what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

I'm getting close to the time when I'll have to be applying to funding bodies for PhD monies. In the humanities. Lols. I am considering it very unlikely, but I really don't know what I'll do if I don't get anything, since the "take three years off to work full-time and save up enough to be able to study part-time, while working to pay the bills, over, ooh, seven years?" option sounds... less than ideal. Ayayayay.

Applying for grad school is expensive if you went to four universities. (Total cost of sending these four transcripts = $55, Boise State charging $15 extra if I want them to mail instead of fax.) (Also did not help that my mom lost my childhood immunization records & had to get MMR titers for $110 to prove to U. of Arizona that my parents weren't crazy in the '80s altho they are forgetful now.)

not to mention application fees and gres. some people take the gre multiple times but damn, that's $120 (or was it $140? don't remember!) a pop! are you doing applications now abbott?

gre hee hee

GRE was $150 (plus the $40 taxi ride there & back to the weird-ass non-bus-route strip- mall the place was in). I am doing apps right now & so is my husband + sick dog = defs emptying the pantry of pasta type of month.

geez, they've raised the price again. best of luck to you and your husband (and your dog ;)

Oh shit man this is all worth it bcz if nothing else I got to see this letter one of my faves people, a dude who I just respect & love so much, wrote for me. The kind of praise that will sustain you for a few years. I'm like almost in tears here.

:D

haha i have trouble reading those letters! had a rec written weeks ago and the guy attached the letter to an email to me and i still haven't read it. even though i know it's very good.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2010/01/educationalattainment.png

fml

gonna fucken treasure my half-percent

max, i'm guesing that factors in loss of earnings from loan payments? or is that the type of work taken with advanced degrees forgoes income from more profitable jobs elsewhere?

finding it hard to credit those as absolute figures, certainly.

i think they mean a person with a doctoral degree made 10% more in 1999 than in 2008, it's not decline in the same individual's earnings. right?

ok, got you.

so in real income terms the higher qualifications are becoming less of a relative advantage over time?

oic now

I take it that the meaning of that chart hinges on what "real" means in "real mean earnings".

earnings are real mean lately ; )

that is a microsoft graphs-authored chart i found on a blog post and thought might validate my "decision" to not apply to grad school

man I'll tell you though that when the doctoral life is good, it's very very good.

well it would be more helpful to look at the mean earnings of people with grad degrees over bachelors but since i think u prob want some liberal arts degree maybe it would be just too depressing :/

oh wow ppl are making relatively less now than ten years ago when the economy wasn't in the shitter

well people with bachelor's degrees and master's degrees are making relatively more..........

"relatively more" lol

i mean just sayin that plotting the change in earnings isn't as useful for grad school or no grad school decision making as, say:

difference in earnings between levels of educational accomplishment v. difference in cost (both $$/time) for achieving levels of education

and that only holds water if you're making your educational decisions based on earning potential, which anyone considering an advanced degree in the humanities likely isn't doing

i make all decisions based on my earning potential

no, you should do it for the sweet robes:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/05/14/us/18obama2blog.jpg

from my alma mater (I didn't buy the robes b/c lol @ $2,000 but my mom said she would buy them (before she knew the cost); one day I'll take her up on it).

i thought the school you teach at pays for those when you get tenure, guess it depends on the school

Bear in mind the period encapsulates a time where there has been an expansion in the number of advanced degrees that lead to less lucrative outcomes. (MFAs, english literature phds etc.). There's also be a massive expansion in MBAs at the lower end in the spectrum.

but at the end of the day, greater supply means prices will fall.

They rent them for you if you want to wear them at graduation or convocation, though you still have to pay a bit each time. At least it's been that way at the two places I've taught since grad school.

OKAY:

so i get back from a little relaxation, did a bit of writing (project specific) over the period...

and i found out that A ROUGH DRAFT OF MY THESIS IS DUE TO MY COMMITTEE TODAY.

and i though i had two more weeks.

wtf, thanks for being explicit with deadlines, shit-ass janky grad school.

*thought

dude! can u swing it?

i mean, luckily, this is only the 'preliminary' meeting in two weeks. i'm supposed to have approximately 60 pages by may 1st. right now, i probably have half of that? of clean and polished stuff. since i believe i'm able to add more, or at least give explanation to why my thesis is so thin, i should be okay.

still, i'm like scrambling through notebooks, going through my illustrator archives (some of the stuff is more concrete poetry), and racking my brain like wo right now.

wait what do you need by today?

well i'd hope that if nobody told you, the deadline isn't important to them either...guess that depends on other people being decent and not flakes though.

i need a rough draft of the thesis. which can mean 'really rough.' but in the next two weeks, the whole thing is going to change. so i'm sort of like, "uhhhh, why do i need this to be done now?" especially since my committee is made up of people whose lives are so busy that they probably won't really do much but skim it until the final review, which is in the last week of april.

that said, my thesis committee consists of three heavy hitters whose work and lives i respect a lot, and i don't want them to think i'm some slacker.

that seems annoyingly administrative. good luck.

Man this applying to grad school is pretty tough... I'm worried what it will be like when I'm actually in it.

less stressful, imo! then you just get to start applying for grants.

my problem at the moment is that i have so much going on outside of my program that it's difficult to focus on what i need to be doing. on top of the thesis (which is lol poetry, yeah):

- i'm writing these fake 'translations' of an invented japanese gay man for this anthology.
- i'm acting in a joe brainard play that goes up on the 22nd.
- i'm getting ready for a deejay gig that is also on the 22nd.
- i'm writing actively for XLR8R magazine, which involves insane emailing and constant connectedness.
- i'm writing my own (somehow very popular again) music blog.

i ain't giving shit up for no motherfucking thesis, either, except for nights of drunken debauchery, which is probably best for my hurting liver anyway.

FWIW, University of Windsor pays sessionals $5500/course (a bit low for Ontario) and you do get (good) benefits after teaching for a year. A full-time course load is a shitload of work but it does afford a reasonable living. It's not at all secure (and I'm not f/t in my second year here) but it is also a long way from being "below minimum wage".

just finished laying out the rough draft. now to do a SHITLOAD of photocopying, after a shower and a smoke.

i am getting wasted tonight, btw.

congrats!

http://www.polperro.co.uk/FireworksAnimated.gif

indeed, congrats!