Bleep_Bloop

Thank you both for the replies! I tried googling for advice on blogs or websites related to the profession but hadn't come up with much. It's reassuring to get similar advice regarding the breadth of applications. Most students I've talked to about this have given me a quizzical look and wondered why I wouldn't apply to any opening remotely relevant to my sub-discipline, given the state of the market. My intuition has always told me that this will likely harm a candidate in the long-run, and should only be done if you're getting towards the end of the rope (i.e. it's your last possible job cycle and you're just throwing everything down). On academic job wikis from my field I've seen people write that they've submitted 40, sometimes 50+ job applications and I can't even fathom the amount of time that would take. My adviser has told me to just keep my head down and maintain my writing schedule until the end of summer...besides mentally committing to going on the job market, it's time to just wait and see what jobs start being posted in September. It's flattering that he thinks I'm competitive, but it took me entirely by surprise and generated professional jitters. I appreciate the advice re: if you're basically doing the work of a post-doc, you may as well be paid as one and have the title on your CV. I hadn't thought in those terms. That said, I should have probably included in my original post that I'll also be applying to post-docs. In my field post-docs are not required for TT jobs, however. Anyone who is competitive for a post-doc is competitive for a TT job, perhaps because post-docs are scarcer in the humanities. They're usually only found at prestigious institutions...the largest humanities post-doc programs (perhaps 3-5 offers per cycle) are at Columbia, Princeton, UChicago, Michigan, etc. It's not uncommon for competitive candidates to snag both a TT position and a post-doc in the same cycle, and then negotiate with the institution offering the TT to defer the job for the fellowship. That's obviously the best of all possible worlds, but I've seen it happen.

I'm about to enter my fourth year in a humanities program (funded for 5 years, possibility of a sixth year). My advisor is suggesting I go on the job market in the fall. After a few days of thinking this over, I'm still unsure what to think of the idea. But first, here's a little background: I entered with a BA, almost straight out of undergrad (deferred for a Fulbright). I found my thesis topic early (in my first semester, partially thanks to the time for exploration afforded by the Fulbright). While I didn't officially begin writing until my third year, I had been thinking about this research and presenting it at major conferences. Come September, I'll have three major presentations under my belt (at the annual conference of my discipline), along with 3 smaller conferences. I'll have two forthcoming articles from top-3 journals and a forthcoming co-edited special issue at a top-3 journal. I've organized three conferences and networked well, in my opinion. I have three semesters of teaching experience under my belt (the rest of my studies was funded by fellowships). I feel like (and have been told by the faculty) that I've been doing all the right things. So now my reservations: I still have one, most likely two more years of fellowship funding where I could churn out a lot of material (no teaching obligations). I don't want to waste that time and prematurely saddle myself with teaching and administrative responsibilities. I have a chapter and a half of my dissertation written at the moment. With the writing schedule I've set myself, I expect to have half of the dissertation completed by September. Yet I could still use that extra time in a fifth and sixth year to further refine and get a jump-start on prepping the diss. for book conversion, expanding its scope, etc. I could also begin laying the foundation for a second project. Yet at the same time I realize that I'm in the position to take a crack at the market now, which gives me more opportunities in the long run. I could have, in theory, three shots if I start now. If I strike out, the fellowships will still be there. Yet if I do land a TT job, obviously I take it...but then forfeit those fellowships. I was wondering if anyone on the forum has been in a similar situation, or has advice... Going on the job market is very time-intensive, obviously, and will likely slow my writing down in that period. Yet it can only increase my chances by allowing me multiple shots at the market. Would this be premature?

The definition of decent is subjective, obviously. But yes, there are many, many half-baked articles out there. A lot doesn't need to be published but makes its way into journals, in part because programs push professionalization so much. And the academic-industrial-complex profits off it (there's real money to be made for publishers, of course). The structure of tenure also contributes to this, but that's a discussion for another thread. I'm not implying that this is true in your case because I haven't read your work. But in my experience (in the humanities), undergraduates really only publish for the novelty of it (and because they think it will get them into a top graduate program), not because the field really needs their research. The problem is that anyone with the proper training sees these publications for what they are. No offense, but you really should spend more time in the field before you approach publication. As an undergraduate you're just not prepared to produce the kind of work for a leading journal (the only work you should be striving to publish). How can you be? You don't even have a BA. I would sit on it. There's no need to publish now, so why rush it? You have a long road ahead of you and your thought will mature. Let the article ripen. Put it aside and continue training in your discipline. Explore parallel fields. Learn additional languages while you still have the time. Continue to practice your writing and hone your style. This is time to grow, not to worry about the profession. Then go back to it; I guarantee you'll have a much better article. You'll be able to publish in a higher-ranked journal and it'll likely serve your career better. You don't want to waste your material by rushing a publication. I see this mistake a lot (I myself felt the pressure to do so). At the BA and MA-level, your job is to learn. Again: you won't need publications for PhD programs (you really, really won't).

