Venting Thread

[orphic_mel528]

Just now, Wyatt's Terps said:

So does the person who just posted this on the Results page...
 

...think he or she is being funny? Because that's not funny in the least.

Goes to show that it doesn't take much for the seeming legitimacy of the Results board to be compromised.

That's a stupid thing to do.

[Dr. Old Bill]

1 minute ago, orphic_mel528 said:

That's a stupid thing to do.

Indeed. This forum is a blend of light-hearted banter, serious advice, legitimate camaraderie, and rampant anxiety, but beneath all of those things is a layer of vulnerability, because we've all spent countless years of education, thousands and thousands of dollars, and an extreme amount of time and effort to get to the point of applying to graduate programs...programs that take a small percentage of worthy applicants. Beneath everything else, the process is extremely serious, and shapes our lives, in large part defining the paths we will take for the next several decades. Pranking on decision results is not even remotely funny, but is instead rather cruel, and I hope the person who created those false acceptances (or purported to create those false acceptances, which is just as bad) has it sit heavy on his or her conscience for awhile.

 

[Caien]

15 minutes ago, Wyatt's Terps said:

Goes to show that it doesn't take much for the seeming legitimacy of the Results board to be compromised.
 

I reported all of them as spam. Only thing I could think to do.

[clinamen]

8 minutes ago, Wyatt's Terps said:

Indeed. This forum is a blend of light-hearted banter, serious advice, legitimate camaraderie, and rampant anxiety, but beneath all of those things is a layer of vulnerability, because we've all spent countless years of education, thousands and thousands of dollars, and an extreme amount of time and effort to get to the point of applying to graduate programs...programs that take a small percentage of worthy applicants. Beneath everything else, the process is extremely serious, and shapes our lives, in large part defining the paths we will take for the next several decades. Pranking on decision results is not even remotely funny, but is instead rather cruel, and I hope the person who created those false acceptances (or purported to create those false acceptances, which is just as bad) has it sit heavy on his or her conscience for awhile.

 

I second all of this. Those ostensibly fake posts have just added a layer of confusion to the already anxiety-inducing waiting process.. 

Edited February 24, 2017 by clinamen

[la_mod]

48 minutes ago, orphic_mel528 said:

That's a stupid thing to do.

SO cruel. 

 

40 minutes ago, Wyatt's Terps said:

Indeed. This forum is a blend of light-hearted banter, serious advice, legitimate camaraderie, and rampant anxiety, but beneath all of those things is a layer of vulnerability, because we've all spent countless years of education, thousands and thousands of dollars, and an extreme amount of time and effort to get to the point of applying to graduate programs...programs that take a small percentage of worthy applicants. Beneath everything else, the process is extremely serious, and shapes our lives, in large part defining the paths we will take for the next several decades. Pranking on decision results is not even remotely funny, but is instead rather cruel, and I hope the person who created those false acceptances (or purported to create those false acceptances, which is just as bad) has it sit heavy on his or her conscience for awhile.

 

Agreed. And was this person waitlisted for real? Gosh, I'm such a ball of nerves. It's awful for someone to know, to READ that we're all so nervous and then purposefully toy with that. Not cool. 

[Warelin]

As much anxiety as this causes us all: this says more about the character of the person causing the anxiety to everyone else more than it does anything else. I have no idea why anybody would find it beneficial to cause people to be more stressed than they already are.

[orphic_mel528]

Just now, la_mod said:

SO cruel. 

 

Agreed. And was this person waitlisted for real? Gosh, I'm such a ball of nerves. It's awful for someone to know, to READ that we're all so nervous and then purposefully toy with that. Not cool. 

Especially for those who have had a series of rejections and are holding out hope for their remaining schools. Far be it from me, the Empress of Non Sequiturs, Mad Hatteress, and Pied Piperess of Logical Discussion to be stodgy about rules and regulations, but it's just...kinda shitty. You only need to spend five minutes on these forums to see that people are checking that results board like their lives depend on it. Even for people who have gotten an acceptance or more than one, it's still irritating to have decisions wafting around out there in the cosmos somewhere and no closure. 

[la_mod]

19 minutes ago, Warelin said:

As much anxiety as this causes us all: this says more about the character of the person causing the anxiety to everyone else more than it does anything else. I have no idea why anybody would find it beneficial to cause people to be more stressed than they already are.

I mean, yeah. I'm just as bothered by the fact that I have zero idea whether or not decisions for Columbia have been released at all. Ugh. 

[la_mod]

20 minutes ago, orphic_mel528 said:

Especially for those who have had a series of rejections and are holding out hope for their remaining schools. Far be it from me, the Empress of Non Sequiturs, Mad Hatteress, and Pied Piperess of Logical Discussion to be stodgy about rules and regulations, but it's just...kinda shitty. You only need to spend five minutes on these forums to see that people are checking that results board like their lives depend on it. Even for people who have gotten an acceptance or more than one, it's still irritating to have decisions wafting around out there in the cosmos somewhere and no closure. 

Yes! I posted earlier that Columbia is my LAST shot, so this feels really awful.

