Fall 2013 English Lit Applicants

[dazedandbemused]

And as for grad admissions-related dreams, I woke up from a short nap today having dreamt that I got into Indiana-Bloomington, which is odd considering I didn't apply there or even think about it.  I visited the campus, arrived late to a tour they were doing, and discovered that I was one of 5 applicants admitted.  I think the average incoming cohort is a lot higher than that at many places, but it's weird to think that, in such a situation, you'd represent 20% of the student body. 

 It's good to see all of these dreams from other people; I thought I was going crazy. I think I've begun to fixate on UT Austin or something because I had a really vivid dream in which I got accepted, went there, and became best friends with everyone I encountered. Cause you know, I'm just that cool. Of course, waking up and realizing that I'm really just completely psycho didn't help the anxiety knot that I've been carrying around in my chest since I submitted my last app.

[Swagato]

I want to read read read!

 

 

I'd like to read it as well.

 

Woah, thanks! If you'll just PM me your emails, I will send the sample over. This generosity is what I like about GC.

[HHEoS]

 It's good to see all of these dreams from other people; I thought I was going crazy. I think I've begun to fixate on UT Austin or something because I had a really vivid dream in which I got accepted, went there, and became best friends with everyone I encountered. Cause you know, I'm just that cool. Of course, waking up and realizing that I'm really just completely psycho didn't help the anxiety knot that I've been carrying around in my chest since I submitted my last app.

I don't usually have dreams related to real-life anxieties, but after reading these posts yesterday, I had one this morning. In it I got an email from some program where I applied (don't remember which one) about my application being incomplete. Panicking, I scrolled to the bottom of the message to find that my application was missing "7 eggs & 3 CDs." My response: "Why would they need that many eggs?!" Then I woke up and thought: wtf does that mean?

[BlueSiren]

I just wanted to say hello to everyone. Like the rest of you, I am waiting to hear about my application status from PhD programs. An acceptance will mean a big change for me and for my family. I'm an older student (37) with a husband and two daughters. I graduated with an MA in History in 2006 and am currently completing my MA in Literature. I've lived in the same town in Montana for my entire life. I look forward to chatting with others on this site and patiently waiting the letters of acceptance or rejection. I mostly dream about moving and packing these days.

[asleepawake]

"Why would they need that many eggs?!" 

 

Wow, yeah, none of my schools asked for any more than 3 eggs.

 

Edited January 6, 2013 by asleepawake

[HHEoS]

Wow, yeah, none of my schools asked for any more than 3 eggs.

 

LOLz I wish there were a way to up-vote this more than once because you just made my day.

[ProfLorax]

I just wanted to say hello to everyone. Like the rest of you, I am waiting to hear about my application status from PhD programs. An acceptance will mean a big change for me and for my family. I'm an older student (37) with a husband and two daughters. I graduated with an MA in History in 2006 and am currently completing my MA in Literature. I've lived in the same town in Montana for my entire life. I look forward to chatting with others on this site and patiently waiting the letters of acceptance or rejection. I mostly dream about moving and packing these days.

Hello, Jennifer! Welcome to the club. This is a good place to wait (although we don't do very well with the "patiently waiting," as seen in this thread!). 

[practical cat]

I don't usually have dreams related to real-life anxieties, but after reading these posts yesterday, I had one this morning. In it I got an email from some program where I applied (don't remember which one) about my application being incomplete. Panicking, I scrolled to the bottom of the message to find that my application was missing "7 eggs & 3 CDs." My response: "Why would they need that many eggs?!" Then I woke up and thought: wtf does that mean?

None of my committees are counting eggs until... You know.

[TripWillis]

I don't envy any of you right now. Last year around this time, I started to get into a fevered habit of constantly refreshing my e-mail, the forum, and the results board ALL DAY. I probably did it a total of 90,000 times. I will never be able to reclaim the sanity I lost between January 5th-February 8th.

Enjoy.

"The hard part was getting the brain OUT."

[HHEoS]

I don't envy any of you right now. Last year around this time, I started to get into a fevered habit of constantly refreshing my e-mail, the forum, and the results board ALL DAY. I probably did it a total of 90,000 times. I will never be able to reclaim the sanity I lost between January 5th-February 8th.

This is exactly what is happening to me right now. Today, I started watching three different movies and couldn't get past the first 5-7 minutes of any of them. I can't stop myself from thinking: MUST CHECK EMAIL NOW (all while knowing that no program where I applied is even close to making decisions yet).

[BrookeSnow]

I am panicing and I haven't turned in all my applications yet. I'm applying only to Masters programs but I've never felt so anxious about anything. I'm trying to quell the panic but its not working very well.

