2019 Applicants

[j.alicea]

@Sav thanks for the link - looks fascinating, and extremely important to the future of academia. Also, it’s crazy that MLA 7 already looks so strange to me now... how I miss the days when footnotes were right there on the same page, and block quotes didn’t look so damn clunky :/

[j.alicea]

Additionally, The Graduate School Mess by Leonard Cassuto is worth a read for everyone doing graduate studies. The cold hard facts and statistics are, well, cold and hard to swallow, but I believe it also opens new avenues for academics and resists the ideal of a traditional career path for scholars. Most importantly, it reminds us that teaching and “research” (a term that is relatively new, or at least the way we use it, in academia, is relatively new) are indeed at odds (to the detriment of our students and our scholarship). He interrogates the idea of a research institution, and, in my opinion, very clearly shows its origins (one being economic coloniality, for those of us who prefer the language of decoloniality ; or capitalism).

Edited January 27, 2019 by j.alicea

[thismortalcoil]

6 hours ago, FiguresIII said:

No way, congrats, I'm actually from Utrecht! I love the city so much and I have so many recommendations haha

No way! I will definitely hit you up for some recommendations!!

[pdh12]

february is gonna be an eruption on here, for sure. it’s seriously not coming sooo enough.

re: poetry—ever read CA Conrad? essential reading 

[disidentifications]

5 minutes ago, pdh12 said:

february is gonna be an eruption on here, for sure. it’s seriously not coming sooo enough.

tbh, im stuck in a sort of limbo stage between desperately wanting to know and not wanting to know my admissions results at all. (ignorance, at this point, is both bliss and torture...) 

[Musmatatus]

1 hour ago, flungoutofspace said:

tbh, im stuck in a sort of limbo stage between desperately wanting to know and not wanting to know my admissions results at all. (ignorance, at this point, is both bliss and torture...) 

Same! I'm at the airport now and there's a piece by Sara Ahmed talking about the limbo of the airport and it fits in perfectly wit the limbo of my life at the moment! 

[SomeoneAcceptMe]

Anyone else just kinda feel like:
 

[pdh12]

also @flungoutofspace, i believe, who recommended that sufjan side-D thing---so great for writing!!! 

[barshmie]

2 hours ago, sugilite said:

Same! I'm at the airport now and there's a piece by Sara Ahmed talking about the limbo of the airport and it fits in perfectly wit the limbo of my life at the moment! 

@flungoutofspace I totally feel you. I have a new appreciation for Beckett. 

I'm also reminded of one of J.M. Coetzee's ways of looking at Beckett; which really speaks to my experience:

Five.

Try again. A being, a creature, a consciousness wakes (call it that) into a situation which is ineluctable and inexplicable. He (she? it?) tries his (her? its?) best to understand this situation (call it that) but never succeeds. In fact, the very notion of understanding a situation becomes more and more opaque. He/she/it seems to be a part of something purposive, but what is that something, what is his/her/its part in it, what is it that calls the something purposive?

We make a leap. Leave it to some other occasion to reflect on what this leap consisted in.

A being, a creature, one of those creatures we, whoever we are, call an ape (what his/her/its name for himself/herself/itself is we do not know; we are not even sure that he/she/it has the concept of a name; call him/her/it “It” henceforth; we may even need to question the concept of having a concept before we are finished)—It finds itself in a white space, in a situation. It seems to be part of something purposive; but what?

Before its eyes are three black plastic tubes a metre long and 19 millimetres in diameter. Below each of the tubes is a small wooden box with an open top and a door that is closed but can be opened.

A nut is dropped (we pause to note this “is dropped,” which seems to have no subject, no agent—how can that be?—before we go on) into the third tube (one-two-three: can we assume the concept of the count, can we assume right and left?). If the being, the creature, the ape, It, wants the nut (always, in these stories of bizarre situations to which you awake, it comes down to something edible), It must open the correct box, where the correct box is defined as the box containing the nut.

The nut is dropped into the third tube. It chooses a box to open. It opens the third box, and lo and behold, there is the nut. Greedily It eats the nut (what else is there to do with it, and besides, It is starving).