Exactly.

I'm in a book field. A major reason that you have to be careful with what you publish, in addition to the point above about quality vs. quantity, is that you can't publish too much of your dissertation research in article form and then still expect to flip the dissertation into a book down the line. Publishers understandably won't want a book that already has, say, 2 chapters published in article form. The goal is to publish one chapter as an article in a top journal before going on the job market so that you get exposure and introduce your project to the field. You can keep presenting this research at conferences, but in terms of publications you hold off until you're ready to publish the entire project in book form. You should always try to develop a separate line of research, on top of your dissertation and teaching. In my field, people typically develop a seminar paper on an unrelated topic that the professor has found particularly close to article quality. If you spend a couple weeks of a summer break on this you can prep it to article form and send it out. But that's typically it: 2 articles and then the job market. Don't get intimidated by people with 5 or more. There's a lot of crap that gets published. Academic publishing is an industry, after all. My experience (and all my faculty mentors that have served on search committees) has taught me that hiring really is about quality over quantity. I've seen many grad students get tenure-track jobs at ivys in the humanities with less, sometimes without any publications at all. And the committee's barometer is typically correct: these people go on to publish amazing books, in part because they weren't distracted by pushing out 3 or more tepid articles a year. Search committees at research universities in the humanities are primarily concerned with the quality of the dissertation and how good they think the book version will be about 3 years down the line. They're also very interested in the second book project, hence the importance of developing a second line of research that you can pitch them.

This may be because I'm in the humanities, but I've always had the feeling that administrators couldn't drug test faculty or grad students even if they wanted to because they'd lose half the university.

This is the cheapest way to get to/from the airport, and it's what most grad students do. Your only other option would be to book a shuttle or a taxi. Also, I would not recommend flying into JFK/LaGuardia/Philly. I also rely on the train, which should take no more than an hour and a half to get from the Dinky to the terminal. Few delays, schedules are well synchronized, and it's as cheap as you'll get. For these reasons I typically recommend the train, but it depends on how much you're willing to pay for the comfort of not having to lug your bags around. Shuttles will be $50+ and can take almost as long as the train, depending on the number of pick-ups/drop-offs. You won't have to worry about handling your bags on the airtrain, Trenton line, or Dinky, however. Taxis are the fastest and most comfortable option but will cost $100+.

I can't speak to the workload of a masters program, but can share my experience in seminars at an ma/phd program. We're required to take 15 seminars over five semesters in the first half of the program. That comes down to 3 a semester, but realistically it's not distributed evenly. There were semesters I took four so that in others I could only take two (when preparing my prospectus and teaching simultaneously, for example). The weekly workload for seminars came out to be about 1 long book (or two shorter ones) along with a selection of articles or individual book chapters, and then supplementary material like films, images, etc. I had a fellowship and didn't have to teach in my first year, which helped. But in the second and third year coursework on top of teaching and research commitments was challenging. I'd say I averaged 50-60 hours of study/teaching a week on the low end (this includes time spent in seminar and teaching) and 60-70 on the high end. I tend to work 6 days a week, Monday - Saturday, averaging 10 hours a day split between different responsibilities. The hardest part of coursework was the balancing act and feeling like I didn't have time for it all, between coursework, teaching, research, service (organizing conferences and lectures), attending supplementary lectures and events in the department, studying for comps, preparing the prospectus, etc. Your experience as a masters student might not be the same. I would imagine that the obligation to do research would be significantly lower (depending on whether your program requires a thesis), as would the expectation to contribute to the department's intellectual culture by organizing and attending lectures and colloquia, etc. That said, I'd still do it over again if given the chance. It's such a stimulating environment and I grew so much both personally and academically. I didn't always think that in the moment, however. In regards to eating, sleeping, relationships, etc. I was single for the first year and a half of my program and found it very difficult to date and meet new people because I was always in the library. With more experience I was a more efficient worker and found time to date and go out with friends every other weekend. I was able to exercise regularly except during the two-week paper-writing period at the end of every semester. I was able to travel plenty over summers for my research, on grants. I averaged 40 hours a week over summers on research, preparing for comps, etc. Towards the end of my coursework I even was able to carve out time every week for personal creative projects. Throughout my whole time during coursework I was able to average 8 hours of sleep a night, but I made it a priority because I knew it would have been counter-productive to get any less than that. When things got really busy at the end of the semester, however, I'd get as little as 6 on weeknights but caught up over the weekend. Like I said, this is from the perspective of a ma/phd program. But if your long-term goals include the PhD and an academic career, this has been my experience. Hope this helps!

