I need a venting thread. I'm in the process of wrapping up my MA, and I'm currently sending out applications for PhD. I've made sure to do everything the right way. I've got a 4.0 in my graduate work. I've presented at 4 conferences (three of which were national level conferences). I spent quality time over the summer researching programs, and compiled a list of 10 schools across the range of rankings that I would love to go to. I prepped and took the two GRE's (the subject for the first time and the general a 2nd time). So why do I need a vent thread? Two reasons--ETS and my recommendation profs. I'm justifiably curious as to how I did on the subject test. I took it over a month ago. They have scored it, because they sent out the score report to my schools more than a week ago. They have sent me nothing, and put nothing online. I understand that they do this to try and force people to pay the extra money to get the scores by phone, but I already gave them an obscene amount of money for a test. I just don't think they should be allowed to play games like that. As for my recommenders, I asked four profs, just to cover myself in case one of them flaked (my thesis adviser is completely senile, so I wanted a backup for when he inevitably flaked). Two of my recommenders uploaded their letters right away. My thesis adviser told me, the day after the deadline for the first school, that he wasn't going to write his letter until he got the next chapter of my MA thesis (which, according to my research schedule, isn't even due until late January). I thought, "hey, good thing I arranged for a back-up." Unfortunately, my backup is ALSO flaking. He keeps telling me he's going to write it and that it's going to be "really good." The problem with that is that it's been three weeks now...and he still hasn't written it. I sent apps to UCLA, UMD and SUNY Buffalo, and they might end up as wasted money because these two profs agreed to do something and then didn't follow through. I'm beyond aggravated at the moment.
You should be aggravated. I know several programs that use the status of application (including test scores, transcripts, writing sample, and letters of recommendation) as the first layer of screening. The good news? Your senile adviser may have forgotten what he told you, so you can remind him he promised to send the letter before Christmas.
No such luck on the senile adviser. He only wrote one letter (out of the 11 schools I applied to). On a more amusing note, he really pushed for me to apply to one of the SUNY schools, insisting that I would be a perfect fit to work with a dear friend of his at that school. When I looked into the school, I discovered that the "dear friend" had died the previous year, and retired long before that. The results have been mixed so far. I've been rejected by three schools (SUNY Buffalo, Delaware and UCLA). I've been implicitly rejected by four more (they've notified admits, and I wasn't notified)--Vanderbilt, UVA, Rutgers and Notre Dame. Three schools haven't notified anybody yet (UFlorida, U of Rochester and UNLV), and I've been waitlisted at the University of Maryland (which was my 2nd choice initially, and got bumped up to first choice when I was rejected by Vanderbilt). Based on conversations with the DGS at UMD, I think I'm the only early modern scholar on the wait list (so if one of the three early modern admits gets a better offer, I would be in). As it stands, I'd love UMD, I'd be equally thrilled with Florida (a bit of a better fit) or Rochester (a much better climate), and I would have to visit UNLV (I applied on the advice of a prof, but I wasn't able to find detailed job placement info, and that's info I would need before moving across the country).
