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Most schools have it in their FAQs, etc., that no materials can be changed after submission. I just took my chances and e-mailed the DGS at each school, and it worked out. If you're applying to Penn, which gets like 650 English applicants, you're kind of accepting the fact that such a tiny percent get admitted that errors take on an entirely new meaning. Even an army of secretaries can't keep track of all quick messages from students about their apps, let alone the long, eloquent e-mails they sometimes get. I think a lot of you English folks are brilliant, but I can't figure out why you'd rather study theory or Medieval studies in an English program, and have an impossible time getting admitted even to second and third-tier programs, when you could study very similar things in a smaller, prestigious program that is happy to accept you...and where you get fellowships to study in foreign countries and even seduce someone in a foreign language :)

Of course, some of my favorite professors were English professors, but at least two or three of them also had foreign credentials. One studied with Lacan at École Normale SupÉrieure...and he's a better English professor because he can speak about Lacanian theory in French as well as English. (He's also a bigwig in Penn's English Dept. btw...)

If any of you get across-the-board rejections (which is no indication of your intelligence, but merely a fact of the insanely competitive English admissions process), think about studying another language and coming back with a different goal next year - sorry for the propaganda, but one of you might be thanking me next year :)

This is a really nice post, thank you :) And it's good advice. English is frighteningly competitive, but unfortunately I don't think my language skills are strong enough to make it into a foreign language program. I did consider trying for different sorts of departments -- I could conceivably fit into philosophy or history, as my interests are broad and interdisciplinary -- but at the heart of it is always literary criticism. I'm always at my strongest, intellectually, when I'm working very closely with a text. So it has to be literature.

Your post reminds me, though, of how worthwhile and splendid it is to know multiple languages, so perhaps I will dust off my German grammar and have a crack at it again. And I do like Rilke.

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If you spend a few months or a year in a foreign country, you will be able to do effective scholarship using that language - to be a Slavicist or Germanist, or a Comparatist or to work in the French/Spanish/Italian tradition, you don't need to write in the language fluently, you need to be able to read it and speak it rather well (which is, by the way, its own reward). I will be writing articles and books in English, but citing texts in the original. Much of this scholarship is quite useful to those in other fields - Theater Studies, Linguistics, English, Philosophy, History...And as far as criticism: German departments, among others, love literary criticism and theory. Who do you think is responsible for "Critical Theory"? The Frankfurt School. What language do you think they originally wrote in? :) Fredric James, Judith Butler, Stanley Fish...all cite theorists in other languages in analyzing both English and non-English texts. Virginia Woolf idolized Tolstoy, and regretted that she couldn't read the original. Mark Twain cursed the German Language while frittering away months trying to discover the depths of the German Soul while on a vacation in Saxony (or was it Bavaria? I don't remember).

Edited by vertige
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I spiraled into almost panic attack today. I forced myself to get up, dressed, do make-up, and hair, and go shopping. I wound up not buying anything for myself other than a pair of gloves, but I got really cute gifts for my coworkers baby shower. Then I did some routine grocery shopping. After about an hour of being out of the house, I was able to cool down to level headed. Retail therapy worked for me, shockingly. I'm not that big of a shopper. I guess it was just the getting out of the house and changing environment thing.

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me tooooooooo... I was really emotional last night :( Trying to distract myself but to no avail. Getting weird nightmares as well. I half woke up last night around 4am from a weird dream in which there was something hiding in my wardrobe and banging on the door, and all the while just had "Yale. Yale. Yale. Yale" going round and round in my head. What does it mean?!!

You've got a Boggart and it's taking the form of a terrifying Ivy League school.

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Up until tonight, I have been obsessing about how I won't get in to any schools and I should start thinking about my re-application approach for next year. It seems like a reasonable strategy to prepare for bad news, right? Well, tonight, I purposely indulged wild fantasies of getting alot of acceptances. Just thinking about getting that first call and being excited, then getting a second one and thinking through the kind of tough decisions I would have to make if I got in to most of my choices.

Nothing has changed since yesterday. I still don't know where I stand as far as my future is concerned, but I tell you what, I'm a whole lot less exhausted tonight as I crawl into bed. It feels good to just let myself dream for a day or two.

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Is the Blackout affecting anyone else?

No Reddit, No Wikipedia...yet I keep going to them. There's not even PennSound or UbuWeb...

When in doubt, my answer is always NETFLIX (assuming you have Netflix). I know I'm a few years late, but I just started watching Skins. There's nothing like the drug-fueled, sexual escapades of a bunch of nihilistic British teens to keep your mind off of grad school.

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When in doubt, my answer is always NETFLIX (assuming you have Netflix). I know I'm a few years late, but I just started watching Skins. There's nothing like the drug-fueled, sexual escapades of a bunch of nihilistic British teens to keep your mind off of grad school.

I, too, have been drowning my sorrows in Netflix. I love Skins! It's one of my favorite shows! (U.K. of course, not the awful U.S. version). My husband and I just re-watched all the seasons a few weeks ago.

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When in doubt, my answer is always NETFLIX (assuming you have Netflix). I know I'm a few years late, but I just started watching Skins. There's nothing like the drug-fueled, sexual escapades of a bunch of nihilistic British teens to keep your mind off of grad school.

I feel similarly about Degrassi! Different breed of teen, for the most part, but still melodramatic to the extreme. I'll have to check out Skins (UK).

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I feel similarly about Degrassi! Different breed of teen, for the most part, but still melodramatic to the extreme. I'll have to check out Skins (UK).

If you like Degrassi (which I do!) you will LOVE U.K. Skins!

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New season of Skins comes out on the 23 of this month, Timshel! Have you ever watched Misfits? If you haven't, you have to. It's on E4 like Skins, and it is pretty similar in tone and humor but it is science fictiony.

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I'm honestly just trying my best to forget that I applied. (Obviously I am not doing a very successful job at that, considering how many times a day I read grad cafe.) My semester started yesterday, so I'm just trying to throw myself into the mountains of work that have already appeared. Even though I'm trying to minimize the time spent thinking about applications, I've basically been an insomniac for the past 3 weeks. I'm not even worrying about applications, per say, in those sleepless nights. I'm just worrying in general, essentially about anything that pops into my head, but the root of the anxiety is definitely this weird limbo state.

Rip the bandaid off, indeed!

May you all get into your top choice with full funding!

Edited by rainy_day
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At this point I just want someone to rip the bandaid(s) off.

/ now back to looking at Craigslist rentals for college towns where I'll probably never live...

Haha I totally did that!

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