[Two Espressos]

I have a random, off-topic question to ask, and seeing as we're now just chatting about superfluous stuff like grad school dreams, I figured this thread would be a good place to ask it.

 

I'm taking a senior seminar (or a "capstone," I guess) course in English literature.  I assumed, going into this course, that it would require a final longer paper, not thesis-length or anything, but maybe something in the range of 25-35 pages.  I get to the seminar, the syllabus states that three papers are required, and the professor says we can democratically as a class work through the particulars of these requirements.  It's a small class, and the handful of other students all seem to think that three ~7 page papers are a good idea.  I'm the only dissenter: I want to write a longer paper, at least 20 pages or so, because writing three short papers seems inadequate for a course at this level.  Am I wrong for thinking this?  I've been writing 5-7 page papers since freshman year.  How can you possibly discuss something substantive in 5-7 double-spaced pages?

 

I guess I just want to know everyone's thoughts on this.  If you've taken a senior seminar course, what kind of requirements did it have?  Do you think, as I do, that these 7-page requirements are strange?

[slvitale]

I have a random, off-topic question to ask, and seeing as we're now just chatting about superfluous stuff like grad school dreams, I figured this thread would be a good place to ask it.

 

I'm taking a senior seminar (or a "capstone," I guess) course in English literature.  I assumed, going into this course, that it would require a final longer paper, not thesis-length or anything, but maybe something in the range of 25-35 pages.  I get to the seminar, the syllabus states that three papers are required, and the professor says we can democratically as a class work through the particulars of these requirements.  It's a small class, and the handful of other students all seem to think that three ~7 page papers are a good idea.  I'm the only dissenter: I want to write a longer paper, at least 20 pages or so, because writing three short papers seems inadequate for a course at this level.  Am I wrong for thinking this?  I've been writing 5-7 page papers since freshman year.  How can you possibly discuss something substantive in 5-7 double-spaced pages?

 

I guess I just want to know everyone's thoughts on this.  If you've taken a senior seminar course, what kind of requirements did it have?  Do you think, as I do, that these 7-page requirements are strange?

 

I took two different "senior seminars" both of which culminated in a paper of at least 15 pages. I don't think you're wrong to be the maverick here.

[rems]

My "senior seminar" course finished with a 12-30 page paper -- mine clocked in at about 17. We also had a lot of other "projects" to do that would prepare us for graduate study in English (that's how my prof structured the class: to prepare us for graduate school). Including writing 20 annotations, writing a review of a text, finding calls for papers and writing "fake" abstracts, extensive and exhaustive research logs to see where our weaknesses were in research and how we could improve upon them, developing a syllabus to teach theory (that was my fav part), and other stuff. So the paper was short, but we had kinda a "crash course" in stuff grad students do, so it evened out in the end. 

 

Long story short, I would want to write the longer paper. I don't really see the point of writing shorter papers in this context. I think your classmates may think it's easier when really it won't be. They'll just have to do three times the research and three times the close reading instead of focusing on one idea in depth -- I don't think they realize that. If it's still up for debate in your class, try to persuade them by saying how much more work it would be to start three individual projects that don't culminate into much whereas they could focus on one piece that could potentially be a conference paper, pub, or writing sample. My senior seminar paper was the jumping off point for my MA thesis which will continue (hopefully) into my dissertation. Writing three papers won't accomplish much more than refining your writing skills (which is never bad) but it's nice to get your hands dirty with a longer piece early because they are a separate beast all together. 

[DisplayCancel]

Cup o' Joe- when and how did you hear from CUNY? It is my top choice and would be great to know when I can expect to hear from them...

 

Thanks

[BookGeek]

I have a random, off-topic question to ask, and seeing as we're now just chatting about superfluous stuff like grad school dreams, I figured this thread would be a good place to ask it.

 

I'm taking a senior seminar (or a "capstone," I guess) course in English literature.  I assumed, going into this course, that it would require a final longer paper, not thesis-length or anything, but maybe something in the range of 25-35 pages.  I get to the seminar, the syllabus states that three papers are required, and the professor says we can democratically as a class work through the particulars of these requirements.  It's a small class, and the handful of other students all seem to think that three ~7 page papers are a good idea.  I'm the only dissenter: I want to write a longer paper, at least 20 pages or so, because writing three short papers seems inadequate for a course at this level.  Am I wrong for thinking this?  I've been writing 5-7 page papers since freshman year.  How can you possibly discuss something substantive in 5-7 double-spaced pages?

 

I guess I just want to know everyone's thoughts on this.  If you've taken a senior seminar course, what kind of requirements did it have?  Do you think, as I do, that these 7-page requirements are strange?