At my university (in a literature program) 3 final papers of 25-30 pages is typical of the average course load. In the fall semester we have 3 weeks. However, the spring semester is much more challenging because the calendar only allows 10 days. You either start early or you very literally don't do anything else during those 10 days. I dedicate my mid-term breaks (the week-long thanksgiving break in the fall or the spring break) to the research process of the paper. Between that time and the end of the semester I do more research, sketch an outline, meet with the professor for feedback. This part is quite hard to balance with regular course assignments and teaching responsibilities. Then during the time we're allotted at the end of the semesters I sit down and crank out 5-10 pages a day, followed by 2 days of revisions. It's really hard to balance writing papers with the rest of your coursework and teaching, which is why time management is so important. I dedicate nights to my regular responsibilities (reading books and papers for seminar, preparing presentations, planning lessons, etc) and then weekends to working on the final paper projects. It's overwhelming but it breaks you down and forces you to make your research and writing process extremely efficient.

I'd say it depends entirely on priorities and work load. There are people who go to New York every weekend because they have a significant other that lives there. There are people who live in Princeton but go every other weekend or once a month to hang out, party, etc. Personally I find it pretty difficult to find the time during the semester. That said, it's not a very high priority for me because I'm trying to get as much work done in Princeton as possible before I move away. 5 years for a PhD is very, very little time and the workload is extreme. I go maybe once every two months during a break or vacation. Certainly more often over summers. I'm also not from this region and don't have any friends that live in the city, so I don't have anyone to crash with if I want to stay out late. I'll just say that I've found that with the exception of those who have partners in the city, people go much less than I expected and it's largely because there's little time while classes are in session.

Sorry, I should have mentioned my field above. I'm in the humanities, in a language department. I've taken classes listed in various language departments, comp lit, english, history, art history, etc. The period I study (20th and 21st century) might also be relevant. Living in Princeton is not great, nor is it awful. I have mixed feelings. Princeton is a phenomenal place to work. Firestone (which I'm assuming you'll have at least limited if not full access to) has absolutely amazing collections and will get you whatever you need. Princeton is quiet and cute and there aren't many distractions. This makes my time here EXTREMELY productive. At the same time, Princeton gets stressful and lonely and tiresome. It's the price you pay, I suppose. There isn't much to do in town, there's no community outside your home department, the food is pretty bad, everything is expensive (think NYC prices without any of the fun or excitement of the city). Also, don't underestimate how awful of a state New Jersey is. That said, I don't necessarily regret coming here to study. It can be a cozy place, though difficult to get to know people or find things to do besides studying. It's what we're here to do, after all, but you really do feel like you're living a monastic life as a graduate student here. I'm leaving Princeton at the end of this semester for Philly or NYC because I'll finally be done with my coursework and teaching. I've been waiting for this moment for a long time, though I can't say I don't have a few fond memories of the place. Do you have specific concerns?

I'm a PhD student at the university and haven't directly interacted with anyone from the seminary before, whether socially or academically. In my three years here I've never been aware of any social interaction between students at the seminary and the university. Despite being within walking distance, they're pretty much separate worlds. That said, there's nothing necessarily stopping you from taking classes at the university and making friends with students from the university. In general, Princeton is small and insular.

From what I can tell, e-mailing faculty isn't that important when you're applying to a humanities program because it's not a grant-driven, lab-based field where individual faculty need to have the funding to take a student on. I didn't (and wouldn't recommend) cold e-mailing faculty because they likely won't answer you anyways. I don't think it's a bad idea to reach out to contacts you already have, however. From my experience that's fairly common...if they know you and can vouch for your personally (have seen your work at a conference, etc.) that goes a long way. Obviously have some genuine/important questions in mind when you contact them, don't just write for the sake of writing because it'll be pretty obvious that you're just brown nosing. Some faculty have told me about times they've received e-mails from prospective students who just "want to know more about the program", or who just ask basic stuff that's listed on the department's website. Not something you want them to remember when they read your application in a couple of months. Again, that might seem obvious but it happens far too often.

