Fiona Thunderpaws

HELL YES!!! I was hoping you would come, you are an awesome person! Let me know if you want those apartment searcher details, though it sounds like your housing mission was successful! As for the rest of you all, thanks for visiting, and I hope you enjoyed your trip whether or not you decide to come!

D&B--yeah, I walked around for a few days until I found my landlady. I was staying with my sweet old grad students who also lived in Hyde Park so it was pretty easy to get out and just wander. As for whoever was considering getting a car because they're a terrible biker, it's really easy to bus it pretty much everywhere if you're on a north/south route! And while rent is going up in Austin, whoever said entertainment is cheap is absolutely right. You can easily go out to places and drop tons of money to have fun, but there are so many cheap things to do, it's ridiculous. +1 for weather. Snow sucks. I don't miss it at all.

Just adding my own judgement to what Marlowe and Guate have to say: Rents are going up, but you can totally find a place to live that's less than $1200 and walkable/bikeable. I pay $800 in Hyde Park, which is a lot, but it's also a house with a yard. Meanwhile, there's a $700 studio across the street. Real Estate in Austin is crazy and makes no sense. I found my place by walking around Hyde Park and taking down the numbers of any place for rent and calling around. Also, as Marlowe mentioned, Real Estate people can be really useful. They're paid on commission, so there's no cost to you. Also, if you have no car, they'll drive you around which is great if you have no car.

It's because of sxsw mostly. That stuff started this week, and goes through all of next week and then part of the week after. All the hotel prices are crazy until it's over. Not that that's particularly helpful for anyone waiting to decide or anything.

Yeah, English folks are pretty good at landing fellowships. Far as independent work goes, I guess that depends what you're trying to do. My courses take up most of my time and I do very little extra reading outside of it, but I also get the feeling from the department they kind of want this to happen when we're in coursework so we exposed to as many professors and texts as we can be before they let us loose to pursue our own things. I never expected to have extra time in the early stages for other stuff, so I might not be the best person to confer with on this one.

Hi all! Sorry, I was talking to a few of you then got sick and slammed with work, and forgot what was going on. But now it's three days until spring break and I seem to have hit a wall with this midterm paper so onto TGC it is! As a current UT student and TA, I don't know anyone who spends 20 hours a week on their TA appointment consistently. I've only done that when I've been slammed with grading I would say under 10 is pretty consistent (3 hours for lecture, 2 for teaching, 3 for office hours very few students attend anyway). I tend to use lecture and office hours to formulate lesson plans. When is the visit weekend? I want to see you all attending at some point!

But also, congratulations to everyone getting in places and feeling awesome!!! So happy for y'all. It's really exciting, seeing it all happen again. And to my waitlisters, HOPE IS NOT GONE. I love my waitlisted kinspeople. I will pull for all of you the hardest.

Oh, by all means! In my totally non-biased and objective opinion, UT is the best program in the country. I am eager to spread the gospel. Congratulations on getting it!

AUSTIN PEOPLE. If you got in, you should come here. Unless you hate fun. We have mastered the art of kick-ass scholarship and having the best time ever. I am Thunderpaws and I will be at recruitment weekend. If you can guess who I am, you will do a shot with me. Unless you don't want to, then high-fives are acceptable. Funding at UT is mostly from teaching. Here's the thing about teaching though. We just turned down a totally awesome and perfect job applicant because he had no teaching record. Teaching is a vital part of getting a job these days, and UT makes sure you can do it well. But it doesn't do this at the expense of your research. As a first year without an MA, you TA which is 8-13 hour committement a week. Three hours of lecture, two of your teaching sections, 3 hours of office hours (which almost no one comes to so it's essentially work time for you). Somestimes you have meeting with your TA crowd, sometimes you have grading. When you become an AI (which comes with a raise) you aren't taking 3 courses as you are the first two years, so while you're responsible for your own class, you're also not dying under lots of ass-in-chair class time. The teaching load here is instructive, not suffocating, and I find the expirence very valuable. Fellowships are offered for dissertating students.

Texas people!!!! If you're waiting to hear back for waitlist stuff, the waitlist emails went out approximately a week after the acceptances last year. I don't know when the rejections went out in relations to acceptances or waitlist because after the UT acceptances went up I drunk myself into a sodden, sad stupor and only returned to TGF when I was waitlisted. I would say almost half of the incoming class as far as Lit went off in off the waitlist. The UT waitlist is a good waitlist to be on, but don't expect them to tell you anything while you're waiting. I know everything about that goddamn waitlist.

The thought of submiting applications still gives me the chills... I was procrastinating writing final papers and saw this thread and thought I'd chime in. After you submit applications, I really, really, recommend making sure that your application fee went through. Check your debit account, credit card recipt, whatever. Despite my crazy, crazy triple checking all of my materials, I somehow missed the application fee part of an application (since you, know, I was finishing like 2 a day every day for a week) and the school couldn't process my application because I realized it too late to do anything about it. It was really stupid, and I don't want anyone who repeat that horrible mistake. DON'T BE ME. Aside that, I recommend a lot of alcohol. Good luck everyone!

I agree with Marlowe and Guate. As far as support networks go, UT is incredible, both formally and informally. I met with my advisor this week (I have three subfields) and he was supportive of all the courses I wanted to take (which invovled even more subfields). I think the subfields are more for their own book-keeping than anything else. I honestly don't know if another program could come close to UT in terms of camaraderie among students. I'm blown away by it, really. If peer support is something you really want and you're applying to UT, I recommend mentioning it somewhere in your application as well. I did, and while I can't say it's one of the reasons I got in, it definitely didn't hurt me. They want people to fit into their atmosphere.

I picked my classes out, and it was like going to store and being to choose amoung all the most delicious candies. Also, now that they're grad classes my Dad has stopped making fun of them. Every semester for years he'd be all "Hitchcockian cinema and Lacanian theory? You can watch movies at home for free!"

Thanks for the warning! Ill definitely look into the tracking options.

Haha! I just discovered USmail has a book rate, for anyone else whose having issues cramming them into your suitcase, purse, cat carrier, ect.