margery st. john is a shrew

inactive as of 02.2020~

[post--grad]

inactive~

it’s been a wild ride, friends, and i’m so grateful for all of it. this blog is now inactive and the askbox is closed, but i’ve left everything as is; if you’re looking for tags and resources, please see the /faq and /nav links to the left. 

grad school questions? masterpost here.

[post--grad]

here is a list of questions i have already answered about graduate school!! 

please check it before you send me a question about graduate school :) :) i hope it’s useful! xo // updated 02.2020

basic info

what is the PhD and what can you do with it? (+) 

what does a literature PhD entail?

should i do a PhD if i have to pay tuition?

is the degree worth it?

does it look bad to take time off between degrees?

what was your timeline like? 

what’s the difference between a terminal MA and a PhD? (+)

does getting an MA first help you get into a PhD program?

is it okay to just try grad school out? 

application process

how can i prepare for applying early in my undergrad career? (+) (+)

where should i start looking for programs?

should i choose a program based on rank or fit? (+)

how can i find lower-profile programs doing cool stuff?

how many programs should i apply to?

parts of the application

advice on the writing sample

advice on the GRE (+)

how should i ask for letters of recommendation?

how should i write a statement of purpose? (+)

how do i demonstrate my “ability to excel”?

how should i address mental health/family/personal issues that impacted my grades?

should i send in extra materials?

grad school application spreadsheet

how should i email potential advisors? (+) (+)

how can i survive the waiting period? (+)

how should i prepare for an interview or phone call? (+)

what should i ask at open house?

what should i do if i don’t think i can afford my grad school tuition?

what should i do the summer before i start my program?

seminars/coursework

how should i plan for grad seminar presentations? (+)

what should i bring with me to seminars?

what are grad seminars like?

how can i get better at speaking during seminars?

what do you mean grades don’t matter

reading

what should i have read before i start my lit grad program?

how much reading should i expect?

how can i read a lot without getting overwhelmed? (+)

how can i read efficiently? (+) (+)

quals-specific reading advice

how should i take notes on critical articles?

writing

how do i write a lit review?

how do i write an indicative bibliography?

how do i choose a dissertation topic? (+)

how do i plan for a long research paper?

how do i balance all the different kinds of writing i have to do?

money & living

how can i find housing before i move?

how do finances work in grad school?

what is adjuncting and why does it suck?

how can i budget while on a stipend?

should i work while in grad school? (+)

what’s important to a research assistant application?

i’m running out of funding / i’m off normative time

fellowship, postdocs, & job stuff

which websites post US fellowship/postdoc/job ads?

CV writing tips

how do dissertation fellowships work? (+)

tips for grant, award, & fellowship applications

should i share my materials with others?

how does the academic hiring process work?

how do i keep track of all my applications?

how do i think up a second project when i’m not even done with my dissertation?

job materials masterpost

skype interview-specific tips

job talks

negotiating (+)

general tips (+)

what’s up with the professor is in?

how do i stay motivated while getting buried in rejection letters?

misc

will grad school make my mental health issues worse? (+) 

how do i survive conferences (abroad)?

how should i deal with burnout? (+)

secret labor

i think i want to quit

my advisor is ghosting me

how do i work with no structured schedule?

how do i get enough sleep?

how do i balance my work & my teaching?

how can i beat imposter syndrome? (+) (+)

how can i excel in grad school?

[post--grad]

good morning friends, this list has been updated with asks from the past seven months--this is likely the last update that i’ll make to this list.

[post--grad]

as i get farther along this academic road, i can see that people are becoming increasingly secretive about their grant proposals, statements for faculty applications, fellowships, etc. what is your policy on sharing these things? i ask because i think you are a Normal Human Being who is a Decent Person, and sometimes this secrecy or tendency to distrust makes me sad!

i understand and i really dislike it as well, but i think it’s important to remember that much of that distrust comes from real and historical patterns of intellectual theft (which hit disproportionately across academia). it’s shitty! the world is a better place when we can share openly and help each other get through the absolute absurdity of the academy! but i can’t think badly of anyone who chooses not to spread their materials around. even though they’re not the same kind of work as, say, a book chapter or an article, we put a lot of labor into documents like proposals and applications, and i think it’s okay to be protective of that labor. 

that said, i’m really open with mine, particularly with people that i actually know. my roommate’s getting a big folder of fellowship and job application materials from me, for example, which is partially bc i love him & the other younger premodernists in my program and want them to succeed, and partially bc i want to save our shared advisor some work. my fellowship group have swapped and given feedback all our job materials, and juliana @caffeinebooks & i exchange proposals all the time. i’m happy to share things like cover letters and research statements with people that i know, because i want to save them some of the angst i went through (which was already ameliorated by the folks who did this for me). it’s harder to muster that kind of generosity towards people i don’t know, because, as selfish as it sounds, i spent 9 hours getting the wording on that cover letter right and i’m enough of an asshole to want to reserve the fruits of that labor for people i know and love, at least until i’ve moved on to other forms of labor. i was not planning on sharing my job materials until i got a job. now i’m cool with it.   

i feel an obligation to pay forward a lot of the help that i’ve gotten on my materials from people who shared theirs with me. but i also understand not being comfortable doing that, or only being comfortable doing that in certain ways. the giving and the getting should be balanced, IMO, but i think it’s up to the individual to decide what that balance looks like for them.

