Time between MA and PhD

[Quamvis]

Hi all,

I ended up doing a terminal masters (philology) at Arizona rather than going straight into a PhD program from undergrad, despite the fact that I had enough credits to do the latter (various stressors came up my senior year of undergrad which resulted in me not meeting PhD deadlines and I was encouraged to just apply for the MA so I wouldn't go outside the field too long), and I am now teaching Latin on the secondary level in New York. Does anyone know, barring recommenders dying or something, whether time off from grad school, as long as it is spent teaching and reading on one's own (I am making my way through the whole Harvard reading list while off, and my eventual goal is to read all of classical pagan poetry in the original and before I die the whole corpus-- lofty, I know!) is detrimental to getting back into academia between the MA and PhD? Also, more embarrassingly, due to unwisely taking on a way heavier load than I was prepared for at Arizona (I took four classes and TA'ed or taught almost every semester, including the one I was writing my thesis) I made two B's solely due to papers being slightly shorter than they should have been-- my recommenders all know I am very well-grounded in the languages, but I do struggle time to time with cranking out large amounts of academic prose under overloaded conditions-- does that destroy my chances almost everywhere? Me pudet hoc fateri, but, as I said, I unwisely took on a lot, but I nonetheless have made myself read very large amounts of both Greek and Latin (Aeneid straight through eight or nine times, all of Lucan, all of the Metamorphoses, all of the Odyssey, most of Statius, most of the elegiac corpus, + all the stuff on AZ's reading list). I am also editing my thesis to try to publish it so my name is out there.

Thanks for your thoughts/help!

[Pius Aeneas]

Welcome! I, too, did my MA at the U of A, although my emphasis was/is archaeology.

To answer your question: No, taking time off from between the completion of your M.A. and applying for doctoral programs will not, in any way, hurt your chances. This application cycle my M.A. advisor even told me to make sure to include all my work experience on my C.V. because a lot of students think that taking time off is something to be ashamed when it isn't. I've also had an interview with one of the programs I applied to over the phone and the professor I spoke with seemed happy that I took time away from the field and mentioned that they had done so as well before pursing their doctorate.

The only instances where taking time off might be cause for concern would be if you had taken years off doing something entirely unrelated to Classics which didn't allow you to keep up your languages. This shouldn't be an issue for you since you're actually teaching Latin and you seem to have a significant amount read in the ancient languages.

The two B's may be an issue, since as a graduate student anything below a B might as well be failing, but you might ask your recommenders what they think since they may have served on admissions committees before. Generally, your Statement of Purpose and your Letters of Recommendation are the most important components of your application. Grades and GRE tend to come into play if you're up for competitive fellowships or funding beyond whatever the department you're applying to provides.

As for papers, you're just going to have to get used writing them, since this a large part of being an academic. Start early on them, choose topics which you're really interested in whenever possible, get feedback from your professors and peers as you write them, etc.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Pius Aeneas

[Apogeee]

Since your time off has been spent in the field, I don't see this time as a detriment. You can spin it carefully in your personal statement if your advisors recommend that.

Have you considered giving a paper at a conference? That will be a useful addition to your CV.

That being said, I see a larger potential problem with not having an easy or comfortable time "cranking out academic prose" since that is the main activity of the PhD. Are you sure a PhD is what you want? So many people start, and then, when they realize that it's not all about the classes, but mainly about the writing, they get discouraged and end up leaving ABD.

 

Good luck.

 

 

[Quamvis]

Thanks for the responses. To answer the point about difficulty writing-- I have taken steps to remedy that, making myself write (or expand old papers) in my leisure time to practice, and have been reworking parts of my thesis into an article to submit to a journal. Perhaps, however, I should be more realistic about what getting a B at all says about me-- although in reality much of that was due to plain out laze/procrastination + the inevitable grad school depression/burnout. The main reason I feel so invested in going on for a PhD is that I have put in so many hours at this point with the languages, as well as the fact that in undergrad I was told I could get into a very good PhD program straight out of undergrad, but then due to family circumstances which led to my depression and the PhD application deadline passing I ended up at Arizona for two years instead. I enjoy high school teaching, but in no way can it be as rewarding as teaching on the university level (not that the job market makes getting a job at the university that realistic of a shot for many people).