As a disclosure, I have no expertise in the history of American higher education, but I'll venture a guess. I agree with your observation, and I think it might be due to the fact that these universities are much older and thus their literature departments (regardless of how they're organized now, these arbitrary structures come and go, as evidenced by the boom and bust of comp lit departments over the last few decades) were well-established far before the arrival of modern linguistics. Chomsky published Syntactic Structures in 1957, so the rise of modern linguistics would have coincided with the post-war boom of the public university in the United States. So, as modern language departments grew in this period they were able to incorporate linguistics from a pretty early on in their history. The scientific methodology of any branch of modern linguistics would have been at odds with what scholars in foreign language departments had been doing at these elite universities for centuries and so, not surprisingly, it emerged in a separate department.

Also just wanted to add that I agree with ExponentialDecay's advice that it's more advantageous on the job market to get your degree in a language department than in an interdisciplinary, multi-language program. Again, you can always take courses outside your department. You'll likely be applying for jobs in language departments and hiring committees will look for grad students who trained in similar departments. They'll also be tempted to see a candidate from a multi-language program as a jack of all trades and master of none. Not that I entirely agree with that, but I've seen it happen (also with comp lit candidates applying to language departments though obviously this is case-by-case).

Harvard does have a Romance Languages department but its focus is on literature, theory, cultural and visual studies, etc. I really doubt they'd take on a linguistics candidate, but I might be wrong about that. Not sure how much Romance linguistics you'd be able to do in Harvard's linguistics department, but it's worth checking out. Princeton has not had a Romance Language department for some time now. It split into Spanish & Portuguese and French & Italian. To my knowledge, Princeton doesn't offer any linguistics training at the graduate level. Cornell and UPenn also have Romance departments, but again their focus is not on linguistics. That said, at some schools you might be able to base yourself in a linguistics department and collaborate with Romance language departments if they happen to offer relevant coursework. In my experience, faculty in Romance/language departments don't have backgrounds in linguistics, but many lecturers do.

For the first time in my program, I have a summer that's dedicated exclusively to research (in the humanities). It's been awesome! This is the first time that I haven't had to juggle research with teaching, coursework, language classes, etc. Overall I'm really enjoying it. I've run into an unexpected problem, however. I can't seem to NOT think about research. It's the summer, campus is empty and many of my friends have left. The built-in stress-valves that I had during the semester, like having drinks or dinner with other students, are also not an option. Previously I always had other tasks built into my schedule to momentarily take my mind off research, like teaching. I don't have that now, and combined with my (albeit young) enthusiasm for the project, I find myself working long hours when I don't need to, or thinking about work even when I'm trying to distract myself. Case in point: this afternoon I told myself that I'd go for a hike to clear my head. After a couple of minutes my mind was still swimming and I pulled my phone out to take notes so that I wouldn't forget any of my ideas. I was back at work in the middle of the forest. This all might sound like one giant humblebrag, but I'm concerned about preventing burnout and finding the right pace for my work. I know it's very important to find your stride when you begin the actual writing phase of the dissertation rather than just sprint out of the gate. More advanced grad students in my program tell me that at times you need to just find some way to just shut your brain off and not think about your research. So what is it that you guys do in these situations? I've been trying to do so by exercising and going outside, but as I just mentioned above, that doesn't necessarily work.

Congrats on the paper, that's always a nice compliment to receive from a professor. However, the quote above tells me that you should wait on publishing. There's no need to rush to publish at this stage in the game, and if you feel like you're rushing during the writing/revision process, then the article most definitely will show this. Once a paper is published and out there, it'll follow you around for the rest of your academic career. You don't want to look back a few years later as a PhD student and regret publishing something that needed more work. It's tempting to want to publish very early so that you can have publications in your PhD applications, etc. But to be honest, I think that publishing before the MA (and most often before you've passed comps/quals in a PhD program) is actually more harmful in the long run because your ideas haven't had time to mature, and there's a lot out there that you haven't had time to read and think about. A premature, half-baked article could come back to haunt you and blemish your CV. Take some time, sit on it, think through the ideas, read more, and revise as much as you can. By all means get in touch with the professor for whom you wrote the paper and get feedback. My advice would be to keep this as a side-project until you're more advanced as a student (post-MA).

There's a general orientation hosted by the graduate school at the beginning of the fall semester, is that what you're referring to?