[post--grad]

paleographic analysis is my supervillain origin story oh my god i want to scream

[post--grad]

first off, massive congratulations on your job!! i’m so excited for you! i’m gearing up to apply to complit phds in the fall, coming from a ba, and i’m afraid i’m getting lured into Big Name schools, but i can’t seem to figure out how to find programs that are doing really cool/interdisciplinary work that aren’t like, ivies. i guess the question might be, how do you find a “safety” for grad school? i’m starting to freak out bc it feels like this all is happening REALLY soon....

thank you!! ok one: i discourage the idea of thinking any phd program as a “safety”  -- some are ranked higher than than others, and some have access to more resources, but unlike safety undergrad programs (which give you some guarantee of admittance, as long as you hit a certain number of criteria), even lower-profile grad programs tend to have a really rigorous admissions process, and there’s absolutely no guarantee you’ll get in anywhere. i got accepted to higher-profile programs and rejected from many that i had considered back-ups, so don’t get too hung up on rankings as an indicator of success! 

all of that said! imo the best way to find lower-profile programs that are doing cool stuff is to do some sleuthing. if you’re nearing the end of your undergrad, odds are you’ve read a fair amount of secondary criticism--collect a handful of your favorite scholars and google them! you’ll see where they’re currently based and where they were trained (and if their CV is available, you can also often see who supervised their graduate work.)

you should also ask faculty members in the field you’re interested in pursuing--they’ll know where their colleagues and friends teach; they may have insider knowledge about program reputations; and might even be able to send some emails of their own, if you decide to apply to one of those places.

[soap-stones]

meanwhile in the canyon!!

[post--grad]

Hi Chelsea, this is a super specific transcription question! Do you transcribe f's that are s's as s's or f's?

i've actually never run into this! plenty of long s's (which look like an f without the crossbar: ſ), but i've never worked with a document that used an actual f in place of an s. long s's get transcribed as s's, because that's what they are!

Paradise lost, not Paradife loft.

you do run into this with v/u and j/i quite often (ouerioyed = overjoyed, for ex) and then you just have to make a decision abt whether you're doing a diplomatic or semi-diplomatic transcript--in other words, are you going for accuracy or readability? for my own work, i stick as close to what's on the page as possible when I'm transcribing. you can easily clean a text up later if needed, but it's INCREDIBLY annoying to have to go back to the images and put parentheses around all the abbreviations you silently expanded as you went, put weird capitalizations back where you lowercased, figure out which of the v's were originally u's, etc.

so if you are in a situation where they're real f's (?? crazy!) i would transcribe them as written and include a note for future-you or current readers that mentions what's going on there.

[post--grad]

Hi - what type of grant did you get (I feel like I read that it was a grant?? could be making this up...) that allowed you to finish up your grad work in Cambridge? I am kind of hoping to travel somewhere quiet (I am in Chicago right now, nothing is quiet) to do some of my dissertation writing but am not sure what kinds of funding opportunities there are for that. Thanks for your consistently great advice! Congrats on the job!

hello! I received a diss completion fellowship that (forcibly) released me from my teaching obligations and provided the money that i’ve used to travel and live for the past few months. grants and fellowships aren’t too different from one another; the main difference is that fellowships generally provide more money.

both grants and fellowships tend to privilege applicants who need to be in a particular place for their work. this is a distinct (and rare) advantage for those of us who need to travel to consult our objects--if you work on something that’s widely available online, or if your work doesn’t require much archival labor at all, it can be significantly harder to find someone willing to give you money to travel just for the sake of writing someplace nice. not impossible! but harder. it’s the difference between saying “i literally cannot complete my groundbreaking dissertation without spending a month in this archive 5,000 miles away” vs saying “i can complete my groundbreaking dissertation anywhere, but it would be nice to do it someplace not here!” usually, the funding goes to applicants who can make a clear case for their need. 

that said! there are absolutely fellowships that consider the funding a reward for good work and an investment in future good work, rather than as a way of facilitating that work. 

there’s a big big list here for your perusal (tw for the wiki being the wiki); you’ll want to look specifically for ones that don’t award based on demonstrated research need. in the US, the major humanities DCFs (dissertation completion fellowships) are the mellon/acls, the newcombe, the ford, the aauw, and the de karman, but there are also plenty of discipline-specific ones! these posts might be useful as well.

