thestage

28. started undergrad 8 years after high school. not going to pretend I learned any valuable "life lessons" during that time.

just call penn "the ivy one" and penn state "joe paterno university and also child rape"

we might define "no chance" differently (for instance, "no prestige" would be an upgrade for my undergraduate school; I applied to Yale anyway), but I just don't see people putting in the kind of effort necessary to seriously consider getting a PhD, and then doing so at a prestigious school, without also doing enough research to get some cursory sense of what is required. granted, everyone thinks they are the exception to the rule, but that sort of thinking tends to diminish over the course of actually applying rather than merely thinking (or dreaming) about applying. then again, it worked for james franco (amirite, etc.)

the biggest problem with this fact is they all assume you are going to get in to schools. they do this partially to try to make you feel better, but all it really does is make you feel worse, because now you are in some way letting down people that are not you. we're the only ones that actually understand that when 500 people apply for 10 slots, odds are pretty good you are going to be in the 490 rather than the 10 regardless of your qualifications, abilities, devotion, or potential. failure is a theoretical until you click those submit buttons, at which point the reality of the situation begins to dawn.

so, trends thus far: kansas and northwestern tricked people into applying for laughs, but didn't admit anyone; NYU only asked for an application as a formality, otherwise if you applied you were admitted wonder how the coin flips will work out at other schools as this process continues to light us fools the way to dusty death

most schools (at least most top schools) specify on their admissions website that they are under no obligation to tell you shit if you don't get in. which sucks, yes, but is nevertheless true. you're unlikely to get anything of substance.

I was going to apply to Edinburgh as a temporary fall back plan on account of the way the british system works (rolling admissions, focused one year programs, flexibility, etc.) and the sheer and total beauty of the place. then I saw something about 12,000 pounds a semester and I remembered that dreams only exist to be crushed.

I haven't taken a math class in 8 years, I was always terrible at math, I did no review at all, and I ended up with a 157. It won't kill you.

I once turned in a paper that included the noble phrase [iNSERT POSSIBLE QUOTE], or something to that effect

well benedict is not very english ok

what is going to eventually happen (in the humanities at least, and probably some of the social sciences) is that getting a PhD is going to be seen less and less as a career move, and more and more as a kind of elaborate and lengthy sabbatical for masochists and aethiest ascetics. in a sense, of course, this is already the case (ask your friends, and detect the whiff of condescion and concern as they inevitably see you as malformed and infantile), but eventually that line will be crossed for good and the jig will be up. one of the reasons the job market sucks is because we're all going to get these damn degrees no matter what happens in the end. sure, the numbers might shrink some, but they will forever outstrip the demand.

smart guy, no reason to believe he's a scholar

isn't it a little weird to wait list people before admitting anyone?

