worried!!

[rosalind_krauss]

hi from a long lurker.

i'm going into my third year and realizing that i, above all else (museums, galleries), would prefer a professoriate track career. as i understand it, grad school seems to be of utmost importance. i can't help but be extremely worried about my chances of admission into a "top" school (mainly HYP, IFA, Columbia) given the current climate and my situation and have resorted to scrounging around on the internet in search for some insight from others. 

 

my background:

- interested in modern and contemporary european and american art 

- currently attending small lac (ranked 15-20), gpa: 3.98, major: 4.0

- independent research and working in college museum collections starting from my first year, decently prestigious two-year research fellowship, at least 2 publications by my third year (two exhibition catalogue texts), at least one research assistantship, curating and running a small gallery, summer internship at a local commercial gallery, presentations at a few conferences, working a digital humanities job and acting as a writing mentor starting in my third year

- i will likely have taken the max number of art history courses my school allows (nerd alert), i am a heritage speaker of a language unrelated to my research, apparently B1 in german, and will begin french in the fall on top of continuing german

 

my concerns:

- people don't seem to care about my research/i don't do a good job selling my research. i am working long term on a very obscure artist in who a guest scholar (from this two-year fellowship) expressed explicit disinterest in... i am very passionate about my work, though, which they kind of made fun of me for lol...

- 2/3 of my recommenders i have in mind at this time have terminal mfa's though they are people i am very close with. would it be worth it to switch out one, or both, of my mfa recommenders to art history professors that might have a less through understanding of what i'm about? also, my department is very small (four full professors) and, while i love them all a lot, none of them seem to be Huge names of any sort

- my dept doesn't seem to have a good track records of placing students into really elite phd programs, though the school as a whole seems to be deemed a "feeder" in other areas (which i am vaguely skeptical of)

- i interview really, really poorly (extreme anxiety/general awkwardness) though this may not be a valid concern as it is totally possible i may never even reach this stage

- i have one W and an A- on my transcript in the same semester, and my course of study is extremely narrow (only humanities courses second year onward)

 

tl:dr: nervous undergraduate asks: is it over for me?