[post--grad]

hi chelsea! so i’m in undergrad right now but eventually wanna pursue a graduate degree in medieval lit but my university offers one course in medieval lit and two in medieval history. they don’t even have a medievalist on staff! do you think it would be worth it to transfer to another university to get the sort of resources i need/want to pursue further studies in medieval lit? thank you! and congrats on your job :-)

short answer: no, probably not? i mean, it’s entirely up to you, but uprooting and moving schools is a lot of work and you definitely don’t need to go to a school with a dedicated medievalist in order to study the subject at the graduate level! i took one medieval lit survey and did a summer supervision on chaucer--that was the extent of my medieval knowledge before grad school. as long as you have professors willing to help you do good brain work (even if it’s not in their area of speciality), you’ll do just fine, esp if you already know you want to study it! 

[post--grad]

so impressed and proud you got a job!!!!! congratulations, you icon!! - tanisha

tanisha!! <3 <3 

[post--grad]

this feels like such a stupid question and i kind of think you've answered this before, but i couldn't find the post. i'm a grad student and emailing with an advisor i haven't talked with much. she answered an email I sent to her with just her first name. and i attend a couple events with her where she of course introduces herself using just her first name. should i be changing my opening email to Dear [firstname] instead of Dear Professor [lastname]??

not stupid! nobody tells you these things! once a professor has used their first name with you (in an email, in conversation, whatever), you have a green light to call them by their first name. 

[post--grad]

Chelsea!! I'm writing to you after such a long time, but congratulations!! I was overjoyed to see the post. I've been following you on this blog since I was in high school, and now I'm about to finish my undergrad in english lit! That's such a long time! You've always been there in a way, so thank you so much. Of course, I'll continue to hang out with you on the other blog. Thank you for all the help and encouragement over the years :') - shree

shree!! it’s been forever! this is so lovely--best wishes for yr graduation <3

[post--grad]

this is anon from the job talk q. lotsa good points! one more, did you do any skype interviews and do you have any tips for those?

yeah i had a few! tips for video interviews: 

as with the job talk, practice. mocks are a life-saver. if you can, do them with a group of people for added realism.

draw a pair of eyes on a sticky note. put that sticky note right above your webcam to remind you to make eye contact with the camera, not your own face on the screen.

make sure the space is good–make a test call to a friend at the same time the actual interview will be held, to make sure your camera and mic are working, and to check the lighting, background, your outfit, etc. most people i know borrow their advisors’ offices (and their bookshelves), but a few of mine happened while i was in cambridge so i had to rearrange some furniture to get a plain wall behind me here. 

PUT UP A SIGN that says “interview in progress, do not knock.” this is a horror story direct from a friend of mine, who had an incredibly persistent mailman trying to deliver a bespoke christmas ornament shaped like her dog during her videocall with an ivy. 

if you haven’t used the software before (most of us have plenty of experience with skype, but less with zoom or webex or whatever), make sure you download it early so you’re not scrambling 10 minutes before. you can also ask the institution for a test call the day before, if you’re really anxious.

no eating, drinking, or cheat sheets. you might want to keep a blank page nearby in case they have info for you, but having a list of prompts open while you’re interviewing is going to be distracting for you and possibly obvious to them.

don’t worry too much about the committee’s affect. interviews are a weird energy zone and when they’re online, it’s even weirder. 

prepare at least 2 questions for them, in case your first one gets answered in the course of the interview. no, “can you tell me about your timeline” does not count as one. this isn’t skype-specific, but if you can find questions to ask that give the committee a chance to talk about something they’re proud of or happy about, those tend to go over better. 

thank-you emails. not required, but they don’t hurt, and if you get a reply (unusual, don’t stress if you don’t) you sometimes get extra information. ex: friend mentioned above got a response that said something like that was a terrific interview and we were really impressed with your ability to keep a straight face while someone knocked on the door for ten minutes. reassuring! funny! she got a campus visit! bare minumum, you will be remembered as the Polite One. 

[post--grad]

first off, congratulations!! i’m so excited and happy for you!! i can’t wait to hear about your coming adventures!!🥰 i’ve been a follower for a long time and have been so inspired by you. thank you for helping everyone else out along the way too. my question, when is appropriate to reach out to museums/institutions/professionals again if they haven’t responded to you yet? i really hate being annoying. i was talking w a museum about an internship and then they stopped replying. when do i email?

thank youuu!

this is a totally subjective thing, which is what makes it so annoying. my personal rule is a week, and i remind myself that my own reaction to being nudged on things is a sense of gratitude, not irritation.  

