andsoitgoes161

Just got an e-mail back....rejected. Of course I am not surprised, but that will teach me to hold out hope again!! Haha. Have you heard back from anyone else yet antecedent?

Sorry everyone It seems like at this point they only have rejections left to hand out. My status is STILL "In Review"--how long do you think I should wait before I e-mail Dr. Lesser to see what's going on? I was going to wait until Friday if I still hadn't heard anything.

Words, I have discovered, are like embers. They smolder. They drop to the bottom of our souls, where for years they give off only a modest heat, and then out of nowhere a life-wind suddenly whips up and the words burst into red-hot, spirit scorching flame. Does language contain history the way plywood contains flight? Are we bruised each day by syllabic collisions, our spirits slashed by combinations of vowel and consonant? At a cocktail party, say, or at a ball game, or at our daughter's wedding, would you feel Death slide between your ribs if someone were to utter the name of your ex-husband? Can a color cause bad dreams? Can a cornfield make you cry? Do we irradiate language by the lives we lead? Both Tim O'Brien. Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. Rilke.

No, I haven't heard anything!! I'm going mad over here considering all the possible meanings for the silence. Of course, I'm sure it's most simply that I've been rejected and haven't heard for some odd reason, but your guys' well wishes mean so much to me!!! I really, REALLY want to be at UT (I'm sorry to sound so bitchy/thoughtless when you guys have gotten rejections, I feel bad for even posting this), but I'm hoping this agony turns into something positive. GRR! I just want to know, because once I hear from UT I can finally stop obsessing over this whole process (it is really the only school I care about in the end).

I feel the same way, but it's still nice to indulge in the minute sense of hope I'm harboring.

If Dr. Lesser is, indeed, the only one inputting recipients for these emails (which I find highly unlikely, but possible), it might just be taking some time. But, as mentioned, that's probably highly implausible. The alphabet theory seems to have fallen to the wayside, so my only other analysis is that perhaps stacks of apps were handed to members in our respective fields, and as they get around to sending out the emails on behalf of Dr. Lesser that's when they show up in our inbox. For example, I believe the past two posters were both Brit Lit concentrations, and both received notification relatively close in time to one another. I don't want to extend my negativity unto you Rupert, but I feel like whoever has my application in his or her stack probably has not gotten around to notifying the people in it...what is your field of interest? Not that it is logical or helpful to continue in this guessing game, but it does pass the time with some sense of productivity.

I am so sorry guys Gosh darn you UT, if only you knew how much we all wanted to bask in your collegiate glory and let you mold us into academic rockstars, you'd have let us in immediately. No word for me, but I'm scared because I've got to be next.

I've been repeating, "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms" in my head quite a bit recently.

Really? This makes me feel a little better...but I still think those monkeys ate my dossier or something similarly monstrous. I'm rooting for everyone still left! This is just plain awful, and I hope people are more optimistic about the silence than I am. I'm so used to the rejections, another wouldn't phase me. Are we all Rhetoric hopefuls?

HaruNoKaze I'm so sorry I really hope you make it into the philosophy program...I also considered applying to it, but knew I would just be frivolously throwing money away in paying the app fee. I can't believe I haven't heard anything from UT yet...I swear I think it's because they lost my file, or something goofy like that is going on. I've been flat out rejected from four schools far, FAR less prestigious that Texas, so I'm honestly not holding my breath.

I'm just a few letters ahead of you, so I'll post if/when I find out. I'm also a Rhetoric hopeful and I thought maybe the department was just lagging, but given that impending got a rejection today and was also a rhet person, I've given up on that lambent hope.

As am I. You've not received notice yet, correct? If so, I think they've got to be doing it alphabetically. I literally just received an e-mail from another program rejecting me--a sign if anything as I'm writing this response.

They're really prolonging my agony over here.... still nothing. Sigh. I'm trying to place some faith in the fact that this might mean something out of the ordinary (aka not a flat out rejection), but they're probably just doing things alphabetically. That or they lost my app and decided it wasn't even worth looking for.

NOOOOO!! I'm so sorry antcedent :( I've still got no word, but I assume I'll be receiving the same response.

Yayyy! I was TRYING to tell you this yesterday in my post about our respective departments maybe not being on the same time schedule as the lit part of the PhD, hence the crickets in our inbox. I know we are going to get some positive news this week, we have to! Also, nothing to do with UT, BUTTTT...I logged onto my bank account this morning and saw a check was cashed on Tuesday by my other top choice program (though UT is really my Disneyland) and it makes me think decisions for them are coming out this week too!! AHHHHHH!!! I can't. Now I know how you felt when Madison/Austin were scheduled to notify during the same week.

