*. This kind of bothered me, and I guess I started getting really self-conscious; so I felt everything was very repetitive, and it led to me making a lot of changes on the fly to my lecture notes, which THEN led to me having to mentally assess the change as I was making it - which then led to short 1 or 2 second pauses (they feel like an eternity in front of 35 undergrads), which then... you get the idea. To make matters worse, someone walked out halfway through, and I guess that really made me even more nervous and anxious. Nothing really hangs on this bad day obviously, and I'm sure if anyone noticed (how could they not!?), they have since forgotten about it (hopefully). Anyway, how do you get over such inevitable disasters?
  2. I agree with this. As possible world PhD-seeking Socrates says, "the unexamined application isn't worth sending," but the over-examined one is just as bad for your psychological health. Wow, that was terrible, but I'm sure you get the point. You can't really do anything about your GPA at this juncture, so it's not worth stressing out over. Besides, if other parts of your application are solid, then GPA won't matter as much, probably. Here are some statements my friends and I made during the application process many moons ago: "Omg, I got a B in biology my freshman year? It's over." "No Phi Beta Kappa? That's not gonna look good. It's over." "I put an area of interest in my SOP that no one cares about. It's over." "Magna cum laude? How am I going to compete with those summa over-achievers? It's over." "60th percentile quant? Damn engineers! It's SOOOO over." "5AWA? I'm in the humanities! I write for a living. It's over." "Yep, 3.0GPA because I couldn't adjust to college my first two years. Why even bother. It's over." "500V? FFS, I'm throwing away my money on these applications. It's over." All of the above people got into grad school. These little things rarely mean that it's over.
  3. I'm not sure if I have a lot of advice, but I'm currently in my 5th year, taking a break from dissertating on a Saturday afternoon by trying to put together some words of encouragement. First, don't take the GRE when you have the flu. I did this and my GRE verbal was 500, math only slightly better. My next attempt was in the 99th percentile. This just means, DON'T PUSH THE GRE TO THE LAST MINUTE. You'll never know when that super-virus will hit you. Make sure you love whatever field you're going into, and don't expect graduate school to be some intellectual paradise - it's not. I went through a year or so where I absolutely hated what I was doing and questioned my choices. If this happens, just stick with it. I've since rediscovered my passion for scholarship, and I feel like my work has improved as a result of this brief hatred of my profession. Talk to professors about grad school. Don't go into applications completely through your own research without talking to people in the profession. I was completely underprepared during the application process. This is especially true of the humanities. There is a lot of interdisciplinary work going on, so maybe check to see if other departments have interests in your potential research areas. I'm in an analytic philosophy department, but I know literature, political theory, and english all have professors who are interested in topics that are broadly (or narrowly), philosophical.
  4. This might not mean much since I'm not in a psychology PhD program, but my research does cross-over into social psych, and I know a few people from undergrad that applied to psych programs. At any rate, to be blunt, both your GPA and GRE are low, as you say. I would really suggest that you apply to MA programs and really excel, so you can demonstrate that you can do PhD-level work and then apply to PhD programs. I know a few people who overcame low u-grad stats via this method. Yeah, it kind of sucks that a lot of PhD admissions are stats-based during initial rounds, but committees don't really know you, and they can't look at every single app holistically. You could potentially be the greatest psychologist to have ever lived, but grad committees need to not only assess your skills in a particular field, but also your ability and desire to professionalize. I know a few really brilliant people who weren't able to complete graduate school because they weren't committed enough to the discipline as a profession. I'm not saying this applies to you, since I don't know you; I only say it generally. MA work will really go a long way towards demonstrating both of these factors.
  5. Just out of curiosity, can someone explain what motivates one to apply to political theory versus philosophy? I'm currently working on my dissert in moral philosophy, but with an interest in political theory, and one of my all time favorite professors is a political theorist, so don't take this as a criticism. I can understand if someone has an interest in continental philosophy, which really isn't recognized as legitimate in analytic departments (and now contained mostly within English, Literature, and Political Theory, etc). However, if Secret Squirrel, for instance, is interested in Ancient thought, contemporary moral/political philosophy within the analytic tradition, and the intersection between moral philosophy and epistemology, wouldn't applying as well to philosophy departments make sense? Again, I'm just curious, because retrospectively I wouldn't have only applied to philosophy, but broadened my applications to political theory departments as well.
  6. And I thought I was the only weirdo who uses LaTeX for everything. After countless seminar papers, presentation outlines, handouts, etc, formatted in LaTeX, the only time someone ever commented was to say, "I like your formatting -- looks really professional."
  7. Thanks! That was very informative and helpful. From your time at Cambridge, would you say that the MPhil is primarily a gap degree in preparation for a PhD in political science, or were there some in your cohort who were there terminally in hopes of a career in government, politics, etc?
  8. I wanted some opinions on doing Cambridge's 10 month MPhil in Politics. My interests have changed quite a bit since entering graduate school, and I think that the program would probably be personally beneficial. A motivating factor is that the degree timeline is relatively short at less than a year, so in the grand scheme of life it's pretty negligible, especially since I was planning on taking a year off after my PhD. Any reactions to this - is it a completely ridiculous idea (assuming finances don't factor into this equation)? I'd really love to spend a year at Cambridge from a purely academic perspective, and if I don't do it now while I'm still in my twenties, it'll probably never happen. From an admissions standpoint, are there any issues with applying to the MPhil program after completion of a PhD? I'm planning on finishing next year (PhD in philosophy, not political science), with a supplementary MA in political theory. I wouldn't expect my GPA at either the undergraduate or graduate level to be a hindrance (and both schools have a pretty good reputation), but maybe the admissions committee would think this is completely redundant? I'm not entirely sure... Any thoughts?
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