[post--grad]

Someone asked a while ago about negotiating when you got the job offer (congrats!!!), could you walk us through the process of how that works? It seems terrifying!

uhh sure! (post here) there’s not much to tell other than what i’ve already written, though. it’s expected that you’ll negotiate, so when you get the offer (usually over the phone) you never give a verbal yes. wait for the official offer letter so you can see everything in writing and then decide if you’re happy with it and/or what else you’d like to try for. obviously it’s great to have leverage in the form of another offer, but even without one, there’s usually some wiggle room! so you either email or call the dept chair back, asking if it’s possible for them to accomodate any of your asks. sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t! most of it’s up to the dean, not the chair. once they’ve talked it over, you’ll get a revised offer letter, and you can decide whether to accept that one or ask for additional things. ex: your first request, for a bump in salary, is refused; you might come back and ask if, instead, you can have money to fly out and look at houses before you officially move. the bottom line is that you want everything in writing before you sign on. 

that’s it! not super complicated, esp if you’re working with your own department, where faculty members will have lots of experience doing this. we’ve had a lot of new hires lately so my chair was like, “i have done six negotiations in the last 3 years, this is fine” haha. it’s totally normal and expected and as long as you’re respectful and intelligent abt your asks (not asking for a course release at a SLAC, for example), it can also be pretty painless.

[post--grad]

academic job talks

as requested! the usual disclaimer applies--this advice is suitable for the US job market, and i’m writing from a literary studies position. i recommend attending job talks in your field and taking notes on presentation, not just content. 

if you’re invited for a campus visit, you’ll receive very clear instructions about the job talk. the department will give you a timeframe for the talk and the Q&A that follows, let you know if they’d like to hear about your teaching as part of that (40 mins on research, 10/15 on teaching is common), and may even tell you what to expect as far as your audience’s knowledge of the subject. 

there are 3 main goals for your talk:

explain your identity as a scholar. what drives your work? what are your investments in it? what big questions are you interested in answering, even beyond your current project? the department is hiring you, not your dissertation.

explain why your work matters. to your field, to your discipline, to the humanities more broadly, to the world beyond the academy. what conversation are you contributing to? why is your contribution important?

demonstrate not just what you do, but how you do it. this means talking about your work and walking your audience through your methodology.

you know your project best! my advice as far as picking a specific topic is to 

pick something you know very well (you’re going to be anxious enough about the visit and giving the talk; you don’t need to be anxious about the content of that talk, as well)

pick something that can be easily worked through in the time you’re given (i opted not to focus on an unpublished manuscript, for example, because i knew it would take me 20 minutes just to get through the context)

pick something of clear relevance to scholars outside your period--that means something with broader implications for scholarship, not something that’ll only be of interest to the 3 other people who publish on your subject.

for literature talks in particular, it’s worth giving a little thought to canon--if you don’t talk about a canonical text, you’ll inevitably get a question about how your argument works with one; if you only talk about canonical texts, you run the risk of seeming dated or stale. 

please, please roadmap. tell them what you’ll be arguing, make that argument, and then remind them what you concluded. it’s an oral presentation; you don’t have the luxury of playing coy with your point. you can also use signposting to indicate additional areas to explore! by which i mean, if something is super important to you but just doesn’t fit in the talk (thematically or temporally), you can say something like “this ms actually forms the foundation of my second project, which focuses on x, y, and z. i’m happy to chat more about that in the q&a, but for now, i’m going to turn to...” 

everyone’s views on a/v are different but i personally kept my powerpoint to images & text only, plus a handout (bring lots of copies). 

if you’re not giving a teaching demo or talking explicitly abt your teaching as part of the talk, you can still find ways of sprinkling it in. i had one aside in mine that was something like, “when i explain this concept to my students, i use a more modern example...” this is good for audience comprehension and also suggests i have experience teaching my field. 

general tips n tricks for the q&a:

come out from behind the podium for the Q&A. and do your best to move around while you’re delivering the presentation itself; i had mine mostly memorized, but even if you don’t, it’s good to keep the audience engaged. 

know your stakes, and know what other peoples’ stakes might be. if you haven’t already, do some serious thinking around how your project engages with race and indigenous studies, queer theory, gender studies, etc. what are the dept’s strengths? some of the most painful job talk moments i’ve witnessed have happened because candidates had clearly not given a single thought to what their work said about colonialism, for example, even though that was a major field of study for many of the faculty and they were sure to get questions about it.

backup slides. blank slide at the end of the powerpoint, then as many extra images/charts/quotes as you’d like after that. peace of mind! the aura of prophetic knowledge, when someone asks a question in the Q&A and you happen to have the perfect example all queued up!

[post--grad]

[bullies @literaetures​ into reading gawain and the green knight by texting her all the queer parts with no context]