eriatarka

I'm a student in a terminal MA program, and I'm also a bit of an oddball fence-sitter as far as interests go: I'm interested in mortuary archaeology, especially of periods of contact, social turmoil, violence, and so on. I entered not knowing what I wanted to do as a thesis topic and with no specific region beyond "the American West, NW, SW, or California."
 
To begin with, there aren't too many programs that (a) offer at least one mortuary archaeology class, ( allow you to take that class in a non-forensic track, and © offer a terminal MA. Basically, the program I'm in now was my top choice because we have a "general" track, which effectively lets you cherry-pick your seminars and electives, rather than having more constraints placed upon you by entering, say, a forensic anthro track. By the time I graduate, I should have roughly 1/3 archaeology courses, 1/3 cultural heritage (CRM and federal work, legal hooplah, in-field management, so on) courses, and 1/3 forensic and mortuary courses.
 
Some thoughts:
  - Apply to schools with one or both of your desired concentrations. Get to know the faculty and their course offerings. Eventually, you'll get a gut feeling about which place is going to allow you to do exactly what you want and pigeonhole you the least, if at all.
  - I agree that you have to hustle from square one. I have worked my butt off since before I even got here; it's paid off. I've quickly improved my writing skills, got the ball rolling on a few conference papers, gotten a summer job with a professor, had a TAship, etc.. but I also had no social life. 
  - Funding sucks. Seriously. I took out loans since I knew this program was the right move for me... but I also escaped undergrad debt-free with a small cushion of savings to sit on.
  - Funding really sucks. Although I don't have to compete with PhD students in my own department, we have limited funding; I just turned in another "self assessment" thing that's a catch all application to decide who gets fellowships, scholarships, and funded TAships. Although we don't compete directly, there's only so much cash to go around. Also, it is really hard to feel up-to-snuff when applying for school-wide fellowships and scholarships when you know you're up against ABDs with way more experience and funding than you.
- For me, this MA is not a waste of money or time, although I've had people try to tell me otherwise. I knew what kind of work I wanted to do, but I had moderate experience, big gaps in relevant coursework (all things theory and skeletal), a barely acceptable regional "focus," and no particular thesis topic in mind when applying to places. I'm smart and hardworking, but.. well, good luck convincing any PhD programs a year ago that I could commit to being there or was worth the investment. Now I have a thesis topic and data set (conveniently from the school of my top choice PhD program), a five-year work and PhD app plan, and lots of connections and opportunities that go well beyond coursework.
 
In sum, you remind me of where I was at mentally and experience-wise this time last year. Doing the MA first has already helped me tremendously, and opened up many doors that I would've never been able to even find the knob for last year or on my own, so to speak. Don't make the mistake I did: now is the time to be handing in applications for funding.. even if you're not accepted by a program yet, go ahead and apply for all the funding sources you can.
 
Best of luck with it all! Give me a shout if nothing I said made sense or if you have more questions!

I may be in the minority here, but in the morning I mainly drink coffee for the taste. It's just something to drink that tastes good. I only really use coffee to wake up during the late afternoon if I've stayed up late or I have a late night ahead. Plus the social aspect of going out for coffee with folks... that's one of my go-to activities. I'd probably be inclined to decline the pills.

Ahhhhh.... if anyone wants a laugh, I was just reading through all the SOPs I sent out, because I individualized them all quite distinctly, etc... and so I'm feeling all proud of myself, right, like, wow, this sounds great! This really articulates what i'd like to study/compare, blah... and then I read the last one. The one to Harvard. The one where I clearly mention "University of Virginia" in the last paragraph, as I'm making my bold closing statement. 
 
 
Is that worse than dropping the wrong name in bed? 

Second Language Acquisition. Before I googled it, I thought "Sweet! Someone will pay you to learn another language?"

lol yeah and I come from a very traditional set up wherein girls are married off before they hit 25. It's kind of like I rebelled and broke the established norms and on top of that, I am planning to fly to an alien country completely unaided for a better career. I guess, deep down, people are jealous and envious of others' success, and since they cannot say anything positive about you, they find it necessary to pass snide or demeaning comments to bring you down.  

I keep having two daydreams about the Committee... in one, a professor runs in with my application, and as he bursts through the doors exclaiming "this is the one!" a shower of confetti explodes from the ceiling and a curtain pulls back to reveal a choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus as the dean wipes a tear from his eye.
 
In the other, the Committee has my application pinned to a wall and are throwing darts at it while laughing.

I just randomly checked the UT Austin website and it says I'm admitted!!!! I don't have any funding info yet. I still have a call with the 3 POIs on thursday so, I guess that is what we will be talking about! STOKED!

True, that is a good attitude! It's just disconcerting to not do as well as you'd hoped. And GradCafe doesn't help matters, lol.

Lol - i'm proud of my 4.5! Considering i had no idea what they were looking for, I think that's pretty spiffy.

well i'll attempt to answer part of this. FLAS or the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship is given out by different schools that have been approved by the government to recieve Title VI funding under the Higher Education Act. each school tends to apply for funding from the federal government for certain regional areas. so, for example, i am applying to a lot of schools that get regional funding for east asia, because I want to do research and get funding for korean.
 
the list of the different regions approved for different schools are listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Resource_Center      
not every school has every region of the world approved. so in that sense, certain languages are favored, because different schools are only allowed to give out FLAS fellowships if you applied for a language in a area that they were approved to grant grants for based on federal approval (phew! long sentence).
 
and yes, you do have to specialize in one language or regional studies area to get the FLAS (again based on if the school you are applying to has that region approved).
 
hope that answers some questions.

Thank you! My POI was Louise Burkhart, but Dr. Masson is the one that will be advising me. Glad to hear she's nice!

Thank you! This totally caught me off guard today. Good luck to everyone, and hang in there!

I absolutely know that show... I've got a 5 year old at home!
 
Eriatarka is a song from the Mars Volta. My favorite song from my favorite band. It's also useful because no one else really has it, so I never have to come up with an alternative name when creating accounts.
 
My pic is simple. My favorite flower has always been the tulip, and I wanted something bright and pretty.

For sure, I will certainly be applying even if it is a bit of a stretch for me.