NowMoreSerious

I wish you the best and I am rooting for you. I know academia, especially in NY I hear, can be a very alienating place. I first want to say that all of your traumas and anxieties are in part a result of academia. Depending on what you were going through, I think your responses are a normal response. Let me ask you this, how were you fostering advisement relationships? What types of things were you doing to develop mentors for you? What types of networking, office hours, etc? Further, if you were in office hours, how were you approaching that valuable time? I also ask because the three things you listed as why you want to be a professor are very different than what most Ph.D. programs are looking for in a student. Also, are you a person of color? I am, and if you are, there are even more nuances you have to be aware of when navigating academia.

I've been coming here since the 2012 season and I think that might be the record for on here, or anybody I've known, for that matter.

It's funny you should say this, because I was about to PM you just to tell you that you have a super tough decision and to hang in there. You have one of the toughest decisions I've seen in a while. Have you visited anywhere?

Yes, yes, and yes.

I will PM you

Can you expand a bit on this? This part sticks out to me. How did you demonstrate it by being a widely published formal poet?

19 C Americanists do it better. That is all. Yes, I bumped this thread.

I got my MA at Cal State LA. Just in the past three seasons people from that MA program have went on to the following Ph.D programs in English: UPenn, USC, UC Riverside, Cornell, UCLA (x2), and UCI. Each of those individuals had several options as well, from schools like Virginia, U of Chicago, Minnesota, Indiana, CUNY, and Princeton. This year one person is deciding between Berkeley Rhetoric, UCI, and UCLA. Another is deciding between NYU, UCLA, and WUSTL. Professors in the department give tremendous mentorship. And as students and former students, we always help each other out when we can.

I would alert them immediately. Why would you not? In fact I'd do it sooner than later so it doesn't seem like you are just hung over because you went to drinks after dinner last night.

When is the actual conference? It's March, but it's barely March. You might also want to see if they ever extended the deadline because that usually pushes everything back. I also agree with fuzzy logician, having organized a conference before. Though I do understand that because of organizing travel, it's helpful to know early.

Who the F was charging you 225 an hour? I used to privately tutor GRE verbal for like 20 bucks an hour, if that. I also wanted to ask you if you studied with others? Did you have a support group of others who were taking the test that you studied with? Sometimes these things make a difference just for your overall mental health.

1Q, that depends on what life choices you are talking about. For example, I took on debt to get an MA because I felt it was the only chance I had to further my studies to the point where I could put together a good Ph.D. application. For me it was a choice between debt, or continue my career as an industrial factory worker. I made a decision. I'm not sure if it was the right one but I did it, and I know it will have consequences because I will have to pay back that debt in the future, and having to pay back that debt might obviously affect my standard of living (especially if I am only able to get low-paying jobs) for the rest of my life. But so would have 20-30+ more years of factory work. Do you know what I'm saying? I made a calculated decision and luckily, it paid off, so far, in that I am fully funded in a Ph.D. program. It sounds like you have a family to support and are in a different situation. I don't see accumulating debt as an automatic death sentence or automatic hinderance to supporting a family, however. But everyone makes their own decisions about debt. For me it was my absolute only hope--I had no other choice if I wanted to pursue an academic career. All this being said, though, I am sincerely, and in good faith, interested in how this thread in the conversation is making you re-think privilege and non-privilege. That sounds like an interesting conversation waiting to happen.

I'm not saying this will be anybody else's experience: I won't mention which school, but one school really showed me a lot of love. Great acceptance phone call, and constant friendly emails from everyone, including graduate students and professors. Then when it came down to finalizing my financial offer, I felt a lot less 'loved.' Obviously, it's not all about money (I did not choose the school that gave me the best financial offer), but I have to take into account that some schools financial/fellowship offers allowed me to focus completely on my work while others stipulated that I have to constantly teach several courses, take jobs on the side, etc.

I have no illusions about ever getting a Tenure Track Job. That isn't why I entered graduate school. My only goal is to survive and teach/learn literature and theory. If I take on debt, I take on debt. This has less to do with us and more to do with the maneuvers of global capital. This is not to say we do not have agency, but we are working under a system whose moves are sometimes difficult to even follow, much less take advantage of. I'm not trying to be melodramatic, but I was born poor, grew up poor, and I am poor now. I don't expect that to ever change. I've always scraped by in life and I don't see earning a Ph.D. as some ticket out of it. I'm the first person in my family to graduate high school conventionally and the first to attend college. This is not to say I'm not somewhat privileged, though. And my mission, as always, is to accumulate cultural capital and use it to attack back and confront all kinds of institutions, including academia itself. If you want to know the book chapter I always read whenever I feel like quitting graduate school, pm me and I will tell you. And yes, you will feel like quitting sometimes.

