ProfLorax

YAYAYAYAYAY!

Thanks for responding, crazyhappy! It's brilliant to bring a helper, and I imagine my mom or my partner would be happy to do the job. Glad to know it's possible!

I'm so happy this thread exists! My partner and I are hoping to get pregnant this summer. However, because these things are inherently uncertain (who knows if it will happen right when we want it to happen?), I have still been submitting proposals to conferences for next year. Many of these conferences will be when (I hope) I'll be pregnant or right after I have had the baby. Anyone have stories about attending conferences while pregnant? Or having to back out of a conference because of pregnancy? Or going to a conference within a few months after the baby is born? For the last question, I'm especially curious how new mothers balance the demands of nursing with travel to conferences. Thanks, all!

Congrats, Coffeecreve! One thing to consider when weighing funding options is cost of living. $25K in NYC may not go as far as $16K in Madison. (I'm totally making these numbers up, btw, and really have no idea what the funding offers are!) To second peachypie: Visit! Visiting can really open your eyes to the culture of the environment.

My favorite part of this poem is that it is your first post! Welcome! And good luck with Purdue!

Oh thanks for the list! If you click "View All Results," Maryland is on the list, as is Boulder. ETA: I spent like ten minutes figuring that list out because how could not a single UC be on it? But they are, indeed, just on the third page. It's not a very clear website design!

I'm unfamiliar with RU/VH vs. RU/H, but Maryland and Colorado (at Boulder) are both R1's. My impression is that R1's have more support and resources for research as an institution, and that R2's focus more on teaching undergraduates. But it's important to note that the R1 or R2 designation is based on the institution as a whole. English Departments within some R2 institutions may have department-specific resources and funding that rival those at an R1.

Gosh, I hope so! Or else my "Congrats!" email will be the first she's heard of it. Ha! UMD is super super closed today. The DGS (Ralph) has been the one making the calls, and while he does most of his DGS work in the office, I have no idea if he'll be making calls from home today. My guess is no because everyone was pretty excited about the snow-induced "long weekend!" Are you snowed in today? I'm in DC, and we got maybe a foot of snow. I am stoked about the snow day, but my dog is pretty sure it's the apocalypse.

Hey allllll! I just got some news. My professor emailed us about a new recruit as of tonight, so Maryland is definitely still admitting folks!

My MA was unfunded, and I paid for it via Cal Grants, a small fellowship, some part-time jobs, and loans. Fortunately, it was at SFSU, and I am a California resident. I came out of the program with $20,000 in debt. I have no regrets; I taught for three years at a community college (a job I absolutely LOVED) and am now quite happy at a great program. That being said, I hear what JLRC is saying. Debt should not be taken lightly. There are lots of conflicting ideas about how to succeed in academia. I try to listen to various opinions, weigh all the options, then make the best decision for me.

Let's just let the facts stand for themselves. Like ComeBackZinc suggests, look at the type of institution you'd like to join. See where their NEW faculty are graduating from. We can look at Maryland's recent TT hiring. Not all of us want to end up at an R1, but it's an example. Here are where the final candidates received their PhDs. African American Studies: University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Rhet/Comp: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Miami University, the Ohio State, and Maryland (she taught somewhere else for a few years before getting asked back to interview) African-American Literature: Duke, Duke, and UPenn. Thems the facts. Hate it or love it, but UMD seems to select candidates from high ranked programs. Also, I've noticed that folks have been accused of being elitist or overly cynical for constantly bringing up the job market. The reality is that the job market, adjunctification, and the changing role of Humanities are what we are talking about within our programs and our professional organizations everyday. No one here endorses the power of prestige or the horrific job market; it's just the reality of our profession. If we want to change the reality of our profession, we have to first confront it. When you are visiting programs, if the department doesn't explicitly talk about how they will prepare you for the job market, ask. Ask what professionalization opportunities they offer. Ask if they hire recent PhD's as lecturers while they are on the job market. Ask if they offer funding for job interviews. Any ethical humanities PhD program should be doing these things. At the end of the day, go to a program that will make you happy, foster positive connections, motivate you to produce excellent work, and position you well for the job market.

I think I love you.

BowTiesAreCool, I love that you remember! Yes, that is absolutely the case; I had figured I would choose one of the bigger rhet/comp programs, but the Maryland visit did indeed sweep me away, and I'm really happy I came out. History was made! Academicat: I learned a lot about various rhet/comp programs through the application and decision-making process last year, so I would be happy to talk to you via PM, Skype, or email about your specific program options and your priorities. And remember, it's early yet-- you very well may have more than two programs to visit by March!