The only positive I can see in regards to the shorter papers is that they'll already be conference length, which may or may not be an end goal of the capstone class. Otherwise, I'd have to agree with you- longer papers are much more effective. Good luck on that battle! 

[lisajay]

  If you've taken a senior seminar course, what kind of requirements did it have?  Do you think, as I do, that these 7-page requirements are strange?

 

i took two senior seminars in undergrad, both of which culminated in a 15-20 page paper. one of them had two shorter papers along the lines of 7-10 pages prior to the seminar paper, while the other seminar had no other graded assignments at all.

 

if you're the lone dissenter, i'd recommend asking your professor if you can treat the three papers as part of a whole: i.e. your first two 7-page papers, although capable of standing alone, will work as seed papers for your final paper, which will be 21 pages or so. that way, you get to write the long paper you want to write, but you don't take away from other students' ability to do 3 separate 7 pagers, & everyone still does the same amount of work roughly.

[sebastiansteddy]

I took two different "senior seminars" both of which culminated in a paper of at least 15 pages. I don't think you're wrong to be the maverick here.

 

My senior seminar had one 7 page mid-term paper, and one 25 page final paper. The idea was to begin to form your ideas in the smaller paper, and then substantially develop them in the longer one. Every class I have taken in my MA program (which is integrated into the PhD program) has been done this way. It was a great way to learn how to write a seminar paper.

[sebastiansteddy]

I'd do exactly what lisajay says: ask your professor if you can develop your first 7 page into a 40 pager for the second one, and in turn, that one into a 21-25 pager. 

[lisajay]

ask your professor if you can develop your first 7 page into a 40 pager for the second one, and in turn, that one into a 21-25 pager. 

 

that sounds like an awful lot of editing...  

[lisajay]

My senior seminar had one 7 page mid-term paper, and one 25 page final paper. The idea was to begin to form your ideas in the smaller paper, and then substantially develop them in the longer one. Every class I have taken in my MA program (which is integrated into the PhD program) has been done this way. It was a great way to learn how to write a seminar paper.

 

seconded. virtually all of my MA seminars have had one or two short papers which are intended (though not necessarily required) to work as seed papers for your seminar paper.

[Two Espressos]

Thanks for the responses, everyone.  I'm glad to see that I wasn't off-base in feeling that three short papers seemed inadequate, on their own, for a senior seminar course.  I should have mentioned that, after I stated that I much preferred a longer paper, my professor brought up the tentative possibility of either turning in three short papers or one longer final paper, turning in in-progress work on the latter option periodically throughout the semester.  I quite like the second option, so I'm hoping that, as we discuss the course requirements in the coming days and weeks, she decides that the either/or option is acceptable.

[dazedandbemused]

I have a random, off-topic question to ask, and seeing as we're now just chatting about superfluous stuff like grad school dreams, I figured this thread would be a good place to ask it.

 

I'm taking a senior seminar (or a "capstone," I guess) course in English literature.  I assumed, going into this course, that it would require a final longer paper, not thesis-length or anything, but maybe something in the range of 25-35 pages.  I get to the seminar, the syllabus states that three papers are required, and the professor says we can democratically as a class work through the particulars of these requirements.  It's a small class, and the handful of other students all seem to think that three ~7 page papers are a good idea.  I'm the only dissenter: I want to write a longer paper, at least 20 pages or so, because writing three short papers seems inadequate for a course at this level.  Am I wrong for thinking this?  I've been writing 5-7 page papers since freshman year.  How can you possibly discuss something substantive in 5-7 double-spaced pages?

 

I guess I just want to know everyone's thoughts on this.  If you've taken a senior seminar course, what kind of requirements did it have?  Do you think, as I do, that these 7-page requirements are strange?

 

I actually took a capstone class that required four 7 page papers. However, rather than being an English capstone class, it was the Honors program capstone and was in fact a philosophy class. I think doing the shorter papers can be extremely useful, but it all depends on the focus of your class. Our class was extremely varied thematically, so it was useful to be able to think about things on a smaller scale on paper that we were thinking about at a grander scale in discussion. Will you be examining a variety of themes and methods or is there a more cohesive tone to the class? In the latter case, I would ask for the longer paper as well because I can't think of any reason why a senior English major would be writing anything shorter than 10 pages in that situation.

[sebastiansteddy]

that sounds like an awful lot of editing...  

 

Haha, that was supposed to be 14....

[TripWillis]

Cup o' Joe- when and how did you hear from CUNY? It is my top choice and would be great to know when I can expect to hear from them...

 

Thanks

I heard on February 9th. Good luck!