LCB

I'm celebrating... by having my exam defense today. 30 minutes to go. Eeeeep (but also yay that it'll be over soon!)

Man, I hope you hear about funding soon so you can come too! I'm sending lots of good vibes your way.

I just accepted my offer at Michigan State in the Rhetoric & Writing program!

I just declined an offer from Miami. I'm declining a few others in the next few days as well. Good luck WCers!

I am on the WRAC side. I'm a bit sad about the disciplinary divide - that's actually one of the other things that I don't like as much. I come from a program where rhet/comp is with the lit and creative writing folks and I love it here. But I agree, I liked the weekend and I like the program a lot. Hopefully funding gets figured out for y'all soon, though! I'm sending good vibes.

I'm leaning towards Michigan State! They have a lot more of the stuff that I want to do, and honestly the only drawbacks I have right now is that I'm being offered more money elsewhere and I like Louisville as a city better. But I'm going for the program, not the city, and while the money is important, I think MSU gives me more opportunities for what I want to do, which matters on the job market end of things.

Accepted off the waitlist at Illinois Urbana-Champaign! I am pretty much decided on another school, but I was kind of hoping to hear from the waitlisted schools on my list before I made that decision final, and hey! What do you know?

I just want to ask a few questions here, and maybe also talk a bit about what I see rhet/comp as a field doing (to both respond to the debate in this thread but also hopefully talk about rhet/comp). WPA, rhet/comp, and fields dedicated to the study of writing and pedagogy should be able to have conversations about what makes up good writing and pedagogy. And let's be clear here: these are conversations about what make up good pedagogy, not assertions. Our field is filled with people disagreeing with each other on best practices, continually revising the way we do things, adapting to new situations and technologies, etc. We're not some monolithic entity beating up lit TAs in workshops until they agree with us that our way is the only way, because we don't always agree on "our way." I guess I'd just ask you the same question you keep posing to rhet/comp and WPA: why do you get to define these things? I see rhet/comp as a field that doesn't assume that a good writer is necessarily a good teacher (re: your first post). Clearly, you disagree. But why? What makes you assume that having skills automatically means that one can teach them successfully to other people?

I also know someone who got notified they were waitlisted there, which I also feel like is unusual (maybe I'm wrong?). But I'm assuming rejection too if they notified some people of waitlists.

Waitlisted at Illinois Urbana-Champaign too! Cheers to those also waiting on them.

Definitely! I'm actually in a similar position, funnily enough - I came over from political science, so I have a lot of political texts but am just starting to delve into the new media. It sounds like we have a really similar approach.

Another thing that might factor into the questions to ask/decision process for PhD and MA/PhD people: look at the recent job listings in your area of interest (and related areas). What are universities asking for, outside of research expertise? While it's been true for a while that teaching has always been a factor in getting a job at the other end of the PhD, different kinds of teaching experience are being asked for. For example, more and more job calls are asking for experience or training in online courses. So you might ask if the university (1) offers training in online courses or (2) offers online courses for graduate students to teach. Ask what other kinds of training they offer too (computer-mediated classroom training; technical writing training; etc.).

Tip from someone who's moved across the country before and will be doing it again: you can ship your books across the country cheap through media mail, which is reserved for "educational materials." It takes them longer to get to the destination and the boxes will probably arrive (1) a little beaten up and (2) not all at the same time, but if you're okay with that, it's a really nice way to save room in a car or suitcase and get to keep some of your belongings.

Some schools also do a lot more post-acceptances than pre-acceptances (one of my schools was definitely this way; I got some basic contact/info going in, but then a lot of stuff once I actually got there). You might also be wary of the reverse happening - where schools are so focused on getting people to come that they know how to "sell" their program, but don't always end up being as beautiful as they sound once you get there. This has happened to multiple people that I know, who were basically recruited really hardcore by specific POI at their schools and arrived their only to find that their POIs weren't nearly as interested in taking them on as it had seemed, the POIs were super busy and didn't really have the time to devote to them at all, there were major personality conflicts with them, etc. In general, I'd say that I'm definitely leaning more towards programs that are being more friendly to me. I feel like that indicates the university is organized, wants me there, and has an environment I would enjoy. But I wouldn't necessarily bank on it, I guess? Or count the programs out who are less interactive. A side note: I can't remember if this is on the list of questions to ask programs, but one question I've found extremely helpful has been to ask how many students have dropped out of the program in recent years. While placement rates for some programs might be extremely high, placement rates are also only determined by the number of people who are applying for jobs; they don't tell you the number of people who didn't make it that far. If a university has a really high dropout rate, you might (politely) ask why. Obviously, there are individual reasons why people might leave the program, so don't worry too much if one or two people has left, but there are some places where entire classes of students have dropped out - and that's indicative of a deeper problem within the program. If they aren't taking steps to solve it, be suspicious.

I have degrees from the social sciences (psych and polisci) and originally came to English to do literary theory. When I got here, I was just really frustrated by (1) the need in literary studies to declare a specific time period (especially when I wanted to do theory); and (2) the general disdain/misunderstanding of different methods/methodologies that happens often in literary studies (this isn't universally true; there's really awesome people doing stuff with digital mapping and literature, for example, but I just noticed that my background was often treated more with suspicion than excitement). On the other hand, the comp/rhet people were more open to interdisciplinary approaches and I felt like I could bring more of what I knew about from other fields with me if I did comp/rhet. Plus, I just found that I was much more invested in pedagogy than I expected to be. I really connected with the teaching side of stuff, and I really enjoy administrative work (I'm in writing program administration now, and I love it). There is much more discussion of that on the comp/rhet side of things, since there tends to be much more research on pedagogy and a concern about the application of the research to the classroom.