Again the nut is dropped into the third tube. Again It opens the third box. Again the box contains a nut.

The nut is dropped into the second tube. Has It been lulled by habit into thinking the third box is always the lucky box, the full box? No: It opens the second box, the box directly beneath the second tube. There is a nut in it.

The nut is dropped into the first tube. It opens the first box. The nut is in it.

So tube one leads to box one, tube two to box two, tube three to box three. All is well so far. This may be an absurdly complicated way of feeding a being, an appetite, a subject, but such appears to be the way things work in the present universe, the white universe in which It finds itself. If you want a nut, you must take care to watch into which tube it is dropped, and then open the box below.

But ah! the universe is not so simple after all. The universe is not as it may appear to be. In fact—and this is the key point, the philosophical lesson—the universe is never as it appears to be.

A screen is introduced: It can still see the top ends of the tubes, and the bottom ends, but not the middles. Some shuffling takes place. The shuffling comes to an end, and everything is as it was before, or at least seems to be as it was before.

A nut is dropped into the third tube. It, the creature, opens the third box. The third box is empty.

Again a nut is dropped into the third tube. Again It opens the third box. Again it is empty.

Within It, within Its mind or Its intelligence or perhaps even just Its brain, something is set in motion that will take many pages, many volumes to unravel, something that may involve hunger or despair or boredom or all of these, to say nothing of the deductive and inductive faculties. Instead of these pages and volumes, let us just say there is a hiatus.

It, the creature, opens the second box. It contains a nut. It makes no sense that it should be there, but there it is: a nut, a real nut. It eats the nut. That’s better.

A nut is dropped into the third tube. It opens the third box. It is empty. It opens the second box. It contains a nut. Aha!

A nut is dropped into the third tube. It opens the second box. It contains a nut. It eats the nut.

So: the universe is not as it was before. The universe has changed. Not tube three and box three but tube three and box two.

(You think this is not life, someone says? You think this is merely some thought experiment? There are creatures to whom this is not just life but the whole of life. This white space is what they were born into. It is what their parents were born into. It is what their grandparents were born into. It is all they know. This is the niche in the universe in which they are evolved to fit. In some cases, this is the niche in which they have been genetically modified to fit. These are laboratory animals, says this someone, by which is meant animals who know no life outside the white laboratory, animals incapable of living outside the laboratory, animals to whom the laboratory, while it may look to us like white hell, is the only world they know. End of interjection. Go on.)

Again there is an episode of something being shuffled behind the screen, which It is not allowed to watch.

A nut is dropped into the third tube. It, the creature, opens the second box. It is empty. It opens the third box. It is empty. It opens the first box. It contains a nut. It eats the nut.

So: no longer three and three, no longer three and two, but three and one.

Again, shuffling.

A nut is dropped into the third tube. The creature opens the first box. It is empty.

So: after each shuffling, everything changes. That seems to be the rule. Three and three, then shuffling, then three and two, then shuffling, then three and one, then shuffling, then three and—what?

It, the creature, is doing its best to understand how the universe works, the universe of nuts and how you lay your hands (your paws) on them. That is what is going on, before our eyes.

But is that truly what is going on?

 

[Bopie5]

Anyone else feel in their bones that this is going to be a big week in terms of hearing back? 

[alexisnj]

6 minutes ago, Bopie5 said:

Anyone else feel in their bones that this is going to be a big week in terms of hearing back? 

I rlly rlly RLLY hope your bones are right for the sake of my sanity

[WildeThing]

I have Boston College, Vanderbilt, Maryland, and Northwestern down for responses this week (also Chicago but having not received an interview request I am taking that one as a loss). I really hope this will be a good week since the following week i only had Rice, who have already notified apparently. The two weeks after that should be the major ones, as all but 1 of the remaining schools should be notifying acceptances over that period.

[Bopie5]

@WildeThing Yeah, I only have Northwestern down for this week from my list. I'm just having a weird feeling based in almost no evidence that this week is gonna be the kickoff of really hearing. But same for me--the two weeks after that are the big ones for me too.

[havemybloodchild]

8 minutes ago, Bopie5 said:

Anyone else feel in their bones that this is going to be a big week in terms of hearing back? 