[Apogeee]

1 hour ago, Quamvis said:

I enjoy high school teaching, but in no way can it be as rewarding as teaching on the university level 

This is a fascinating point of view that I have never, ever heard before. Have you taught at the university level for a long time? What would you say sets it apart from teaching at the secondary level?

[Quamvis]

Well, there is, I think a certain depth of discussion of the literature that can't be had on the secondary level in the way it can in teaching upper-level language courses on the university level-- although to be honest, now that I think more carefully about what I am saying, even the very highest upper-level classes I had in undergrad very rarely delved that deeply into the literary aspects of the texts, since often people were not so highly prepared as translators. I try to incorporate as much as I can of literary history and so forth into secondary teaching, to get the students to really see Classics as a literary tradition, though of course they usually aren't at the level of reading comprehension with Latin to be able to really take the time for those discussions until the third year. Perhaps I should remember that it is a very rare professor who gets to teach graduate seminar level courses where one can really spend large amounts of time on the literary aesthetics of Classics.

[Apogeee]

56 minutes ago, Quamvis said:

since often people were not so highly prepared as translators

It's a delicate balance, I think, between attention to reading and discussion, and work paid to increasing grammar skills. There is very little call for transltion in the real world. And, certainly, a reader has to understand the text before translation can actually happen. 

[pro Augustis]

I agree with Quamvis, actually: I think I would enjoy teaching at the university level but am uninterested in teaching high school. Perhaps I am biased because my high school did not offer Latin, but I have a hard time imagining teaching anything like what I am interested in at high school. I took every history course offered at my (highly regarded!) high school, and not a single one was anything like a college course in approach. High school history consisted of memorizing facts, and I have little interest in teaching that, while, even if I am just teaching 100 level Roman History or whatever its equivalent, I would at least be talking about the topic I love and guiding students through the interpretation of tricky sources like Tacitus. 

4 hours ago, Quamvis said:

The main reason I feel so invested in going on for a PhD is that I have put in so many hours at this point with the languages, as well as the fact that in undergrad I was told I could get into a very good PhD program straight out of undergrad, but then due to family circumstances which led to my depression and the PhD application deadline passing I ended up at Arizona for two years instead. 

This part of your post, Quamvis, did, however, catch my attention. If your reasons for pursuing this are a desire to teach in the university or a love of the subject matter, then I don't think that you should let a B deter you: it may be an obstacle to admission, but it may not be. But if you are only proceeding down this path out of a sense of momentum, then that is (in my opinion) an insufficient reason to spend years in grad school and enter a moribund job market. 

[Apogeee]

1 hour ago, pro Augustis said:

High school history consisted of memorizing facts,

Ugh. That's individual school preference and administrative directive. It's not like that in every class, thank goodness! 

[pro Augustis]

11 hours ago, Agrippina said:

Ugh. That's individual school preference and administrative directive. It's not like that in every class, thank goodness! 

I am glad to hear that. I should say that not all of my history classes were bad. Some of the teachers made the material very engaging. But not once in high school did we ever sit down with a primary source and try to figure out what it could tell us about the past.

[Quamvis]

Yes, and also there is simply the allure of teaching the big lecture classes like myth and Roman history-- lecturing is, at least from observing my very famously animated and hilarious undergrad myth prof at Alabama, very fun and rewarding if done right (although large classes like that no doubt have their own frustrations, as that a job will always in some way be just a job and therefore not something one is always thrilled to do). 