As others have said, you still have other schools left to hear from. My question is simple. Why do you want to switch suddenly to African-Lit after coming from an Anthropology background? This is the key question that your entire application should have answered, which is why I ask.

There may be two different discussions going on here. Personally, I'm talking about Ph.D. acceptances, not the job market.

I'm one of the older students in the entire program (2nd year). And I'm also probably among the oldest to start (For example, some of the students older than me in the program have been there like 5 years). But I bet a lot of that has to do with the fact that just less people in their mid-30's apply in the first place.

I don't know. I got accepted to two top 12 English programs at the age of 34, (35 when I began coursework). And further, I was applying from an unranked state school that does not even offer Ph.Ds.

African-American Literature and the Left - Yarborough

Sometimes people dress a bit up for the reception, but other than that you want to dress for pure comfort. UCLA is a bit hilly and rather big depending on where you are going. Ackerman Student union to Young Research Library, for instance, is a pretty good little walk. As a male, I normally dress to department functions in a navy sport coat with no tie and people act like I should be at the Opera or something. It's a pretty casual department.

I just wanted to say hello to a fellow IRT'er! I did my application season two years ago, though. Right now I'm at UCLA, English.

You obviously may not be done with acceptances yet, so don't think too hard. Two great choices already though.

I think it is important to consider depending on the other requirements for the program. For example, if you teach every year and have little opportunity for fellowships that give you non-teaching years, and the department has a deadline-heavy structure, then that's difficult. It also depends on your endgame. If you are committed to teaching and pedagogy then obviously you want that teaching experience. I'd argue you want the teaching experience period. Consider also the structure of the teaching requirements. Not just how many classes, but how much choice do grad students have over their teaching? Do they pick top choices from a list? Are they simply assigned courses without regard to student preference? Are you a discussion leader or do you have your own course? Do you design your own courses, or are the courses pre-designed to different extents? Do you teach only composition, or also literature? Here's why this might be key. If you have the opportunity to design your own courses, then you can try to incorporate at least some of your interests into the syllabi, making teaching potentially much more productive to you. Same with if they give you options. You can choose to TA courses that will at least in some way help your own work. As someone said earlier, it's also important to learn how much support teachers and TA's are given at the school. How much training?

Here are more tips, drawn from my own experiences as well as my friends who are also doing an English Ph.D from places such as Davis, USC, UPenn, Cornell, Irvine, UCLA. -What are the requirements and normal "stages" of graduate work? How many courses do you have to take? Do you have to pass some kind of MA exam, or do an MA thesis? How fast do you have to do this? -What study and reading groups are available? Are there colloquium that meet regularly for your area of interest? -Does your POI teach seminars? Is your POI often traveling for conferences and talks? -What kind of seminars are offered? Are there normally seminars offered in your area, or by the professors you want to learn from? -Here's a mistake a lot of people make. They measure a school's strength in a certain field/area by the presence of one or maybe two famous professors. Nooope! You have to make sure that the same professor teaches seminars, is a good advisor, etc. Oh, and that the professor isn't planning on moving to another school or retiring soon! -Don't just look at job placement. Look at the job placement in your field, and from the dissertations that were advised by the professors you might be working with. -People say "Your interests might change" and they are wrong. Your interests WILL change. So another thing to consider is whether the school is strong in areas other than your specific interests. To me, this is the single biggest argument for picking a top ranked school-not the funding, not the prestige, or even the job placement. One thing almost all top ranked schools have in common, is that they are strong in almost everything. They have resources in many areas. Lets say you choose a school that's very strong in Early Modern, but weak in many other areas. What if you decide you want to do 19th British now? Basically, you are in a tough position. But if you are in a top 10 English program there's a 95% chance that there are other amazing professors in whatever direction you want to go. So that's my 4 cents. I'm just putting it out there because I feel often people are very secretive about their experiences, or they are just too busy once they are already in to try to help people. I will be 100% candid.

Was it Judith Haber? She's cool and funny.