[Caien]

Personally I'm leaning toward them all being fake, and Columbia not having notified yet, purely because an acceptance as big as Columbia usually gets a post in the acceptance thread, and for the most part (but not always) we have at least one gradcafer accepted to each school. Of course its entirely possible Columbia have in fact notified, but now I don't think I'll accept it until a someone we 'know' (as in, with a history here on the forums) posts an acceptance. That is a sad state of affairs, but there it is.

[imogenshakes]

5 minutes ago, la_mod said:

Yes! I posted earlier that Columbia is my LAST shot, so this feels really awful.

Geez. I just now saw this. I'm sorry, guys. People can be so stupid and cruel. Hang in there!

[piers_plowman]

1 minute ago, Caien said:

Personally I'm leaning toward them all being fake, and Columbia not having notified yet, purely because an acceptance as big as Columbia usually gets a post in the acceptance thread, and for the most part (but not always) we have at least one gradcafer accepted to each school. Of course its entirely possible Columbia have in fact notified, but now I don't think I'll accept it until a someone we 'know' (as in, with a history here on the forums) posts an acceptance. That is a sad state of affairs, but there it is.

Agreed. They also claimed to be notified by phone, something Columbia has never done before (always email in previous years). Not that that means anything, but for those who applied don't give up hope!

[zombiekeats]

10 minutes ago, la_mod said:

Yes! I posted earlier that Columbia is my LAST shot, so this feels really awful.

Good luck, @la_mod! I'm sorry, this all sucks.

Application season is already so stressful. I don't get people.

[Caien]

They seem to have removed the 'confession' post but not the two 'acceptance' posts. I'd hoped they'd remove them all as now people will be checking the board and just seeing the 'acceptances', thus causing further unnecessary upset, but I guess its the mods prerogative as they can't confirm a fake post.

Edit: They're all gone now.

Edited February 25, 2017 by Caien

[anxiousphd]

Is this an appropriate place to vent about my mother? Because she has been trying to manipulate me into not breaking up with my boyfriend and into taking the LSAT "just to see" because law school is "so much easier than PhD programs." I DONT WANT TO DATE HIM ANYMORE AND I DONT WANT TO BE A LAWYER. I said I wanted to be a lawyer once when I was seven and also wanted to be a zebra

Edited February 25, 2017 by anxiousgrad

[orphic_mel528]

2 minutes ago, anxiousgrad said:

Is this an appropriate place to vent about my mother? Because she has been trying to manipulate me into not breaking up with my boyfriend and into taking the LSAT "just to see" because law school is "so much easier than PhD programs." I DONT WANT TO DATE HIM ANYMORE AND I DONT WANT TO BE A LAWYER. I said I wanted to be a lawyer once when I was seven and also wanted to be a zebra

Haha, I just made a thread about this! And btw...law programs are most definitely not so much easier than PhD programs. Especially that part about graduating with $150,000+ of debt and no job in sight because the market is flooded with lawyers. 

Edited February 25, 2017 by orphic_mel528

[eadwacer]

13 hours ago, anxiousgrad said:

Is this an appropriate place to vent about my mother? Because she has been trying to manipulate me into not breaking up with my boyfriend and into taking the LSAT "just to see" because law school is "so much easier than PhD programs." 

 

12 hours ago, orphic_mel528 said:

 And btw...law programs are most definitely not so much easier than PhD programs. Especially that part about graduating with $150,000+ of debt and no job in sight because the market is flooded with lawyers. 

I can personally vouch for this. I dropped out of law school after one semester for three reasons: 1) I hated all of the (sparse) career options law school career services pushed me toward, so why spend money on a degree to MAYBE get a job that I won't like; 2) the law was made by rich white straight men to disenfranchise everyone else and working with it made me want to punch everyone all the time; and 3) law school is such a toxic environment that they wouldn't give me a one day extension on a paper worth 60% of my grade so that I could go to my grandfather's funeral.

PhD programs may be intellectually difficult and stressful in terms of work load, but law school is specifically designed to tear you down and sabotage your learning unless you're there to support the status quo. If that's not what you're about, then a PhD is absolutely a legitimate, better choice for you. ...Not that I'm bitter or anything.

[Mippipopolous]

13 hours ago, orphic_mel528 said:

Haha, I just made a thread about this! And btw...law programs are most definitely not so much easier than PhD programs. Especially that part about graduating with $150,000+ of debt and no job in sight because the market is flooded with lawyers. 

Very true, my sister just took the bar and it almost broke her. She's one of the smartest and most dedicated people I know, but it really pushed her to the limit. And she already has a job lined up, so if she didn't it would've been even more stressful. The debt is crazy too, when I told her I was turning down an offer from U of Chicago's MAPH offer because I could never justify taking on 50k in debt she thought nothing of that amount. She absolutely loves the working environment at the firms she's been involved with though and the work itself, so definitely worth it to her!  

@eadwacer, I'm sorry you had such a negative experience in law school, it's definitely not the right path for everyone. I think you are perhaps discounting a lot of the wonderful work the profession as a whole can do though. For a recent high-profile example, the ACLU's work to strike down the Muslim ban and all the lawyers who showed up at airports to work pro bono for those stranded by it. And of course lawyers are responsible for landmark legal cases that have expanded our rights significantly; Obergefell v. Hodges being one of the most recent examples where the law was the path forward for fighting discrimination.