Oh man, am I ever familiar with that slog. I'm using MM as the main text in my thesis, but I do agree that despite the sloooow, brutal pace there is definite poetry in its construction. I haven't had a chance to read any Sara Grand, but she's bunched in with the "New Woman" writers, correct? After spending so much time with Eliot/MM I'm definitely interested to read similar stuff, so I'll be sure to check her out. And as far as losing steam: don't. The problem is we started to discuss school/research interests...I always regenerate a cycle of mania and depression when I begin to think about academic stuff, and you're just experiencing the comedown stretch of it, i.e. anxiously contemplating the possibility of not being able to indulge your scholasticism next fall (I'm right there with you at present, why did we start discussing literature?!). You've got two great program offers, and though I realize there's not much solace to be had in my pointing that out, you DO have options. Do you think we're going to look good or hideous in that weird, burnt orange color UT uses? I can seeing it going either way for me--I think if I am perpetually tan I'll be able to make it work. We'll obviously be spending a ton of time laying out and reading at Barton Springs. (Vision board thoughts )

No I'm not. I've just always loved anything Alice, and I think Lewis Carroll is a linguistic genius--the syntax/semantics he originates in the language of "nonsense" are fascinating, and I think writing children's lit within a "nonsensical" code is a brilliant attempt at providing a working exposition of the imaginative faculties of children. I also just really like the Disney animated movie because I think it's cool, haha. A class on the drafts of Alice?! So. Awesome. I wish I'd had an opportunity to take something like that, but my undergrad institution took a pretty conventional approach to literature, as well as to what literature we read--I've taken more analytically straightforward courses on Shakespeare and Medieval lit than I care to remember. I would totally be a Victorianist too--I think a lot of people would, even though many seem to voice disinterest in the period. I find that a lot of people buy into its stereotypical characterization of being a stifling or prude era and write it off prematurely, but I happen to think it was a culturally rich and innovative time that everyone should appreciate.

Though, it would be so nice is something made sense for a change. Ps. Don't even get me started on Alice quotes. I am way too obsessed.

(But it also makes me sound a little whacky. Who am I kidding: totally whacky.)

Umm, obvi. And we're going to be BFF. And line dance. And have so much fun on Sixth Street. And study I guess. But definitely nerd out over sociolinguistics. (I really want us to get into UT, I feel like just writing those things out acts a personal form of a vision board.)

Here is my take: some people have already gotten rejections, so they were definitely people Austin did not feel would fit well with a cohort this year. However, we were not immediately notified on our status (either positive or negative), and so our apps probably display some sort of potential for meshing well with what they're looking to build in an incoming class. Furthermore, someone mentioned something about the Rhetoric people not having yet been able to finalize offers because of funding, and I know that although the Rhetoric concentration is offered through the English PhD, the department is actually separate from the English department (though I assume integrated in the same manner in which the concentration falls beneath the PhD umbrella). Antecedent, I haven't done any research, but I can see how the linguistics concentration might also be dependent on a separate departmental wing, and so the English department might be waiting on decisions from a more streamlined language/linguistics AdCom group as they obviously have to have some say in the decision process. Same goes for final rhetoric offers/wait list announcements. This is all my own wild conjecture, but I intuitively feel that it makes sense and that it's what is happening, soooo I'm going with it.

I might be exercising blind optimism, but I feel like UT's silence on our apps means we still stand a chance. Anyone else feel this way?

Nothing could make my life more complete. Except maybe that addition of wine. Grr...THE addition of wine. I look like an editing maniac. No more iPhone posts.

Yeah I really don't know why I've thought of antecedent as a guy, it seems like sort of a visceral thing, but obviously it has come through in antecedent's writing. Now I feel weird saying antecedent instead of "he or she" as if antecedent is an "it." I'm sorry. I'm a girl for what it's worth, though I suppose in the amount of timorousness, self-deprecation, and need for validation with which I post that's been pretty evident. Gosh, now this is sounding like an anti-fmeinist rant, and I'm just digging myself a hole. I swear it all comes back to the linguistics project I did and the common signifiers in male versus female speech. (Notice the verve of typical feminine expression in there? Ha.) EDIT: Whoops, you posted before I got this up. Sorry miss

This is so weird, but I think related. So today I was ruminating on this project I did for a linguistics class a few years ago on male vs. female communication, and I got to thinking about how I perceive everyone on this site solely through the way you all write, and how those imagined figures are obviously either a guy or a girl. Then I thought to myself, "Well, I bet I am incredibly mistaken about a lot of these people, because even though there are certain gender tip-offs and linguistic tendencies in language, it usually manifests in oral communication and not as much through writing." Given that we are all intellectual, verbose geniuses (who will all get into UT Austin and have amazing Texan lives) our writing is always highly directed toward some intended goal or message and typically nestled within similar erudite voice/language choices academic writers tend to use, but not in the spontaneous rambling (though this post is starting to lean that way) that usually indicates gender. Anyhow, point being: antecendent, not that it is at all wrong for guys to wear nail polish, in fact I am rather attracted to the indie/rocker type of man who will at some point or another don nail color in his life, but I totally had you pegged for a guy. Now with this yellow sunshine nail varnish revelation, I'm thinking you might be a girl. My world has been turned upside down-- or maybe right side up, since it's been upside down since last December when I applied for grad school. Cue white rabbit.