masack118

Thanks for the recommendations! I'll definitely look into those.

I read this for the first time last year and while I figured it'd be good, I was actually shocked by how much I loved it. I read Invisible right after and it was also pretty good, but definitely not as good.

Thanks for the comments pinkrobot and imogene! My original plan was actually to take a class or two last spring (as in, the one that just passed) to facilitate writing a new sample, but a change-up at work meant I was doing 2 jobs for a few months, and then training someone new, so that never worked out. My next thought was to write a paper on my own, but I was worried that there isn't enough time to do the sort of research necessary while getting everything else prepared, while working (my current job requires a lot of work outside of the office and can be unexpectedly time consuming depending on the week). But the idea of updating/revising the old writing sample to give it a postmodern angle...I hadn't really considered that before. It'd definitely be easier than starting from scratch and while I might not be able to do extra research on the medieval side (I don't know how I'd get my hands on some of the texts I used without going back to my undergrad's library), reinterpretation of passages, etc. wouldn't require extra research, just extra writing. And now I'm thinking about other medieval-based papers I wrote in undergrad that could possibly be expanded with a postmodern focus... I think my workload just increased, but probably for the better! Thanks to both of you!

Hi everyone! I'm another Fall 2013 applicant for English MA/PhD. This is my second time applying. I tried for Fall 2010 before, and got into 3/6 schools, but didn't end up going for various reasons. For this round I'm going to retake my GREs (I had some sort of anxiety attack the first time around, so I'm hoping to score better), and I want to take the Lit GRE (which I'm nervous about, like most of us). My areas of interest are medieval lit, postmodernism, and contemporary lit (especially transgressive fiction). The first time I applied it was for pretty straight-forward medieval, but my research interests have changed/developed now that I've had time to think about them. My main concern right now (other than the tests, which I can't stop thinking about) is my writing sample. I think it's okay, but it's completely medieval in focus (The Canterbury Tales, specifically). I don't have any papers with a postmodern/transgressive focus, or related to what I actually want to study, and I'm not sure if that'll hurt me in the admission process. If anyone has thoughts or opinions on that, I'd love to hear them. Anyway, I wish everyone luck in this round!