mvlchicago
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Posts posted by mvlchicago
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That is to say, if you don't hear after the second email, assume the faculty member in question is being deliberate.
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1 hour ago, ToomuchLes said:
I emailed a POI a month ago and never received a reply. I briefly introduced myself, mentioned my plans to apply to the program, and then concluded by asking if the POI was accepting new graduate students. When should I send a second email? I would like to know, for sure, if each POI that I selected is accepting a new grad student, which is the purpose of my emails.
EDIT: Just to be clear, there is no information on the website or their page.
Two emails sounds like a good number. As a lowly grad student I've definitely missed/overlooked emails the first time people sent them.
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2/10 topic
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It's a rule of thumb tho, like I break it often but it works for 95% of students so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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On 7/29/2016 at 9:07 PM, novazembla said:
Hi everyone! I'm applying to a bunch of PhD programs for fall 2017, focusing on modern East Central Europe. The universities I'm applying to have pretty wildly divergent requirements for the length of the writing sample, ranging from ten pages (!!) to thirty pages to "Just send the whole thing with the understanding that we probably won't read all of it if it's too long". I have a 50-page research paper that I want to use as the basis for the writing samples. I'm wondering if it's okay for me to send an excerpt from this paper to the schools requesting shorter samples that's very obviously an excerpt, or do I have to re-form it into something that would pass as a stand-alone thing? Professors I've talked to have told me that sending an excerpt is okay, but I'd like the input of others, too.
I'm also completely at sea about the statement of purpose. Can anyone point me to any sample SOPs for history? I know that's lame, but that sort of thing really helps me. I know what my purpose is, I just am not sure how to go about writing it and it's making me a little crazy.
Generally speaking, if your faculty are telling you to send an excerpt, you should send an excerpt.
This isn't a truism; you'll have many moments as a student where your advisor is giving you advice and other people are saying things that go against it. A general rule of thumb: your advisor knows more about you than anyone else, and their advice should be weighted as such. -
I also want to say that like, I totally get wanting to revive interests and try different things. But also recognize that this isn't a light hobby for everyone involved in the process: many of us are trying to get a first career off the ground for amounts of money so low that they would be illegal if we were considered "employees." Upon receiving a first tenure track job, many people feel pressure to sit down and shut up until they attain tenure, and even after that, until they've landed jobs in cities or regions they'd actually like to live. And then, maybe after all that, enjoy the small amount of recognition they've been able to hobble together.
Having worked with some older students and networked with some people in the finance sector, I find that when I say I do history, they have an imagined sense of a glorious life I live, full of cushy armchairs, old documents, and untold amounts of truth. While I feel very lucky to have the position I do currently (and good about my prospects down the road), I'm trying to tell you guys that this isn't a hobby. It's a job. And with a job comes job stress and frustration and anger.
Best of luck in the process~- pyramidstuds, charlemagne88, TMP and 1 other
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Why? Honestly the job market's crowded enough as is. What is pulling you to do history at this point in your life?
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Have you spoken to your advisors from undergrad? Depending on how long you've been out, they might have some useful advice about what programs should be on your radar. Reputation only goes so far as the quality of your instructors and their networks are involved.
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plus like I've seen professors "working" on a book for some two decades do you really want to wait for that book to come out? Obviously this is more dependent on the topic of the book/professor involved but I think you should let your POIs evaluate this for you since they know the field and people better.
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dw about it. Are you guys the same person? I don't think there's much chance you guys will produce the exact same thing
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So it begins! If any of y'all have questions about Brown feel free to message me
~~First year going on second -
I'll be at Yale working on Native language work, then back to my archive in Providence.
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As an addendum: don't feel like you ned to use the same part for each school. My interest in certain schools was somewhat different than my interest in other ones, and I gave them writing samples that reflected the best parts for those interests.
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TBH (and my preference for economic/class orientations is showing here) I don't think following the money is ever the worst choice. Worst case scenario? You drop out with an MA in hand from an excellent school, no accrued debt.
Worst case scenario with your dream MA? You don't get a job or a PhD offer after you finish your MA, you have warm fuzzy experience, but also now owe the school 60k+ for having those experiences. -
I mean, I don't think any set of top-20ish schools we could give you would be particularly surprising: if you get a degree from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Berkeley, or Chicago, you're probably doing pretty well for yourself regardless of your job specifics (call those the bomb schools maybe?)
Then the type of schools that are in a similar tier but definitely below (Johns Hopkins, Stanford? don't have a good read whether Stanford should be up there or here, Wisconsin-Madison, Columbia, Brown, Penn, NYU, UT-Austin) are ones where the "fit" of their program to what a job is hiring matters more.
The nice thing about being in history is that stat and econ people like using the history discipline to do analytical work for the broader job market (since history arguably has implications for humanities and the social sciences). So studies often at least tell us who is getting hired effectively and can not some schools that go under-the-radar in common discourse.
