It is officially three days past the deadline for applying to graduate school. All of the materials I needed to turn in have been received by at least one department (the other department had nobody there through most of December, so I don't know what they have) and three of the people I asked to write letters of recommendation for me have let me know that the letters were sent. Even my GRE scores have arrived. What's missing (and can actually keep me out of grad school for another year)? One letter of recommendation for each department. I asked one of my library school professors to write two letters for me in early December. He said that he would be glad to do so, and I even delivered to him a packed of everything that needed to be filled out [forms, addressed stamped envelopes, background on what I want to study, etc.] and told him when the deadline was. He was the only person that I actually told face to face when the deadline was, and he assured me that he would get the letters done long before the deadline because he was retiring and moving back to Cincinnati.
If he was going to get this done, why is it that his is the only letter that never arrived? If anything, his letter should have been one of the first things they received [it is possible that the letter got there before my application went through and that they misplaced it; considering that they claim that they do not have my Kent transcripts when that was the first thing they received for me, that wouldn't surprise me]. I understand that retirement can make things crazy, and I probably would've thought twice on asking him if I had known he was retiring and if I could've found any other library school professor that I had had who could've done it [One professor quit before I graduated, and the other has been on sabbatical], but he was a good choice at the time.
Now it seems that my bid for graduate school may end because of one stupid letter.
One. Stupid. Fucking. Letter.
I e-mail this guy on both of his accounts. I even found his home number and left a message on his answering machine, but I can't reach him anywhere.
I can't believe my fate is going to be decided by something completely out of my control. I don't know what to do anymore.
I just know that I will never ask anyone to ever help me again. It's not worth it. If I'm going to have my life ruined, I'd at least like it to be my fault.
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Thursday, December 6, 2007
It's Been Too Long
I've disappeared for almost two months, and I've been keeping busy. The Festival of Cartoon art was awesome! I got 18 autographs and I have several artists who have told me to keep in touch, including Ray Billingsley (the creator of Curtis). I'll write more when I have time...which may not be until January: I'm in the last stages of applying to grad school, so I don't really have the time to do much else but panic.
I was trying to get three people to write letters of recommendation for me, but one of the people I wanted to ask (my advisor from when I was an undergrad) had since retired and has been very ill, so I finally asked my supervisor and the VP in my department. One is writing a letter for the English department and the other is writing for the Comparative Studies department. Let's just hope all of the letters will be complimentary.
The Jewish Graphic Novels course wrapped up in November; just in time for the article about the group to be published in the New Standard. I'll provide a link later, but the quote from me actually makes me seem not as crazy as the whole interview process must have been for the author (who is the wife of one of my co-workers, if I haven't mentioned that already). I think I got a great deal out of the course, and I may have shown people a thing or two about life for non-Jewish people. When we discussed Harvey Pekar's The Quitter, I ended up opening up about my life and family back in Cleveland; revelations that I was surprised were being said to a group of strangers. That deserves a longer post, so we'll see.
In bigger news, I am scheduled to take the G.R.E. on December 17th, so I need to spend a lot of time studying for this exam that has me freaked out over the verbal (very important) and the math (important to only me), as I don't have a very large vocabulary, and it's been more than a decade since I've had to do the kind of math required for this exam. I just hope and pray that I can do well on this exam. I just want everything to come together so that I can have a shot at getting into grad school. I even worked with the Comparative Studies professor (who told at least one person that he really wants to be my advisor) to get my Statement of Purpose up to caliber. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that I did have it in me to write at the PhD level; coming up with terms like "cognitive empathy" and using phrases that sounded very scholarly but make no sense to me now seemed to do the trick.
All I have left now is to make sure my transcripts from Kent State make it to OSU safely, confirm (yet again) that my OSU transcripts will be gotten by the Grad School Application office without me having to pay for them, get all my letter writers to get their letters in ASAP, write the autobiographical statement for the English department, choose a stellar writing sample for both departments, and pass the exam. All that, and holding down my internship while changing my schedule drastically for the next three months so that I can audit a Comparative Studies class, and taking steps towards my first attempts at getting published in a scholarly journal. I'm very serious about what I want to study [Strong female characters in sequential art = super heroine comic characters from the U.S. and abroad] and I really want this. I'm not sure that I'll get it, and I'm in a panic for the first time ever about affording it, so I've got to give it my best from now to the end of the year.
I want to set up a schedule so that I can make regular posts to all of my different internet haunts, but I'm probably going to be gone again until at least after the exam. Please pray, wish me luck or whatever you're into, for me as I make one last push towards the end.
Let's see how this works out, so I can tell people what went on in the interim.