Unless you get into a top-tier Professor Mill school and can work w/ a cutting edge, hungry adviser, I wouldn't recommend getting a Professor Mill Humanities degree. Those "job placement" stats are ****ing stuffed and highly manipulated. Slash them by about 50%. Don't get me wrong... They're a good measuring stick in order to compare programs. But man oh man can a department's placement record get thrashed in the matter of a blink of an eye. My dept. was taken over by a micro-manager as chair and he ran the grad program to the ground, to the point where nobody was even graduating except for a select few. But more than blaming him, I actually fault the lack of cutting edge AND hungry advisers to protect their students and the program. We went from 1/5 of graduates going to top-tier universities and SLAC and 2/5 going to state schools and community colleges to 3 ppl graduating/yr with no jobs. But that initial placement % showed cause for concern. 40% were NOT getting jobs, and that was after the fact that the vast majority of the "weeding out" happens well before completion of the dissertation. (That's a ton of cheap TA's and cheap PhD'ed lecturers. Oh, and find out how many of those who got a TT job are tenured a decade later. I had no idea how steep the drop-off was even AFTER getting a PhD and a TT job.) What I'm getting at is that there is an aggressive campaign to de-professionalize higher ed. It's teh awesome for administrators in the short-term, but ruinous to student, professor and staff retention and universities in general in the long run. It's the same "business model" that has screwed over the medical profession and health care over the last 30 years b/c politicians and bureaucrats just can't seem to get a grip around the concept that the business model isn't applicable to every goddamn facet of life. Just keep that in mind. Food for thought: Graduate School in the Humanities: Just don't go (Chronicle of Higher Education) The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of the Mind
When I was at UCLA, the placement rate in English was 40%. Ouch. Anywho... Why didn't you use a dossier service, like interfolio.com? Profs upload their letters and with a click of a mouse, boom! Your targeted schools get their letter. If you don't get into a decent program, you might be better off to wait a year. In the interim, publish a quality article in a journal w/ a quick turn-around (info is available through the Modern Language Association). In order to do that, you *must* take out your "golly gee, Mr. Prof... see... I'm smart!!!111!!!" voice that grad students and junior faculty are prone to do. I'll try to get you some biblio on that if you're interested. Do you want to be research prof, small liberal arts school prof, state school? Does location ultimately matter? My main advice to you is that you have to decide what you want to do, and if it's to be a prof a top-tier PhD granting institution, a SLAC or a state school, you simply must be a bad-ass researcher. You *might* be able to swing a job at a SLAC or state school if you have an ancillary field in shit nobody else wants to teach, like linguistics or pedagogy. You have teaching experience. Own that. Focus on your research b/c ultimately THAT's what sells in academia, even in schools that have teaching as their core mission. I learned that the hard way.
I'm not too worried about rocking an interview at the end of the process. I DO work in a somewhat ancillary field that nobody else wants to teach. My sub-field is Shakespeare and Renaissance pedagogy. I'm not overly fussed over whether I land at Harvard or Houghton as far as a job. I enjoy teaching, so a smaller state school probably suits me better for long-term employment. I would love to help design a track within the English major for English/Secondary Ed majors (where each course would teach the lit with a slant on looking at the different approaches to teaching that lit). I have looked into the detailed job placement records of three of the four schools still in play. Early modernists coming out of UMD and UFlorida tend to get TT jobs within a year of graduation. While Rochester's placement isn't stellar overall, their early modernists snag jobs at a higher rate than the rest. UNLV doesn't put a lot of info on their site. That's a bit of a concern. On the flip side, however, UNLV hosts the Ben Jonson Journal, and I would have plenty of opportunity to do some publishing (thus beefing up my eventual job application CV). It's also the shortest time to completion (3-4 years, as opposed to the 4-6 years at the other three). I don't particularly want to rush things, but I've already seen signs of a first wave of retirements in the Renaissance area. Those jobs are opening up in the next few years. If I take too long to get the PhD, I worry about missing that opportunity window. Either way-- the first step is an acceptance, so I'll worry about the other stuff if/when I have that letter in hand. On a personal note--as dismal as the college teaching job market is right now, my other option is to go back to teaching high school. If you've been watching the news lately, you can probably guess my views on doing that. I love teaching high school kids, but I'm not particularly anxious to jump back into a profession that is being demonized throughout the country.
We're down to the stretch run of the application season. I have solid offers in hand from UNLV and the University of Rochester. I just missed getting in off the waitlist at UMD (they have finalized their cohort). I still haven't heard from Florida, though I don't think I need to. I will begin my PhD work at U of Rochester this Fall!
