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for comp lit of course. my concentration(s): postcolonialism, borders, the middle east, arabic translation.

here's my story with penn:

i have contacted professor of my dreams that specializes in much of what i am interested in. i sent him my cv and he said he would be interested in working with me and to apply. so i did.

after i did, i fretted about my writing sample. i wrote most of it independently, and after taking a diaspora theory course this quarter, and then revising the writing sample to present it at a conference, i emailed the dept with an attachment and (beggingly, pleadingly) asked the super nice coordinator to pass it along.

so, im fretting that it was too late to have my writing sample looked at again. but i figured, hey, i made it through the first round, and i have an advisor willing to take me up as his knave.

i have no idea.

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oh theory_junky...

you're in the same boat as us all. you want to inflict violent unforgivable, merciless harm to those chattering fools the adcoms for making you wait like a fool and drive yourself up a fucking wall in the process.

so many social restraints keep us from doing what we really want to do --- rushing to the department, putting hand over heart, genuflecting before the adcom and swearing with tear-filled eyes that you will work night-shifts as their janitor and clean their toilets and do their linens and dry-clean their suits and do their grocery shopping, their UPS-shipping, for nothing, for FREE, for the ENTIRE FUCKING TIME YOU'RE there... if only only only they will see that you, that YOU are special, among 200 people, YOU have a story, a background, YOU have read through deep jargon-laden books in a fever of excitementthat most people would snarl at for incomprehensibility , wrestled with the big deep abiding "ideas," debated in class far outshining the rest of your peers, brown-nosed and schmoozed with every single pompous ass in your department and sent flowers and edible arrangements to your recommenders, checked, and rechecked the spelling of every SINGLE scholar you reference in your personal statement... conscientious, desperate, willing to be abused... for 6 years of hard intellectual labor and subsistence living...

And you know what they do, they fucking tell you that shit should be up by the damn 16th and it isn't and it makes you want to bitch slap them across the universe..

LOOOOLLLL

after a good laugh....wow. what a stunning depiction of desperate hope. im speechless.

if only they realized that YES this is the applicant that will save the WORLD that will successfully bridge the ostensible gap between theory and practice, that has deep, prophetic insight into the unconscious forces of our time, that will indelibly change the consciousness of every individual and leave a mark on the stain of literary criticism and ultimately wind up in the Norton Anthology of Awesomeness that was trail blazed out of the esoteric brilliance that positively seethes from the pores.

Or, maybe I should send in a picture of me, with 3 kids strapped to my back, bend over a toilet with plunger, and with my other hand, feeding the mouth of a Congolese infant i rescued from the ravenous jaws of a lion.

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no -- but I got accepted to temple.

upenn, however, is right nearby.. in the GHEETOOOO [cartman from southpark]

When at Upenn on visit, I can engage in prestige duels using hyper-refined connecticut well-born partrician almost southern sounding William F Buckley accents wearing a blazer with a coat of arms and saying "Ooohhhhhhhh [nasely], dear fellow. *I* am going to temple, the bastion of celebrity, the tip-tippity-top of fabulosity and grandiosity! Ooohhhhhhhhh [nasely], what can you *YOU* say about your *NOT* so venerable institution. We at temple are surrounded on all sides by crack dens, low-income substandard tenement housing which regularly fails inspection regulations for structural soundness, and a veritable potpourri *ETHNIC* communities... what do *YOU* have to offer? Hmmmmm??? I've been mugged, thrice. I bet you don't have such a boast!"

bigup my man. universities SHOULD be in the midst of such "ethnic" diversity! it toughens our theoretical muscles, blings up our otherwise morose countenances, and keeps us in touch with "the people." my university is in a ghetto-rific area and I like to this it elevates its ranking.

congrats on Temple!

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wow dats pretty racist

bigup my man. universities SHOULD be in the midst of such "ethnic" diversity! it toughens our theoretical muscles, blings up our otherwise morose countenances, and keeps us in touch with "the people." my university is in a ghetto-rific area and I like to this it elevates its ranking.

congrats on Temple!

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... an off-the-wall exaggerated joke with no absolutely no reality to it and to a great extent self-parodistic...

It takes you that many words to describe it, and yet you expect that it will be innately understood by others?

Huh...

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Huh?

Oh, c'mon! LOL.

I hardly think this the proper forum to say that a sentence of oh 20 words would fumble someone's comprehension.

