shortstack51

Could the Clark U interview PM me your POI if it's not too much trouble? Thanks!

Edit: Oops. I just realized the original post is from two months ago. I'll leave the post here in case it helps anyone. First, I'd encourage you not to compare yourself to how your peers in the program seem to be doing. Grad students are exceptionally good at faking their own confidence, but remember that grad students are one of the highest risk populations for depression and stress-related mental health issues. Your peers might put on a brave face, but they could easily be sitting in the car crying after seminar or something. Also, your program seems to be moving pretty quickly. You were teaching your first year and then immediately taking comps? That's a lot to cram into a year. I started teaching at the beginning of my program and have 2 years worth of coursework (I also already came in with an MA), and I'm just starting to prepare for comps now halfway through my 2nd year. So that amount of work is exhausting and I wouldn't blame yourself for feeling overwhelmed by it. It doesn't have to do with intelligence. Writing is hard. Grad school is hard. There will be dark moments. I know I have them occasionally, especially at the end of the semester. But as I told a friend of mine who was having a hard time, there will also be good days. Though you don't feel comfortable confiding in other grad students, I'd also see if you could find someone a year or so ahead of you with interests at least somewhat similar to yours and ask if you could look at their prospectus. You could always lie and say you just want to see if you've done t right if you don't want to reveal that you haven't been able to get much done. One of my office mates, who also just finished her exams and is now struggling through the prospectus, did that and she said it's been helping her a lot. She asked for a prospectus from someone who ended up winning a fellowship for the dissertation project. In my department, at least, the exams are supposed to function as a way to start thinking about what will go in the dissertation and what texts will go in the dissertation (the exams are entirely written and are done at home over the course of 3 days--the average exam is 30-40 pages in length at the end). Once you've rested, which I agree is completely vital before you think about anything else, maybe look through whatever you did for your exams and see if there's something there that interests you. Resting and then returning to a project with new eyes is really the best way I've found to go about it. Reread some passages you found interesting without your exam lenses on, maybe. I haven't written my prospectus so I don't know what the best technique is for it, but it's always stressed in my department that the exams are there to help you determine your dissertation project. It's okay to get burnt out. It's okay to feel miserable. It doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't right for grad school, but it might mean that grad school isn't right for you. Your mental and physical health is more important than your grad work. (I know that this can actually be an unpopular opinion, but I honestly believe that it is much better to take time off and recoup and potentially be late with something than to force yourself to keep working. It's the only way I get by. I always designate at least one day a week where I do nothing related to graduate school.)

Edit: oops. This website is running slowly for me. Accidentally posted as a result. If you mean the school psychology interviews, my SO got an interview for the MA/sixth-year program, which seems to be sending out interviews similarly to the PhD program. If anyone has different information, please feel free to correct me. My SO got a general e-mail with a form letter, but her name was added in.

Cross-posting this from the interview thread, just to see if folks here would have any thoughts. My SO received an interview invitation from UConn's 3 year MA/Sixth-year program, which she's excited about. I'm hoping that the interview goes well (will be in about 6-7 weeks). I'm impressed that they've made it through a decent number of applications already, especially if anyone on the admissions committee is teaching this semester, since it's currently finals time. We haven't been able to find much information about the percentage of acceptance based on interviews.

My SO got an interview at UConn for school psychology (3 year MA/Sixth-Year program), with an option to choose between two dates for the interview.

So this is a bit premature, as I'm just about to start my PhD, but it's something my fiancee and I have been talking about and I'd just like some feedback as we ruminate on it because it might change how I approach the job market. (I thought about putting this in City Guide but I settled on this forum because my questions mostly concern working) Once I have my PhD in 5 years, I'm considering moving to the Netherlands. My fiancee has family there and we've always found the idea appealing. I've done some minor research into how people with PhDs in the Humanities from American universities fare in the Netherlands, and they seem to do fairly well. My biggest concern is being able to make my huge student loan payments once I start working. I'll have a PhD in English from UCONN, which isn't a top-ranked school by USNR but is by NRC standards (via The Chronicle), so I'm not sure if that would hurt my chances (will they have only heard of places like Harvard or Princeton? will it matter if they aren't extremely familiar with the university?). I also don't know what the overall job market is like. How is it compared to the states for those holding a PhD in a field in the humanities? I've read about new liberal arts programs that are apparently weeding out some of the problematic issues that traditional institutions have. I know that the promotion system works somewhat differently, though I've read that they are beginning to move to a tenure track system. Is it true that they tend to run most programs in English (I wouldn't be opposed to learning Dutch--I took German for 8 years and I can mostly understand Dutch as a result, but I would prefer to teach in English since I won't be fluent in Dutch)? Also, has anyone else made the move? How was the adjustment, etc.? My fiancee and I are both women and it seems we would maybe feel a bit more comfortable being out and about there than in the US, but that might be because we're only familiar with the cities in the Netherlands. Her grandparents were Dutch and were extremely conservative, but they also immigrated to the US in the 40s. If it matters, we tend to be the sort who would prefer a longer commute if it means having a bigger place.