they can also be conditioned to eat women in the french riviera

this sounds way better than grad school

yeah, this stanford thing is kinda killing me right now

I agree to the extent that competent and motivated humanities students should be able to translate and articulate that competence in a wide variety of settings--but what does that really mean? If I did not think it were possible to apply a PhD outside of the academy, I would not be trying to earn one. Not because I want to study literature and theory for 7 years in order to take a job outside of literature and theory, but because the realites of the job market are such that we cannot 100% rely on sustainable university positions any longer. So yes, we're only as useless (in the utilitarian sense) as we want to be. But is that because of things specifically learned and taught in humanities programs, or is it because your average humanities PhD holder is simply more intelligent and more dedicated than the average job seeker? I <i>should</i> be able to differentiate myself from the crowd, but perhaps it is only because I actually am differentiated from the crowd, you know what I mean? You are right, marketing ones' self in this sense is not that hard. Employer A asks what you've been doing, you should be able to articulate the value in analyzing and synthesizing huge amounts of data in order to imagine, plan, create, polish, defend, and share a substaintial piece of professional work. But is that enough? Is it really ok that the content involved in that work, and the thought and the research behind it hold no social value? Beyond event that, it is entirely possible that the employers whose whims you are at the mercy of will entirely frown upon extended schooling and the stigma of academia. You can't out argue someone that doesn't value or understand reasoning, and you can't present yourself favorably to someone that has already made up his or her mind on your defining characteristic. And we live in a world that generally views someone with a PhD as an abnormality rather than an expert or professional. It is presumed that there is something wrong. Ask your friends and family members. Apart from that, why should we have to throw away the entire content, environment, and belief systems behind our substantial education in order to take random job X in myopic field Y? You may be right that we are just as capable of taking shitty business jobs as broham mcbrah who slept through a business management BA before learning the fine arts of psychopathy and obsequiousness on the golf course and airport terminal, but we clearly don't want those jobs. If we did, we wouldn't take the decade long detour. True devotion to the humanities can only be valued if the humanities themselves are valued. The intellectual tradition we follow is one that was developed for people to be leaders and thinkers; to work in and barter with knowledge itself. If you take that away from us, and then belittle the process of attempting to obtain it, just so we can luck into careers in marketing and administration--well, it'll keep us alive, no doubt, but I remain unconvinced it will keep the disciplines themselves alive. This is not to say the academy is some bastion of intellectual rigor and expressive freedom and Big Issues and all that. Far from it. But the way back is to try, and right now we've largely been divested of that ability. I don't think we're particularly arguing different points, but I do find your approach somewhat defeatist and definitely reductive.

none of this should really be surprising. we live in a time in which knowledge is not valued for its own sake. the humanities have nothing else to offer. if the propogation of knowledge without a direct economic object (technology, managerial know-how, etc) is to have any economic benefit, it is in the extremely long term, which may as well not exist. I hate to say it, but our fields have always been propped up by an upper class that doesn't really exist in the western world anymore

for the sake of comparison, the poverty line in the US for a single person household last year was $10,890. I don't know how they normalize for nationwide variance in cost of living, but one would assume it is taken into consideration in some way or another. translation: you will be able to live, if by live you mean "eat food and have heat in my apartment." you will not have money for any unforseen expenses. you will not have money for much in the way of "luxury," with luxury here defined as "basically anything." since you are both 1) a grad student, and 2) poor, I'm assuming most of the money above that poverty line will be spent on alcohol and coffee, possibly mixed.

you sound more qualified than 90% of any possible list of candidates, and I am under the impression that comp/rhet programs get significantly less applicants than their literature cousins. but it sounds like admittance isn't your concern. you work at a school, and you have contacts with professionals in the field. ask them for their impressions of the state of the field. there's no reason not to. I would also say that you may be in the somewhat enviable position of working in a field that should look favorably upon the PhD anyway. so at worst, you graduate, find no jobs in "proper" academia, and then go back to what you were doing anyway, only now with (ostensibly) a better chance at advancment. with a background as a councilor added to the PhD stamp that says you are also a theoretical expert in a field, I would imagine it might be possible for you to essentially create your own employment niche. you want to design a program? pitch that program. you'll have the background to be taken seriously. I mean, it might all be fantasy in the end, but that is the case with aboslutely every possible career path or goal in the history of modern man.

supply and demand. there are hundreds of us hopeless fools for every 5 spots at any respectable instutition, ergo the schools are afforded the luxury of doing whatever they please, however they please to do it, while we are afforded the luxury of being treated like detestable nobodies under the misguided premise that it might show who "wants it more" or some such nonsense. even then I think it'd be handled more acceptably if the schools had people (or, heaven forbid, third party services) dedicated to the admissions process and the overall direction of the school's research interests. as it stands, the people sifting over the applications and drawing up the admissions FAQs are the same people engaged in their own research, teaching classes (hah! yeah right...), and working closely with the people they admitted 1, 3, 5 years ago. they understandably have a list of priorities. you and I ain't on that list.

fixed

another fun fact: there actually exists a country named andorra

a tough decision between dumptser-sleeping and suicide