It was an obvious joke. I refuse to people on here can't see that in abundance.

aren't english people notorious for being able to work through infinitely long sentences and instinctively respond according to their favorite discourse(s) despite their proclivity to dismiss obvious performances of irony as complicit when there are no embedded intertextual relationships to be deconstructed?

GIVE ME A SIGNIFIER!!!!!

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I don't want you to be PC. I want you to be yourself. And, as it stands, that self is pretty racist. I live in an "ethnic ghetto" a few blocks from Penn so when you talk about it derisively..I'm gonna speak up...I'm not asking you to change..I'm just letting you know...that the comments suggests a serious race issue...

And, frankly, I really hope you don't get in.

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I don't want you to be PC. I want you to be yourself. And, as it stands, that self is pretty racist. I live in an "ethnic ghetto" a few blocks from Penn so when you talk about it derisively..I'm gonna speak up...I'm not asking you to change..I'm just letting you know...that the comments suggests a serious race issue...

And, frankly, I really hope you don't get in.

this is the best place to start revolutions. bravo.

perhaps it is the criteria through which "ethnic ghettos" are classified is the real racial problem. is it so because it falls significantly below your middle class suburban upbringing, or is it really hard knocks? i live in an area that has been classified as ghetto, and I see the problem of that being the overestimation of violence and danger in the area simply because it has a high number of non-white families living well below the middle class. before you get back on your whitewashed liberal soapbox why don't you try to figure out who you are defending, or why you think that you will be the crusade to their cause. poking fun at the ways in which race and class are geographically distributed and defined is hardly going to result in the next slave trade. lighten up. the only people that you can save will be ones that willing to be subjugated to your benevolent spokesmanship.

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"** PS. I've actually worked in inner city high schools in Brooklyn teaching/tutoring kids in high school Math. You have no f'ing clue."

Great! You teach poor people!

I think its a sign of our "post-racial" times that it has become ever more difficult to call a spade, a spade...It scares me because I imagine you folks will be my colleagues one day and when you make a dumb, racist joke I'll know that If I say something I'll (again thanks to our "post-race" moment) be pinned down as a trouble maker. Good luck, however!

And again, even more vehemently, I really hope you don't get in..

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I really think this conversation needs to end. Alas, I had a very nice response to this that tried to be inclusive of everyone, but then my browser closed, so you'll just get this distillation:

'Ghetto' is used to marginalize. It's really that simple. Even if it had nothing to do with your particular ideas about blackness and/or poorness, it's still used to marginalize, in precisely the way that 'ghettos' have always been determined to subjugate marginalized peoples.

But it does have something to do with blackness, as this is how it's culturally perceived -- that's inescapable, and it's where the racist accusation comes from. 'Racist' may be overused, or perhaps the connotation of it just makes people defensive no matter whether it's merited or not. I don't know, but I'll avoid the term here to instead say that 'ghetto' is, racist or not, insensitive. Even if you're using it to refer to a white person, are you not using it to suggest that they're engaging behaviors or performances not typical to whiteness? I think you are, and I think we need to be honest about this fact. I appreciate that the term is used to refer, sometimes, to poorer white neighborhoods, but I'm not convinced that the term isn't inscribed with a black connotation nevertheless.

And even if it were used to refer to white and black people in equal measure -- not to mention the many other racial identities -- wouldn't it still be used to marginalize? Wouldn't it still, therefore, be insensitive?

[Not to mention that it'd be hard for you to escape the fact that the 'ghettoooooo' Philly environs you were referring to are predominately black. If they weren't, would you have been as compelled to use this particular term? It's something to think about.]

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http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/

NOW THATS FUNNY!

*claps* kedfed. I infinitely appeciate ur position.

Nevertheless, I disagree. But stil, pains are felt everwhere. I'm a good pesron. My frineds, many of then, are grad students, who disagree with me, but I don't extend that further. All I want, from you and other is this: we are living in a time of cultural hodgepodge, strageness, and disarray. All lines implode, subvert, and re-orient. I truly, deeply love people. I've dated black, asian, latin men, in my life. And for soem pesron to accuse me of racism.... it's disgusting. Maybe the joke doesn't well executed... but we ALL HAVE BRAINS. We swe the intent. and I REFUSSSEEEE to accept I was wrong. I'm a smart guy. I was in law school. I know what's up, and frankly, this is this bullshit. I'm infinitely respectful of intelligent argument, but not PC argument which just exists because it's so.

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I really hope that immersion and vecrhite have both gone into the User Control Panel thing on this site and added each other as "foes." I always wondered what that even meant, but seeing the two of you, it makes so much sense.

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