Absolutely. I should hear from four, if they follow past timelines. I think these next few weeks are going to be real intense, and I’m so ready for it.

[placeinspace]

I don’t think most of my schools notify until mid-Feb but that doesn’t stop my anxiety from being full steam ahead this week!!

[mandelbulb]

good luck to all you wonderful people. let's get our emotional battle armor on lol

[jadeisokay]

i have a total of 5 big-ish assignments due this week but lucked into a 3 day super bowl weekend because of my friday class being canceled  AND co-worker offered to take my shift wednesday so i can finish everything due thursday. this week is going to be a GRAND OLD TIME. good luck, everyone. 

[havemybloodchild]

Disclaimer: do not freak out!

 

I was just scrolling through all my app portals and opened UCSB’s to see “accepted”

...had minor stroke

...immediately thereafter noticed the accepted was referring to my app fee waiver, my app status is still very much submitted.

Lol why am I like this? Reading is supposed to be my thing, right?

[disidentifications]

10 hours ago, pdh12 said:

also @flungoutofspace, i believe, who recommended that sufjan side-D thing---so great for writing!!! 

isn't it? i've been listening to a lot of that and max ritcher on repeat as i work (or attempt to, whilst i try not to freak out about *gesticulates wildly* this.) 

13 hours ago, sugilite said:

Same! I'm at the airport now and there's a piece by Sara Ahmed talking about the limbo of the airport and it fits in perfectly wit the limbo of my life at the moment! 

ohh what's the piece? i'd love to read it!
also, if you -- or anyone else -- are looking for other literature on the limbo of the airport, olga tokarczuk's flights is an exquisite novel in fragments that addresses the topic rather brilliantly, i think.

10 hours ago, bardie said:

@flungoutofspace I totally feel you. I have a new appreciation for Beckett. 

i'm currently reading a lot of beckett for class, and i must say, i've never really felt the frustration and absurdity and absolute misery of his never-ending loops more than i do right now. imagine endgame, but with me and uchicago-- 

chicago: we'll notify you of your admission status now. 
me: then i'll know i've been rejected and fall into a state of utter despair. 
chicago: we'll let you know that you aren't going to be interviewed. you'll be wondering if you've been admitted all the time. 
me: then i won't know if i've been rejected. 
???

[dangermouse]

one of the professors i mentioned in one of my SOPs has just followed me on twitter. i am sure it is a very mundane and insignificant decision, but hopefully he isn't a sadist who wants to watch the carnage unfold when my rejection comes in  

Edited January 28, 2019 by dangermouse

[FiguresIII]

@flungoutofspace so on point with the Beckett reference! "Something is taking its course..."

One of my favorite readers of Beckett, by the way, is Leo Bersani: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674048768

[disidentifications]

@FiguresIII yes, "something is taking its course..." but all i really want to know -- and want not to know at the same time -- is which courses i will be taking in a year, as well as where i'll be taking said courses. 

sorry, it's a terrible joke. i'll see myself out. but before i do, i must say, i love the bersani as well! (though given my professor's project, which he's currently exploring in the seminar that i'm taking, he does have a quibble with both bersani and beckett, i think.) 

[pdh12]

@kendalldinniene omg had a sympathetic jolt just reading that. 

@FiguresIII congrats to your three interviews--wow!! Looks like this cycle will bear fruit for some of us!

edit: did anyone else apply to Rutgers' Comp Lit? DGS said they hope to make notifications this week!

Edited January 28, 2019 by pdh12

[jusrain]

20 hours ago, sugilite said:

Same! I'm at the airport now and there's a piece by Sara Ahmed talking about the limbo of the airport and it fits in perfectly wit the limbo of my life at the moment! 

Omg Sara Ahmed is amazing. I’ve only read The Promise of Happiness, what else have you read by her? I hope we’re talking about the same “feminist killjoy” lol 

[barshmie]

Hey guys-- any thoughts on Stanford and UCLA? I have them down as possibly getting back this week. And UChicago-- are we thinking late this week or next?

Hang in there everyone ?‍♀️