toasterazzi

Looking forward to seeing whichever ones of you are coming to see us at OSU on Monday . My advice?: Take it easy. Have fun. Ask questions. There'll be a bunch of us around to answer the questions (Also to eat free food. But **mostly** to answer the questions haha).

I don't post very often anymore (#gradschoollife lol), but I did want to come through to say congrats to everybody accepted/waitlisted at OSU! If you have any OSU/Columbus-related questions, feel free to send them my way

My department accepts ASL to meet the requirement, but I know some folks in other departments here who've had to fight to get their department to accept it for their requirement.

At Indiana State, where I got my MA, we taught two classes per semester starting with the first semester. It was possible to subsequently opt out after that first semester and be a tutor instead, which is an option that some people took. For me, as someone who got a BA in English Education and who was coming off teaching middle school, I didn't find the adjustment particularly difficult, but some folks in my cohort did. My advice if you're nervous? Make good use of the resources. There are hella pedagogical resources both online and in books. Beyond that, to me, it's just a matter of practice. Here at OSU, we do one class per semester (unless you're on fellowship, have an equivalent assistantship, etc). In every class I've taught at the college level, I've been the instructor of record except one. And though it requires more work, I much prefer to be the instructor of record. Being a discussion section leader was a very strange experience imo. Fun (?) fact: I got paid less to teach two classes than I do to teach one class ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just now seeing this. Welcome! We're glad to have you

Very glad to hear that you all enjoyed the visit. We certainly enjoyed having you here

Looking forward to seeing you all soon! As I said on the acceptances thread, feel free to send any of your OSU/Columbus questions my way as well. Particularly, my wheelhouse is the pop culture/media studies/digital media corner of the department, so if you're into that stuff, hit me up FWIW I live in the Old North area, which is between campus & Clintonville, pretty accessible via the bus, and decently affordable in most instances.

Hey everyone! Just wanted to slide in with a hearty congrats/(possible) welcome to everyone who got in at OSU. It's been a while since I've posted, so for a refresher, I'm a 3rd year PhD Candidate (I just finished exam a couple of months ago). I primarily study television, film, and pop culture. If you have any questions about the program, the department, the university, funding, Columbus, etc, feel free to send them my way. And I look forward to meeting you all at the visit day!

So my undergrad degree is English Education & my MA is in English & American Literature. But my actual areas of interest are TV, Film, & Pop Culture. Now there are a lot of different programs in which a person can do such work, including a lot of English programs. Because of my background, I applied to mostly English programs. And part of why I picked Ohio State is because it is such a huge program that values of variety of fields, including TV/Film/Pop Culture. Though I do love reading, I have found myself pretty adverse to the canon over the years, so I feel you there. I did have to take some lit classes for my MA, many of which were in British literature (which is about as far away from my reading interests as you can get), and some of those classes were enjoyable while others were...er...they were classes that I took haha. I didn't have to really take much in the way of required lit classes for my PhD because all of my reqs were met by my MA. But back to the test. OSU does not require the subject test. In fact, I didn't apply to any schools that did require the subject test. Some of them said you could send the score optionally, and I just opted right on out of that. It's true that a fair amount of the higher ranked schools do require the subject test, but rank wasn't ever one of my top priorities. I focused more on finding schools that aligned with my interests, and I got lucky enough that I apply to six of those without having to take an extra test. Everything I've heard about the subject test makes it sound like a pricey hassle, so if it can be avoided, I'd do so. That being said, from what I've read on the board here over the years, there seems to be a lot of variety in terms of whether people think the test score really helped or hindered them. So I guess if you find that you do have to take it, do what you have to do, but maybe try not to dwell on it too much?

I didn't take the subject test at all because the schools I applied to either didn't require it or didn't ask for it (one even explicitly said DO NOT SEND IT TO US lol). It didn't seem make a major difference one way or another.

It's a great conference! There's so many interesting panels & people are very welcoming and open in my experience. Plus, it's pretty chill (as far as conferences go). I've never been to Seattle, so I'm hoping to get some exploring in as well. Last year, the conference was in New Orleans, and that was a fabulous experience.

I'll be there too! Third year in a row. I love this conference The college that houses my department offers small grants for travel/research, so I applied and got one of those to help when I exhausted the departmental funding. I'm sure it varies from university to university, but I know on my campus at least that there are various random departments, organizations, and offices that also have additional funding available, but you have to search for it because all of that info isn't compiled in a central location.

So I did my MA from 2012-2014, and I started my PhD program in the fall of 2014. 1. When did you start preparing for the GRE Literature Subject Score? Did you study with a friend or professor? I didn't take it. Like everything I read about that test made me pretty sure that I wanted nothing to do with it. And most of the programs I was interested in didn't require it, so I skipped that one. 2. If you needed to retake the GRE to make your scores competitive, did you prep during the summer? I didn't take the GRE to apply to my MA program (wasn't required), so I attacked it for the first time when I was preparing for PhD apps. I gathered as many free resources as I could and did some intermittent studying here and there. But I would say most of my "serious" prep happened in the week leading up to the test. 3. How did you manage to work on your applications (i.e. writing samples and SOP) during a busy schedule? Or did you submit your applications after finishing your MA? I'm honestly not really sure how I made this work. I was taking three classes and teaching two classes that semester, so there was definitely a lot going on. I imagine a fair amount of whiskey was involved lol. I did keep an excel sheet with all of the important info (due dates, program reqs, etc.) and I tried to get things going as early as possible. I also made sure to give my profs as much time as possible to get the letters in. 4. Is it okay to ask a professor you work closely with to look at your writing samples, maybe even do a mock interview? I didn't do this, but I imagine it'd be totally fine.

Oh yeah! I guess I should mention that my areas of study are Film, TV, and Pop Culture, so if any of y'all are in those areas, fill free to hit me up with questions about that as well

The funny thing about this is that I tried to just say Ohio State University when I introduced myself to people at a national conference last year, and folks kept correcting me haha.