In my observation, the tension isn't between lit and rhet/comp because of the cash cow aspect or the content aspect; that was certainly the case in the past, as you can read about in Stephen North's The Making of Knowledge in Composition. Rather, the growing rift in English Departments, and one we should be aware of as academic workers, is between contingent faculty and administration (with TT faculty siding with one group or another or none at all). Comp classes tend to be taught by adjunct labor, however with the market as it is today, those teachers are not all rhet/comp scholars, but also lit MA and PhD's and creative writing MFA's. Furthermore, the majority of teaching staff in English departments is contingent. If you followed the live tweeting from MLA 2014, you probably noticed that lots of resentment and discussion came out of the low attendance on the panel about contingent faculty. Concurrently, a shadow conference emerged, MLA Subconference, that confronted labor issues and the trajectory of English and other humanities departments. One crisis always seems to either help us resolve a former conflict or at least ignore it for the time being. Any sense of competition between literature and rhet/comp as areas of study has lessened as the concerns about labor issues and quality of life take center stage.

Congrats, scuttlebutt! PM me any questions you have about Maryland. I'm in my second semester of the PhD program here, and I'm happy to talk about my experiences here! Will you be at the visit day? I have no insider info about how many spots, but our incoming classes tend to be small. Last year, nine were accepted into the PhD program; eight of us accepted Maryland's offer, and no one was pulled off the wait list. However, we have a different DGS us this year, so the process may be a bit different (though I doubt the numbers will drastically change).

Ah, thank you! Glad to add some levity to the boards. Puppies make everything better!

BowTiesAreCool, here is my remedy to the angst. Hope it helps. (Can you tell I have a cold, and am therefore avoiding doing all and any work right now?) GRAD SCHOOL APPLICATIONS: As told by puppies. You started this cycle by throwing yourself into your applications, reaching for the dream of an acceptance letter. Applications took everything you had, leaving you in a dazed state. Now, you are on the waiting period, moving frantically with no destination in sight... Trying to find ways to distract yourself from your email... And attacking any friend or family member who claims confidently, "You're gonna get into all the schools!" But eventually you'll hear some good news, and you will love the DGS more than you've ever loved anyone before. It's pretty much the greatest feeling, the feeling of being wanted. Then, in a few months time, you'll be starting the PhD student journey alongside new friends who are nervous, thrilled, and curious, just like you. And if it doesn't happen this year, it will happen when it's time. Lots of us here had multiple rounds before ending up where we wanted. Until then, here are a bunch of puppies to make the waiting easier.

I meant to upvote Jazzy's response, but instead upvoted myself, so now I look like an egomaniac. Damn you, upvote quotas! *shakes fists in air*

That is 100% what my paper is on! I make some references to #NotYourAsianSideKick and #feministselflies as well. Gah, I love Twitter.

This. Absolutely, 100% this. You're cool. I wish you had applied to Maryland! I do some work with feminist discourses in online spaces. In a few months, I will be presenting a paper on resistant hashtags in U.S. queer and feminist digital spaces. You should PM me when you're in a program and settled-- we could put together a panel or co-write a paper in the future! YAY CONNECTIONS!

Last year, someone posted an acceptance to Maryland. I still hadn't heard anything. A day went by. Nothing. Another day. Yet another day. By this point, I was lying to myself and my partner, claiming that I never really wanted to go to Maryland anyway. I had other options, anyway, so who cared about stupid Maryland? The next day, I got the "you're in!" call while at work. I did a little dance, a quiet celebratory yell, and texted my partner right away. And now, I am very happily at Maryland. A few weeks ago, I told this story to some of my cohort. My friend confessed that the first post was hers, and she wasn't notified as so much as she called the office to inquire on her status, so she found out before the rest of us did. The rest of the acceptances came days later, when they were actually planned to come out. That first post was not an evil plan, nor a conspiracy to strike fear in the hearts of applicants everywhere. Nope. Just humans being human. Some programs have the DGS contact each applicant, and while I imagine those calls can be fun, they must also be exhausting-- so they space them out. Others have POI's contact accepted applicants on their own time. Some have rolling admissions (Purdue is notorious for this) and never let you know you're on the wait list. There is no method to the madness, unless you consider the quirkiness, randomness, and nonsense of human beings and bureaucracy a method. Breathe! It's early yet. And when it comes, take the time to enjoy the first "yes." For me at least, it was the best one.

My research is on the rhetoric of social movements, and while working as a professor is my ultimate goal, I constantly think about how I could explain my work to make it appealing to non-profits, progressive think-tanks, and political organizations. I also have this fantasy of teaming up with my partner, a software engineer, to design literacy software for adults.

Congratulations on your acceptance! A few days ago, there was another thread here that had some solid suggestions for questions to ask. The conversation was here: Good luck!

I just double-checked, and my first notification (an acceptance) didn't come until Feb 13, so don't lose hope if you don't hear anything for the next two weeks! Hell, Arizona and Miami didn't notify until March.

Me too! It will be my first time at Computers and Writing, and I'm seriously stoked. STOKED! See you there!