Of course, the problem with any and all these arguments is that it's difficult to parse institutional networks from personal ones. So let's say person A is a professor at UArizona and person B is a professor at Harvard, both in Reformation history. If person A is the top Reformation historian in the world, person A's students will do remarkably well, even compared to person B's students. The problem is that this example doesn't appear to come up very often; more likely the top historians with the best type of networks end up being at name-brand schools. This, in turn, gives the illusion that something intrinsic to the school makes them good at producing incredible historians, when in actuality it's the people.
This is why the advice of contacting POIs, and talking to your advisors and current department is so important; because at the end of the day, you don't want data on institutions, you want data on people. -
A colleague and former instructor's first book came out about a month ago: Network Aesthetics by Patrick Jagoda. Especially worthwhile for the historian who is interested in reflecting on how "network" has suddenly become ubiquitous in historical writing.
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Brown's up to 27k, full medical and dental, and word on the streets is that they'll be unveiling guaranteed 6 year funding sometime in the next 6 to 18 months. Life is good here in the PVD.
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crescat scientia, vita excolatur
. You'll love the experience!
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I would second Ohio State. Alcira Duenas is currently a JCB fellow and she is absolutely phenomenal as a human being also very smart 10/10.
Byron Hamann is there too albeit in art history and precolonial to colonial, but the dude is incredibly resourceful and I could only imagine a very helpful perspective on one's dissertation.
I'd also put a small plug in for Brown, mostly because our Latin American faculty have gotten fairly deep over the past three or four years, and the Modern Culture and Media and Africana Studies allow for some more coverage in regards to your interdisciplinary concerns.
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2 hours ago, displayname said:
First, these posters are all grad students and recent PhDs, the same people that each of us have talked to when we were looking for advice about entering a certain program or pursuing a certain degree. So, in some situations, we do trust that they have "concern for our well-being." It seems that trust only breaks down when the information being communicated-- like job market stats--is undesirable. This trust also appears to hinge on the status of the messenger. Ashiepoo said something interesting earlier in this thread about arming ourselves with information, "the well-meant warnings from professors and also the snarky and bitter warnings from many others." This repeats an idea that's been presented here many times: we all know this, our professors told us, we don't need to hear it repeated here. To do so is, simply, cynical, negative, or (most oddly) driven by ulterior motives. Oftentimes, when the information comes from professors, the professors are celebrated for being honest. When it comes from others (current students and adjuncts/postdocs), they are derided. Does this trouble anyone else?
Finally (with apologies for repeating something I said elsewhere): I understand that the value of the humanities is, in part, to learn how to treat one another more humanely. So, why, I wonder, are grad students all-too-quick to dismiss the idea that one PhD might simply be concerned for his/her colleagues?
We don't actually know who these people are, that's how anonymity works. I'm open about my identity because frankly, I find the politics of negotiating departments tedious and a poison pill (do I really want to be tenure track in a department that hates either my views or how I express them?) I know other people who, after a few messages, are also open about who they are. These are exceptional. The majority of posters on this forum come here expecting us to have answers for all their problems or to vent about their anxieties and frustrations with the system, after which they go on their ways. This is fine. People find anonymity helpful for easing their concerns that potential advisors and colleagues would judge them for personal or social perspectives. (This also says nothing about the people who don't have accounts and lurk for whatever intel they can find.)
However, lackluster anonymity also has its drawbacks, namely in one's credibility. When five-post people create threads with titles like "RECENT AHA RESULTS WE ARE ALL DOOMED," many times they do so as though it wasn't a discussion that has happened about twelve times in the past year. Newsflash: It has. And many of the threads that I respond to with these types of comments are the threads that offer nothing new.
What number of posts tells us in a nutshell is how much an account belongs to this community. If someone with one hundred posts makes a similar thread here, it is likely because they are aware of the discussions that have happened in the past and have something new to offer. This system is irrelevant to the position of the person offline (which is one of the glories of anonymity.) Prof. Plum, if I recall correctly, has something like 1k+ posts and a very high reputation from the quality of those posts. If someone with the account "FULLPROFESSORATCOOLSCHOOL" and three posts wants to offer something, I don't actually care until they've done the work of being part of this forum or they're willing to show their hand (Which field? What school?). This is how Internet communities function. This is even how most offline communities function.
This isn't trying to create some community of elite posters. It's just asking you to put in some modicum of effort prior to asking us for a discussion.- Chiqui74, Riotbeard and ashiepoo72
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My only point is that the data are fundamentally skewed, and that if one wants to really discuss this, the AHA should develop differential data between US historians and everyone else (ideally, per field, but pragmatically, "everyone else"). Are jobs scarce? Yes. Are jobs equally scarce? No. Is one specific subset biasing the entirety of the set such that generalizations about the state of affairs are impacted? Absolutely.
In other words, if you're an East Asian historian graduating from Berkeley (or more generally, a non-US historian graduating from the top 1-2 programs in your field), you're probably fine so long as there exists a single job on the market. If you're a US historian from the top program for your field, a similar claim is not sustainable.- anxietygirl and ashiepoo72
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Fall 2017 applicants
in History
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it's a fit thing too. Most of these people are best friends or at least good colleagues; if School A knows School X, which is a perfect fit for you, is going to make you an offer, School A is unlikely to pursue you.