Flashback: 1998

 14 February 2021: Just got done offering some feedback to a recent graduate who is working on a statement of purpose for a graduate program. Every time I get asked to do one of these, I say, "You know I haven't done one of these since 1998..." And because of how time works, every year 1998 is further away.

Yet I always end up recycling some of the advice my advisor gave me back in 1998: give us your voice, find the little stories you can tell in a phrase or an example, make us see you. It's not easy to do--to blend the academic and the personal, argue a thesis that is about you. But when you can do it, it works really well. 

Anyway, no doubt because I am currently reading Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch, my thoughts went back to my "hook" for my own statement--the story of finding myself going down an internet rabbit hole to learn everything I could about Christina Rossetti. It's kind of funny now. In 1998, after all, the internet was still a bit "new" for many of us. Clear as day, I can see my advisor telling me he liked it a lot, but I wanted to be careful not to come off as some "cyber-punk." He had even written "cyber-punk?" in the margin. You know, I didn't want to scare off professors by seeming too obsessed with this internet thing. Ha. Very 1998. 

"Beautiful Day"

31 July 2017:

"It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
It's a beautiful day" --U2, "Beautiful Day"

I was just sitting here feeling anxious about silly things and this song came on Pandora. About half-way through, I stopped and thought about the song itself. And then I had a memory...

My friend Bonnie, sits in her apartment in Greensboro, hosting a bunch of us as we play some game (maybe Risk? it was Risk a lot!) after gathering for a grad-school potluck (translation: everybody brings something cheap, it probably isn't fancy, but it's still good).

Clear as day, I can see her in a kind of complete-image memory: she's shuffling cards and singing this chorus as it plays in the background. And we are all, in that moment, pretty happy. We are poor, always a bit (or a lot) stressed, but we have each other and we have our cheap potlucks and board games and laughter and music.

So much has changed since then, and Bonnie died at a cruelly early age, but that little memory reminds me to pause for a bit and stop stressing over little stuff. It's a beautiful day, after all.

More job search/grad school links...

1) Thomas H. Benton is back with more reasons why people shouldn't go to grad school in the humanities. As much sense as he makes in certain places, I kind of hate this dude. This part especially rankles:

So I do not wholly trust anyone who applies the word "love" to graduate school; such language strikes me as possible only from a position of naïveté or privilege. The rhetoric of sentimentalism is used by people who are not willing to interrogate the reasons for what they do, or, more likely, the reasons for asking others to do something irrational.

I am showing my 19th-cent. American lit. leanings a bit here, but his dismissal of emotion (here dismissively labeled "sentimentalism") is grating. But perhaps that's what makes this column and the one before so frustrating and, it must be said, so thought-provoking--he refuses to be even the littlest bit sentimental, romantic, idealistic, or even emotional about his claims.

2) In Benton's defense, though, the numbers in this MLA/JIL midyear report are awful. Read 'em and weep. Seriously.

Skip down to page 21, look at those American lit. numbers, and marvel once again at how the heck I ever got a job. It's a good time (well, relatively speaking) to be in rhet./comp. or multi-ethnic lit., but that's no big surprise. What accounts for the up-tick in creative writing positions, though? That makes me happy for all my poet/fiction-writing friends.

3) Finally, some advice about how schools can conduct their searches more humanely. And I love the Huck Finn reference the writers uses to kick off her article. The advice that she gives is so obvious, so straightforward, so logical, it's amazing that she even has to give it. And yet, anyone who has done a search in the last few years knows that again and again, that some schools treat job applicants horrendously.

One of my favorite anecdotes about this subject involves my first year on the job market when I applied to Ursinus College in PA. Each step of the way, the search committee chair kept all of the applicants fully informed about where they stood. I remember learning over Thanksgiving break (via email) that I had passed a certain round of elimination. She even explained how proud candidates should be for getting this far, giving us the raw numbers: maybe 150 people had applied and now it was down to 50, then down to 10, etc. Very good for the ego when a person is getting mostly rejections or silence from other schools.

After the MLA interview, the search committee chair contacted those who weren't being invited to campus to tell us the news, basically saying, "So it looks like you won't get an offer here." It was courteous, warm, and just decent of her to do it--especially in such a timely manner.

I know some schools don't respond at every stage of the process--they want to keep all their options open until the very end, and yet, come on: why keep the people who you cut out in that very first round wondering? And, believe me, I know this kind of communication takes time, but it's worth noting that 3.5 years later, I still think of that school and that department so fondly. (You don't want to end up on the Universities to Fear list, do you?)

Oh--and when I interviewed for Shepherd? They were similarly amazing. Yes, I have to say that, but it's also true.

More link dumping: Grad School Edition

Three this time:

1) From the Department of Obvious Statements: The New York Times tells us that Humanities PhDs Are Anticipating Hard Times.

2) Laugh through the tears, folks: Check out the Profzi Scheme.

3) And finally, from McSweeney's, Saved by the Bell: The Grad School Years.