Is the 3.5 cumulative undergrad, major undergrad, or MA? If it's cum undergrad, you should be ok. A 3.6 is generally the desired GPA, but I'm pretty sure plenty of people from these boards have gotten accepted with less.

Most schools have an off campus housing listing site where people post that they're looking for roommates, etc. That's how I found my roommate last year- I ended up living with a psych student. Also, Craigslist isn't terrible. I found a decent enough guy on there once (I'm a woman and very tiny). Basically, make sure to talk to whomever it is on the phone first, maybe meet up ahead of time if you can. You should be ok.

As far as I know, most programs require that you become an in state resident after the first year, so you might as well I guess (Yale actually makes you live in New Haven for at least 3 years--which is super specific).

I'm an English grad student, so I hope you don't mind if I contribute. Our reading loads seem to be roughly similar (as one would expect). We typically get either a novel a week for a course or the equivalent of a novel a week if we're reading poetry (or a play a week). They are usually accompanied by three or so secondary sources, which include journal articles or chapters from a longer critical work (adding up to roughly 100 pages of secondary reading typically). At my current MA program, you take 3 courses a semester, so the reading load can feel quite heavy on top of working/teaching (I am looking forward to my PhD program, where the course load is 3-2 and teaching load is 1-1). When approaching secondary sources, which I imagine make up the bulk of the reading in history courses based on the comments here, the most important sections are, as others have said, the introduction and the conclusion. From there, I typically read the first few pages of each chapter to understand what each one is contributing to the argument. If there is one that I believe contains a key concept, I will read that chapter in full. Sometimes I also read the first half of the chapter and then flip to the last few pages of it to see where the author concludes. Other strategies include speedreading, where I force my eyes to move very quickly over the text. I usually retain about 80% of the material (depending on if I am able to focus while doing so). Other than that, I try to pick up on 2-3 key points/motifs that I believe are integral to what I need from the text (or what the course needs) and try to skim for those points/motifs throughout. Also, having camaraderie with your fellow classmates helps. If you don't do all the reading, you can speak with a classmate and see what they may have gotten out of the reading that you may have missed. Also, if the seminars run in history like they do in lit courses, the course will be primarily driven by class discussion. In this case, you will definitely have some freedom to discover what 5-10 other people retained from the reading. If they bring up a point you may have missed, mark down the page number and return to it later. I also have the opportunity to read during my morning commute since I live in a city and take public transportation, which is valuable since I work 3 jobs and am taking 3 courses. I agree that if the book is important to your field, read as much as possible. Also, journal articles, at least in literature, tend to be much more theoretically dense than the longer works we read, so I usually devote more time to them because they're harder to skim (due to taking longer to comprehend).

This--I still have access to my undergrad electronic library thanks to some helpful friends. If you know anyone with access, hopefully they will let you use their info (I can't imagine why they wouldn't). Subscribing to JSTOR is a pretty confusing process, at least from what I'm looking at. They do apparently have free options that you can access. You can access up to 78 articles a year for free if you create a myJSTOR account. http://about.jstor.org/rr They also have something called a "JPASS" now, which lets you sign up for monthly or yearly subscriptions to access 80% of the archive (you need to create a myJSTOR account in order to view this option). MLA, I'm not sure about. Are you talking about the MLA international bibliography? It always worked as a portal to other online databases for me rather than a database in itself.

Thankfully, the school I ended up at is actually in the state we were planning to get married in in the first place, so there's not too much extra work for us (plus we are getting married in 2015). Kudos to you, though, toasterazzi! I think I'd explode if I was getting married and moving at the same time.

My fiancée and I are actually moving this weekend because our current lease is up and we found a place we like. After that we are staying with a friend for the last 2 weeks of class. Other than that it is trying to find work (it looks like I'll be freelancing) and getting set up. We also have to start looking at wedding venues...!

Unfortunately there aren't any Institute positions in CT, but the freelance option looks pretty good. Thanks for the replies! I will try freelancing and see if I can make enough doing that, and if it doesn't work out I can temp as a back up.

So I'm trying to find work over the summer, and I wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions before I resign myself to temping (or something equally soul crushing). My problem is that there aren't a lot of seasonal jobs and the ones that are seasonal are usually minimum wage and/or get snatched up by high schoolers willing to work for less. (Since I'll be starting a program in fall, I obviously can't work past summer. Most places that know you're going into a program ask specifically if you can keep working through fall because they don't want short term employees.) I tried applying to three or four online adjunct positions but I only heard back from one that said they were unable to offer me a position. The community colleges near me have already filled up available slots for comp/lit classes. Local libraries don't have the budget to hire temporary/seasonal appointments either. I need to make at least 250 a week to comfortably pay rent and utilities (and that's an absolute minimum--3 or 400 would be preferred), which is why I may have to temp. Unless I want to work at a camp, but been there, done that, and not interested in having to work alongside high schoolers again. Does anyone have any suggestions?