It does sound generally like a hyper-competitive environment, which is one reason I never really considered pursuing law school—that and my deep passion for literature of course! It sounds like the environment at whichever institution you attended was very toxic, so hopefully you end up at a wonderful PhD program to remedy that! Keeping my fingers crossed for you about Minnesota! They seem like such a lovely department, I'm sure you'd do amazingly there  And of course spending time at the insanely beautiful UBC campus is an awesome option too! 

[eadwacer]

18 minutes ago, Mippipopolous said:

 

@eadwacer, I'm sorry you had such a negative experience in law school, it's definitely not the right path for everyone. I think you are perhaps discounting a lot of the wonderful work the profession as a whole can do though. For a recent high-profile example, the ACLU's work to strike down the Muslim ban and all the lawyers who showed up at airports to work pro bono for those stranded by it. And of course lawyers are responsible for landmark legal cases that have expanded our rights significantly; Obergefell v. Hodges being one of the most recent examples where the law was the path forward for fighting discrimination.

It does sound generally like a hyper-competitive environment, which is one reason I never really considered pursuing law school—that and my deep passion for literature of course! It sounds like the environment at whichever institution you attended was very toxic, so hopefully you end up at a wonderful PhD program to remedy that! Keeping my fingers crossed for you about Minnesota! They seem like such a lovely department, I'm sure you'd do amazingly there  And of course spending time at the insanely beautiful UBC campus is an awesome option too! 

Don't get me wrong, the legal profession is extremely important, and the National Lawyers' Guild does some of the best work of any radical progressive organization I've ever seen. But in order to get to those (extremely limited, almost impossible to find, and frequently pro bono that you have to do on the side of corporate) jobs, you have to go through an educational experience that is literally designed to prevent you from doing that and to channel you into traditional legal careers. The primary document on the NLG website for progressive law students is not any kind of academic resource; it's a guide to not losing your values or becoming severely depressed in law school. It's just that law school is a place where you learn and succeed and grow despite your school, rather than because of it, and I think that's a key difference in the type of difficulty it presents in contrast to humanities PhDs.

Thanks, though! I'm really excited about UBC, and I'm starting to think about accepting that offer even if Minnesota or Rochester offer me a place--I feel like it might make me a stronger scholar, and it matches much more closely with my research interests. At the same time, though, I'm not sure how I feel about getting a Canadian MA, because I'm not entirely sure what that will do to my later options in PhD programs.

Edited February 25, 2017 by eadwacer
my cat woke me up at 4am and I forgot how to words

[Yanaka]

Serious venting needed.

I have to have credential evaluations done for my transcripts for a certain university I am applying to, which means they translate and draw equivalences from my French grades to American ones. I was already short on time because I hadn't seen that information soon enough and was relying on my previous official translations anyway, but this school needs another kind of evaluation. That's fine, and the people there notified me of that requirement as soon as we started emailing and that was extremely nice. They're all very nice!

However--either my current school has not sent my transcripts on time, or the mail took longer to be delivered than I expected, or the courrier has been lost. But they still haven't received anything at all at the "evaluator", so still nothing has been done, and the school's already extended their deadline for me. Not to say that I paid almost 400$ for that service, which will have been for nothing at all if I can't apply to the program in the end.

I already feel ashamed for having to pay for extremely expensive services on top of everything that this whole thing has already cost me, both mentally, financially and academically (hello, grades from last semester). But if it were to be in vain... I'll never be able to forgive myself for going through this craziness.

[slightlymoreanonymous]

Here to join in the venting! Found out this evening that I have to write another 45 pages and completely revise 60 pages in the next ten days in order to submit my thesis to my committee on time. It's 100% my fault (poor time management, really shitty initial drafts, deciding to graduate early instead of in the summer, and focusing on PhD programs and not this stuff), but I can't help feeling like I've totally screwed myself over. Time for major heartbreak, panic, and hopefully desperation-and-caffeine-fueled brilliance.  

 

Haha and I recognize posting this instead of immediately jumping into work is symptomatic of my time management issues  Eek!

[la_mod]

Are you all counting Columbia as an implied rejection yet?

Edited February 28, 2017 by la_mod

[zombiekeats]

16 minutes ago, la_mod said:

Are you all counting Columbia as an implied rejection yet?

Not yet--I'm waiting for the waitlist stuff to come out. 

Good luck!!!!!!

[Silabus]

Maybe that one Brandeis acceptance was meant to mess with me? And the Florida State one? I hope so. I haven't heard from either of them! *headdesk*

[slightlymoreanonymous]

21 minutes ago, Silabus said:

Maybe that one Brandeis acceptance was meant to mess with me? And the Florida State one? I hope so. I haven't heard from either of them! *headdesk*

One of the FSU ones was mine! But I'm a current student there, so they might be letting us know before others. Also, I'm pretty sure that rhet/comp does stuff differently than lit. I wouldn't give up hope yet!