Lakeside offers furnished units (rent is slightly higher than non-furnished apartments), so if you're attending for only a year and decide not to stay in the grad college then that's an alternative. It's also possible to rent a furnished room off-campus, I've seen fliers and ads online for this. I should clarify, though. Even though I've avoided it, there's nothing horrible about the grad college. I think that it gets a bad reputation among many American students (myself included) because most of us had to live in dorms as undergraduates and we're just sick of them. This might not be the case for international students. I didn't want to be in one because I was entering into a PhD program and knew that I was going to be in Princeton for at least 4 years. I wanted a larger place of my own to call home since I was going to stick around. I also love to cook and would hate to be on a meal plan. Nevertheless, it might be a convenient option if you're only here for a year and don't mind the meal plan. I know that there are limited cooking facilities in the grad college. Another option is to live in an Annex (large homes that have been converted into individual, furnished rooms). They give you the option of eating at the grad college (it's within walking distance), but you also have a kitchen in the home that you share with housemates.

I can't speak to the chances of getting an apartment there through the lottery as an incoming student, I was actually pulled into a shared unit with current students who had a guaranteed spot there. I think that you shouldn't have a problem as long as you're open to having a roommate. Getting a 1-bedroom or studio might be tricky because they're in high demand. Once you get an apartment you can keep renewing your lease for 3 or 4 years, I think.

I'm happy living in Lakeside and certainly prefer it over Lawrence; it's greatly improved over my situation last year. To be honest, Lawrence feels pretty dorm-y compared to Lakeside. I think the units are smaller, and the concrete walls there just remind of an undergrad dorm. Lakeside is basically brand new (I'm the first person to have lived in this unit) and the amenities are nice (especially the gym on site, plenty of parking, plus washer/dryer in-unit...no more scavenging for quarters!). It's RIGHT next to the dinky, which is very convenient for getting to New York, Philly, the airport, etc. I have a cat, but I also think Lakeside would be a great place to have a dog if you can land a pet-friendly unit. It's on the southern edge of campus and there are a bunch of trails nearby that are great for walking and running. The area is very quiet and nature-y, which I love.

Judging by how it was presented to me, it's mostly just a matter of buying more time to work on the dissertation, publish, present, conduct research, etc. before going on the job market so as to build a more competitive profile, especially for students who came into a humanities PhD without the MA and need time to search through archives and learn relevant languages for research. At least in my experience when humanities departments made the transition to the standard 5-year PhD, programs just took the amount of work people used to do in 8-10 years and compressed it to 5, forcing students to do the same with less time. The state of the job market made it even more stressful by forcing you to have a number of publications by the time you go on the market, adding even more work to those 5 years (it used to be that you could get a job with none). So I don't necessarily blame people who do this because I too would like more time to get everything done. However, it seems like a strange (and manipulative) coping mechanism. I can see how someone could explain it away pretty easily, though. Saying that their research interests changed or that after a few years they realized the fit in the first program wasn't that great, etc.

I was surprised recently to learn of cases in which advanced PhD students in the humanities (at good, funded programs) are applying to PhD programs in the exact same field (usually similar programs where they have connections via faculty) as a tactic to buy more funded time and find a way around the 5-year funding constraint. I was even more surprised when, after informally chatting with my adviser about the stresses of doing a 5-year MA/PhD straight out of undergrad, my own adviser nonchalantly mentioned this as an option if I felt like I needed more time to finish the PhD. We're on very good terms, so this wasn't an attempt to get me to back out of the program or anything, I was just venting a little about how the architects of the 5-year humanities PhD typically did not have to pass through this meat-grinder themselves (having done their grad work in the olden days of 8-10 year PhDs). So I was surprised when they brought this up very matter-of-factly as a way that people are getting around the time constraint of the 5-year PhD. Apparently even though they often need to re-take coursework, some students (although it sounds like this is not terribly widespread just yet) stretch out their funding this way, beginning again as first years after doing 3-4 years in a program already, but essentially picking up where they left off in their previous department...effectively stretching five years of funding at one program into 8-10 years between two. Has anyone else heard of this? Any personal experiences? I wouldn't ever want to go through the hell of coursework and comps again so this option is off the table for me, but I'm curious.

You can be emotionally mature and still lack experience; as independent as you might be and as accomplished as you may feel, you're still young and haven't had time to do a whole lot. There's nothing wrong with that, it's normal. Gaining experience is the point of taking time off, not ~discovering yourself~. Also, it's silly (and smug) to suggest that you need doctors or lawyers as parents to support you in taking time off. Not everyone who takes time off between undergrad and grad school is living off a trust fund. No one is suggesting you drop off the grid and travel the world or get your parents to pay your rent in Brooklyn while you "find yourself." The point is to get a job (or fellowship) for a few years and keep thinking about your academic interests. Read as much as possible, write a lot on your own, explore similar topics, and encounter new ways of approaching your academic interests. It will pay off manyfold and you will likely be a better scholar for it.