Also, so far as the job market, etc., goes, though I would never go to grad school again without full funding like the MA program gave, money is thankfully not so much of any issue for me: I'm not wealthy per se, but I'm very financially blessed and also have a family business to fall back on. I know I am going to give getting the PhD a shot since I won't be happy with myself otherwise; I just have to remember that those B's significantly lower my chances of getting in anywhere. . . Does anyone know if doing a second MA and not making the same mistakes I made last time would be an answer? Or is it impossible to gain two terminal MA's in the same field?

[Apogeee]

I know people with two MAs in the same field. As to whether or not that improves your chances, I cannot really say. I have been very happy with the responses I have gotten during this admissions cycle, but I have heard that it is not always just or fair. Some people get in and some don't, and even very knowledgeable professors are sometimes at a loss as to the thinking of the committee that has rejected them. If you learned from the situation in which you got the B, you can address that in a carefully crafted statement of purpose (don't allude to the grade itself, but discuss what you learned in the process of meeting challenges, for example, and how this makes you a strong candidate for the target institution.)

[pro Augustis]

1 hour ago, Quamvis said:

Yes, and also there is simply the allure of teaching the big lecture classes like myth and Roman history-- lecturing is, at least from observing my very famously animated and hilarious undergrad myth prof at Alabama, very fun and rewarding if done right (although large classes like that no doubt have their own frustrations, as that a job will always in some way be just a job and therefore not something one is always thrilled to do). 

Also, so far as the job market, etc., goes, though I would never go to grad school again without full funding like the MA program gave, money is thankfully not so much of any issue for me: I'm not wealthy per se, but I'm very financially blessed and also have a family business to fall back on. I know I am going to give getting the PhD a shot since I won't be happy with myself otherwise; I just have to remember that those B's significantly lower my chances of getting in anywhere. . . Does anyone know if doing a second MA and not making the same mistakes I made last time would be an answer? Or is it impossible to gain two terminal MA's in the same field?

Go for it, then. I hope that my prior comment did not sound overly negative. As for lecturing, I agree: one of my undergrad professors somehow made lecturing seem like the most thrilling thing in the world, both for the lecturer and his audience. 

[Quamvis]

Well, good news: two of my thesis committee members said they'd be happy to write for me, and that if I frame things appropriately my blemishes shouldn't be such a huge problem with some programs. I am continuing to make progress with revising and condensing my thesis into an article; I've tried to come to terms with the fact that reading more Greek and Latin past a certain point is in some ways a waste of time in a very research-driven modern academia (and writing is the important thing). But, if I may ask, how did all of you get around the feeling that nothing one writes in Classics can really be "original research"? For my thesis I took an angle at an issue in Theocritus that I actually couldn't find any other scholar taking, and the committee found it compelling, but I always have this feeling that nearly ever paper should be "original" in some sense, though that's actually impossible. Certainly few of mine actually were; but for the dissertation one is of course required to do "original research" on a massive scale.

Also, on the note of time spent honing writing skills versus time spent reading Greek and Latin: it strikes me as sad in some ways that many professors I have had have said they never actually read every line of every work on their PhD or MA reading lists, but I suppose in some ways that it is wise to acknowledge that while ideally we all should try as hard as possible to meet that standard, grad school really IS about producing research rather than about reading, and once one's Greek and Latin is fluent enough to translate anything at sight it may be a wiser use of time not to try to reading literally every page of everything on a reading list when one could be starting early on a thesis or dissertation.

[pro Augustis]

Congratulations on your good news, @Quamvis. The questions you are wondering about are ones that I am still trying to figure out myself, so I can't give answers but can share my thoughts.

There really is something intimidating about writing in a field that has been worked upon for millennia. Researchers have not, however, been interested in asking the same questions for millennia. I sometimes wonder if all that will be known about Rome has already been discovered. But books like Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire or Imperial Ideals in the Roman West astound me and seem like huge steps forward in understanding how Romans thought about the political order of their world. The odds that there remained great things to say in 2000 and 2011, when the above books were released, but that they are all gone now seem... low. Of course, that doesn't guarantee that I myself will have anything great to say. For that I think we can only hope and try our hardest. I did recently have the thrilling experience of, for the first time, stumbling upon a sort of ideological motif that I don't think has been sufficiently treated and got to feel like I had something to contribute. It sounds like you had a similar experience with your work on Theocritus. If it happened to us once, it hopefully will again.