I mean, I haven't even gotten to talk about my department's move to the main building on campus, so I'd like to come back more often.
C-ya, peeps!
I was trying to get three people to write letters of recommendation for me, but one of the people I wanted to ask (my advisor from when I was an undergrad) had since retired and has been very ill, so I finally asked my supervisor and the VP in my department. One is writing a letter for the English department and the other is writing for the Comparative Studies department. Let's just hope all of the letters will be complimentary.
The Jewish Graphic Novels course wrapped up in November; just in time for the article about the group to be published in the New Standard. I'll provide a link later, but the quote from me actually makes me seem not as crazy as the whole interview process must have been for the author (who is the wife of one of my co-workers, if I haven't mentioned that already). I think I got a great deal out of the course, and I may have shown people a thing or two about life for non-Jewish people. When we discussed Harvey Pekar's The Quitter, I ended up opening up about my life and family back in Cleveland; revelations that I was surprised were being said to a group of strangers. That deserves a longer post, so we'll see.
In bigger news, I am scheduled to take the G.R.E. on December 17th, so I need to spend a lot of time studying for this exam that has me freaked out over the verbal (very important) and the math (important to only me), as I don't have a very large vocabulary, and it's been more than a decade since I've had to do the kind of math required for this exam. I just hope and pray that I can do well on this exam. I just want everything to come together so that I can have a shot at getting into grad school. I even worked with the Comparative Studies professor (who told at least one person that he really wants to be my advisor) to get my Statement of Purpose up to caliber. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that I did have it in me to write at the PhD level; coming up with terms like "cognitive empathy" and using phrases that sounded very scholarly but make no sense to me now seemed to do the trick.
All I have left now is to make sure my transcripts from Kent State make it to OSU safely, confirm (yet again) that my OSU transcripts will be gotten by the Grad School Application office without me having to pay for them, get all my letter writers to get their letters in ASAP, write the autobiographical statement for the English department, choose a stellar writing sample for both departments, and pass the exam. All that, and holding down my internship while changing my schedule drastically for the next three months so that I can audit a Comparative Studies class, and taking steps towards my first attempts at getting published in a scholarly journal. I'm very serious about what I want to study [Strong female characters in sequential art = super heroine comic characters from the U.S. and abroad] and I really want this. I'm not sure that I'll get it, and I'm in a panic for the first time ever about affording it, so I've got to give it my best from now to the end of the year.
I want to set up a schedule so that I can make regular posts to all of my different internet haunts, but I'm probably going to be gone again until at least after the exam. Please pray, wish me luck or whatever you're into, for me as I make one last push towards the end.
Let's see how this works out, so I can tell people what went on in the interim.
I mean, I haven't even gotten to talk about my department's move to the main building on campus, so I'd like to come back more often.
C-ya, peeps!
Friday, July 20, 2007
Good news, everyone!
My meeting Friday went over well, so I feel a little better that my PhD aspirations are not half-baked!
[50 points for whomever can guess where my title comes from]
I met with an English professor to discuss the potential of my PhD project, and he spent the first portion of the meeting talking about the challenges of doing a major in comics, and the difficulties of finding a professorship based on a degree on comics. This was the type of spiel that people give to discourage people from pursuing something; it's usually effective in at least dampening one's spirits because it forces you to face the realities of your dreams (and crushes them) and ground you to reality. I've heard this before & I've felt the hurt and low-level devastation from hearing such words in the past [i.e. when I found out that I couldn't minor in music when I first got to college], but that didn't happen this time. I felt that his words of caution were things that I suspected were part of the challenges I would face if I got into grad school to study comics, so I took my feelings as a sign that I really should pursue this degree.
We discussed comic book stores, the possibility that there may be three departments that may be best suited for what I want to study [Comparative Studies, English, and Women's Studies], and who I should speak to in helping me with the dilemma of which department I should try to get my degrees in(because I would have to get another Master's, no matter which department I get into). He made a good sell for working under the English department in that it would be easy to assemble a committee and I would be able to get jobs based on having degrees in English instead of Comparative Studies [Women's Studies has been ruled out simply because of the dearth of faculty who would be open to such an odd focus], but that CS has more flexibilty (something that the CS prof had mentioned in my meeting with him). So the question is this: Do I apply to the department that is newer and allows for greater flexibiltiy, or do I go for the more traditional department with a better chance of getting work in the end? There is yet another option; I can (possibly) apply to both, or get into one and transfer to the other department after finishing my Masters.