Rocking the interview is a TINY part of the murderous job search process. Not only do you have to nail that, you have to nail the cover letter, the cv, the teaching statement, and the research statement. You've got to have 3-5 stellar letters from bad ass scholars, and in order to do that, you've got to rock your entire graduate career. Fortunately, "rocking grad school" means steady, consistent, professional work. You don't have to pull a Judith Butler for every paper. You simply need to do quality work consistently and on time. THAT speaks more than the flash in the pan, "Hey look prof! I'm super duper smart and I hit a grand slam w/ this paper but I turned it in late or the next one was a dud b/c I'm too f'ing stressed out and I'm a tempestuous DIVA... oops" schtick that everybody has seen. Far too many of those ppl fade out and burn out. Steady, consistent, professional, on time. Once you get that down, you get confidence and you can be creative and begin to flourish. And you simply must have an interesting dissertation that shows that you can engage the field and be a voice. Even at the schools that *say* they want a teacher first and a scholar second or third, they all get seduced by that shit. Try and do that or something similar while at UR. Maybe a summer program for first generation college students??? Most uni's have them, and they look fantastic on any cv. Unfortunately.... 1. I wish I had a dime for every time I've heard this. I'd be able to buy a modest, used car for the first time in ... oh... well over a decade. Don't buy into "pending retirements" b/c frankly, uni's just don't wanna replace expensive full profs with less expensive assistant profs. They wanna get dirt cheap labor (lecturers) barely above food stamp wages. Viva la corporatization of the Academe! 2. In the cases where a retirement actually does lead to a Tenure Track line [/gasp], it's quite possible that a dept. might just say that a fellow colleague that is currently nudging his/her way into that field may be given free reign to go full out into that field b/c he/she no longer has to fear the wrath of a senior scholar. And instead the dept and/or university would be better suited getting a Transatlantic early modernist, or a cutting edge US ethnic lit prof or an historian or lit prof who can teach the theory course(s) nobody wants to teach or women's studies or Native American studies or ... The thing is ... you just cannot predict what will happen. In general, if there are a lot of cutting edge articles and books being published in a certain field, that field tends to get most of the hires as dept's adapt. Very little is sacred, even Shakespeare. UCLA had 4 medievalist profs while I was there. I doubt that that will continue after their retirements. At the same time, less jobs means that in general less students gravitate to those fields, which means less competition, which means it might actually be easier to find a job. I used to advise ppl to bone up on theory b4 grad school. Now I'm telling ppl to get super educated about the job market and how to market yourself from the get-go. There are more and more books out there. Please, please do this. And bone up on theory.
Forgot to mention... It's not just one interview. You've got to nail the phone and/or (MLA) conference interview, land an invitation to a campus visit, land the "interview" from the airport to your hotel, then from your hotel to campus, then the formal interview w/ the entire department faculty, the grad students interview, the undergrad students interview, the individual interviews w/ various faculty in the dept and/or related fields, the interview w/ the dean AND the final interview w/ the search committee. Plus you've got to kill the job talk, which is either a teaching demo for teaching-oriented schools or a research talk. In short, for the campus interview you're in the spotlight for 24-48+ hours. Oh, and you'll have 2 or 3 or even 6+ of those in the span of 5-7 weeks. And that's after having spent all of Oct-Dec. doing nothing but putting together applications and preparing for the early January MLA conference.
You are absolutely right about UCLA. A friend of mine is a senior lecturer there, and he said they are re-structuring the entire program to be less canonical and more cultural studies types of courses (he did specify that, though Chaucer and Milton may be de-emphasized, Shakespeare was still safe). As for boning up on theory, that was one of the big appeals for Rochester. U of R has a regular, fully-funded spot each year at the Cornell Theory School. Odds are very good that, in the next three years, I will be able to spend a summer at Cornell with some of the best literary theorists in the field. I'm also laying the groundwork to build my CV in other ways. I've already presented at professional conferences and organized graduate conferences. I've continued growing my relationship with the Folger, and I am putting together the preliminary materials for an application for a Fulbright (I want to go to England in my 3rd or 4th year to do some archival research). I appreciate the advice, and I am taking it to heart. I am not fooling myself about anything. Between what I've already done and what I plan to do over the next 4 to 5 years, I intend to hit the job market as an Early Modernist who can serve as both the theory guy AND the pedagogy guy. The worst case scenario is that it doesn't work and there are no jobs. At the end of the day, the "worst case scenario" is that I spend the next 5 years doing something I love, and end up right back where I am now: fully licensed to teach high school English. Incidentally-- Maryland has offered even more incentive to follow through with this plan. Teachers are now required to pay 3% more of their salary towards their retirement (for a total of 8%). The kicker? That money is not going into the retirement fund. It's going into the general fund, making it available to be spent for any project deemed necessary by the politicians. When the retirement system is insolvent again a few years down the line, I'm sure the teachers will be scapegoated again. Meanwhile, teachers basically just got a profession-specific 3% tax imposed against them. Even if I wasn't planning to leave secondary teaching for PhD work, I would be leaving the state of Maryland. As such, regardless of the odds, I plan to improve my chances as much as I can over the next few years and take my best crack at it.