As for the languages, I think that a balance is needed. Grad school certainly does have a reading component: if you are at a program with survey courses, as most seem to, you will be reading 700-1000 lines a week and getting a good feel for a plethora of authors. More than that, the fact that reading stops being as focused upon in classes and the like does not mean that you have to stop. One of my professors this year said that he, after decades spent in Classics, just realized that he had never read Pliny's Natural History. He is now working through the whole thing in Latin. I don't see any reason why you, once you have passed your exams and honed your research skills, cannot also keep reading, and I imagine that such continued and protracted reading would only benefit your work. 

[Apogeee]

Good news there, Quamvis! I am really happy for you. 

There is a ton of original research being done. A colleague of mine just found a Latin epic poem about a war in South America. Nobody has looked at it since the book was published in the 18th century. He found a lot of references to Vergil, and uncovered a treasure trove of new work. I was at a conference in April where some new and original research was presented about Latin in Australia, which nobody really thought existed. Keep reading. As you read, you will start to make connections and your research interests will develop on their own. 

Several of the scholars here make time to read every day. They read widely and deeply, in several languages. This keeps the connections coming.

Cura te diligenter.

Laura

[knp]

I don't know if you'll be interested in this perspective, but I did wash out of classics because that question, basically. The turning point was when I realized that I wanted to spend my life doing academic research, but I couldn't see myself doing it in classics. I thought I could write a master's thesis, probably, and that would be fun, but the idea of trying to write a classics dissertation filled me with dread. That's not true for everybody, obviously, but it definitely affected how I responded to the field.

I should probably note that my tastes ran to literature/the ancient epic, rather than medieval Latin, neo-Latin, Byzantine studies, history of science, reception studies, or some other topic where there was more obviously more to do. Not that there isn't more work to do in all fields of classics! But just because I know that doesn't mean I felt that, you know? So I went off and found a field where I think I'll still be excited about new questions and new research for 80-90 years (the goal being to retire with more left to do!). I still do some classical stuff on the side, which keeps me happy and fulfilled with that interest, and that was a good resolution for me.

[Quamvis]

Well, further good news: the third committee member, whom I was unduly terrified of asking if he would ever write for me as he went to a very prestigious program himself, agreed to write! I am going ahead and applying to two or three schools this year, with full awareness that it could be highly unlikely that I will get in anywhere at all, but he did say that no one thing on a transcript will be an inevitable death-knell if the overall story of the candidate and his or her abilities with Latin and Greek (and research, though again I wasn't always the best at rapidly producing that) are commendable. I do enjoy secondary level teaching, as I said, though I teach middle school in addition to high school, which can be exceedingly stressful, and I am also in a part of the country with what is not really a sustainable cost of living and I would rather use the money I do have saved up for making it through graduate school than for continuing to live here.

[pro Augustis]

16 hours ago, Quamvis said:

Well, further good news: the third committee member, whom I was unduly terrified of asking if he would ever write for me as he went to a very prestigious program himself, agreed to write! I am going ahead and applying to two or three schools this year, with full awareness that it could be highly unlikely that I will get in anywhere at all, but he did say that no one thing on a transcript will be an inevitable death-knell if the overall story of the candidate and his or her abilities with Latin and Greek (and research, though again I wasn't always the best at rapidly producing that) are commendable. I do enjoy secondary level teaching, as I said, though I teach middle school in addition to high school, which can be exceedingly stressful, and I am also in a part of the country with what is not really a sustainable cost of living and I would rather use the money I do have saved up for making it through graduate school than for continuing to live here.

Good luck!