ciistai

Most of my apps are for archaeology, although I've been hiding out on the Classics board til now. Hi everyone! Good luck to you all!

The admissions committee for one of my top choices is meeting today. Cannot focus at all. I'm at work and getting no ACTUAL work done. I'm also working on a research paper due in April and am making very little progress with regard to my actual research... so hard to pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes. Solidarity, everyone! Good luck!

I feel like this upcoming week is going to be a big one. Maybe your restless despair won't last much longer!

Gah! Thank you! I don't know why I never thought of using Skype to CALL the offices... which would get a quicker response than email, I'd imagine! Good luck to you as well!

My desired program at St Andrews has told me that they have neither of my two letters of reference (both sent earlier this week) and my desired program at Cardiff says they're missing one (sent earlier this week as well). I feel bad harassing my referees to send yet another copy of their letters to the actual School if it's really just a matter of the Office of Admissions (to whom the referees were instructed to email their letters) sending them over. But now I'm worried that there will be some sort of colossal delay before Admissions sends them over. Which shouldn't be too hard! They're in electronic format for goodness sake! I've emailed both admissions offices but heard nothing back. Should I just bite the bullet and ask my profs to send their letters to the schools directly? I already feel bad for having asked so many letters of them (9) and I struggled a lot with one of them (sending letters late, etc.) and I am just so frustrated with wrestling with this LOR thing but I'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience and if you have any words of advice as to what the best option might be here.

Perhaps soon after IPCAA!

No idea about IPGRH!

Not at all! I am being very realistic about this haha. I mean, I am assuming the worst! I'm pleased he's interested enough to ask for further details like that at any rate.

Is it? I have no idea how to interpret that ahhh. I just feel like even though I applied to the program I was kind of resigned to the fact that I wouldn't get in but now this is giving me a stupid little spark of hope that I wasn't planning on having! Eek! I need to take my mind off of this... but at least we know now when they're meeting. I'd wondered if they already had.

Got an email from the Director - he wants me to send in a paper I wrote in my third year. It's listed on my CV because I was given a departmental prize for it. IPCAA is in my top two dream programs. This has just made me so nervous I might be physically ill. I guess this is neither a bad sign nor a good one.

IPCAA committee is meeting on Monday...

Bahahahahaha I love this. Am I the only one obsessively refreshing the results page? Even though I know my decisions probably won't come for another few weeks.

This is probably the oldest one in the book but while in Prague this past summer I told someone I study Latin and he asked if that makes it easier to travel through Latin America... and he was being sincere!!

I think I might have a PDF of an Oscan text on my computer somewhere if you're interested... ditto Umbrian... I can have a look, although I'd like to see what Fockatar recommends! I took out these massive books on Italic dialects from my uni library but it was at a bad time and I didn't manage to get through them.

Mainly Lucania 4th-1st centuries BCE but more broadly I am interested in anything pre-Roman, esp. identity, state formation, urban growth/ structure. I feel like my thoughts about this are still very abstract which is causing me problems... I think my SOPs for arch programs all say something slightly different. I'm currently enrolled in a colloquium on archaic Latium so I'm starting to develop a lot of interest there... and, of course, like anyone with intrest in Italic peoples, I do have a soft spot for Samnites. But Lucania is so interesting to me because its geographical position resulted in a lot of influence from other surrounding cultures, lots of getting caught up in Roman political affairs. I was actually supposed to dig in Lucania last summer, in Roccagloriosa, during the last two weeks of my field school, but they had some anomalous readings for the site where we planned to start (and leave after the first two weeks), so the Town of Cortona gave extra funding on the condition we'd stay there to work on the new area of the site for the full four weeks. Would have been nice; hoping to get more field experience during my graduate career... or if I don't get in anywhere, then before that! I've also applied to some history programs but I would likely still focus heavily on regional identities in ancient Italy. What about you?

I feel like a bit of an odd one out in this thread but I'm on the archaeological side of things myself.

Also Humanities student (Classics) and didn't email anyone besides a professor whom I already knew from doing field work at an institution that wasn't my undergraduate uni - but then again the app for that school required me to make some contact with my POI. Otherwise, as an MA applicant I felt much the same way - I would be working/ learning from many profs so there's no point in pestering them to just jump up and down and wave my hands to get them to know I exist if I didn't have a specific question. I did attend a big conference in January and didn't do much networking there either... it's THAT I'm regretting, not the emails!

GAH. I've applied to IPCAA. My nervous level has just skyrocketed...

I tend to be pretty forgiving about films about the ancient world - especially since my interest in ancient history came from watching The Mummy when I was 10, of all places, so I have to thank Hollywood for potentially drawing in the next generation of Classicists and archaeologists - but most video games are absolutely atrocious, especially Roman-themed ones. Drives me mad! Although I do enjoy the Civ games... the only exceptions!

File limits for transcript scans were a nightmare indeed! I was also annoyed with Cardiff's character limit on the SOP (instead of word or page limit which would be so much more practical). Not to mention Oxford's request for two writing samples of 2,000 words which I found really frustrating; my best undergraduate work were two papers that were nearly 30 pages long (they were term-long research projects) and selecting an excerpt took way more effort than I appreciated having to spend.

Personal statements, by far. I'm not very good at saying good things about myself! I'm worried enough that I won't get anywhere and it's resulted in a lot of difficulties in writing something to convince a group of strangers that I'm qualified for their programs...

I'm of the opinion that any film or TV show about the ancient world is hokey Although I'm not sure if they're getting better or worse lately... Clash of the Titans (the recent remake) was definitely cringeworthy. I never ever say this about films but I really did want my money back for that one.

Agora is indeed about Hypatia - it's quite good, sadly wasn't showing in many theatres. Rachel Weisz is magnificent.

Do you like Spartacus? There are a lot of inaccuracies so it's not your cup of tea if those send you into a rage, but I love the show - I feel like it depicts very seriously (and accurately) a lot of the realities of slavery in the ancient world. The cast is also very diverse with many persons of colour playing main characters and apart from some instances I would say the representation of queer individuals is very good. At first I thought it was super cheesy but I can't get enough of that show now. (It's too bad Andy Whitfield passed away :[ ) Also - delurking since results are coming in soon. Hi everyone, and good luck!

Thank you for the information about writing these! I am a bit confused by something though. UMich asks for a personal statement AND a statement of purpose; I find this very confusing! What you've discussed is what I thought a personal statement was, and I was under the impression that the statement of purpose was a more specific research outline. I am struggling to understand the difference. I have already written a research proposal for a funding application I recently submitted and I was considering using most of that as my statement of purpose. But now I'm not so sure...