What I liked was that this professor told me that he would assist me whether or not he ended up as my advisor (which is extremely encouraging), and he feels that I am in a position to succeed in my endeavors because I didn't rush into grad school; I've taken my time to come to a decision on what I'm passionate about and know the work that it takes to make it through the program. He told me about a program that's coming to the University in October...and how he'll try to help me get in on the student rate, and about a website where there are people who review comics (a possible writing opportunity), and he even likes Hello Kitty (but he may have been teasing me on that one [it's okay :-)]). I've got a lot of research to do on the different programs, application processes, and decisions to make on how I want to proceed. I need to get in touch with more people and prepare to better explain my PhD concept to the Curator on the 3rd.
I felt really good about this, so I've got to work hard and do whatever it takes to get back into grad school. Even though I know I won't be able to study my passion right away, the fact that I'll be studying anything is very exciting for me.
Ja ne!
[50 points for whomever can guess where my title comes from]
I met with an English professor to discuss the potential of my PhD project, and he spent the first portion of the meeting talking about the challenges of doing a major in comics, and the difficulties of finding a professorship based on a degree on comics. This was the type of spiel that people give to discourage people from pursuing something; it's usually effective in at least dampening one's spirits because it forces you to face the realities of your dreams (and crushes them) and ground you to reality. I've heard this before & I've felt the hurt and low-level devastation from hearing such words in the past [i.e. when I found out that I couldn't minor in music when I first got to college], but that didn't happen this time. I felt that his words of caution were things that I suspected were part of the challenges I would face if I got into grad school to study comics, so I took my feelings as a sign that I really should pursue this degree.
We discussed comic book stores, the possibility that there may be three departments that may be best suited for what I want to study [Comparative Studies, English, and Women's Studies], and who I should speak to in helping me with the dilemma of which department I should try to get my degrees in(because I would have to get another Master's, no matter which department I get into). He made a good sell for working under the English department in that it would be easy to assemble a committee and I would be able to get jobs based on having degrees in English instead of Comparative Studies [Women's Studies has been ruled out simply because of the dearth of faculty who would be open to such an odd focus], but that CS has more flexibilty (something that the CS prof had mentioned in my meeting with him). So the question is this: Do I apply to the department that is newer and allows for greater flexibiltiy, or do I go for the more traditional department with a better chance of getting work in the end? There is yet another option; I can (possibly) apply to both, or get into one and transfer to the other department after finishing my Masters.
What I liked was that this professor told me that he would assist me whether or not he ended up as my advisor (which is extremely encouraging), and he feels that I am in a position to succeed in my endeavors because I didn't rush into grad school; I've taken my time to come to a decision on what I'm passionate about and know the work that it takes to make it through the program. He told me about a program that's coming to the University in October...and how he'll try to help me get in on the student rate, and about a website where there are people who review comics (a possible writing opportunity), and he even likes Hello Kitty (but he may have been teasing me on that one [it's okay :-)]). I've got a lot of research to do on the different programs, application processes, and decisions to make on how I want to proceed. I need to get in touch with more people and prepare to better explain my PhD concept to the Curator on the 3rd.
I felt really good about this, so I've got to work hard and do whatever it takes to get back into grad school. Even though I know I won't be able to study my passion right away, the fact that I'll be studying anything is very exciting for me.
Ja ne!
Thursday, July 5, 2007
...I didn't expect that...
I guess I'm back. Surprise!?! I didn't expect to get any comments, but an innocent comment from a blog that I found really cool led to some unexpected traffic that has been very much appreciated.
And after the rough night I had, I needed something to make me feel better.
I was going through our online bank records when I saw that we only had $239 in our account, which would be all fine and good except that our rent check hadn't been cashed yet...and our rent is far more than $200. On top of that, the bank mysteriously vaporized half of my husband's paycheck. I didn't know that a bank could be a magician; they certainly made $400 disappear! In a panic, I called my husband around midnight, and I kept calling until I reached him around 3am [He works 3rd shift, and I'm an unrepentant night-owl.] where he assured me that he would take care of everything. Unfortunately, that wasn't as reassuring as he would've liked it to be, but it was enough to get me to calm down and distract myself with some Gametap games until I could be trusted to go to sleep without incident.
Btw, Gametap has brought out a bunch of free games that I actually like playing...I'm paying for too much crap as it is, so I need something to be free.
My husband's grand scheme to fix things? Go to the bank and get the paycheck issue resolved, then go to Fidelity to raid our mutual fund for some money to make sure that the rent check doesn't bounce higher than the Chrysler building (as I am rife with sayings older than my grandmother). He then promised that we could return any of the money that we don't need back into the account, but I may want to keep it out and put it in a CD or something to help pay the Capital Gaines tax that we are going to have to pay next year [We used this fund, which his mother gave to him after he finally convinced her that the car she gave us was all but truly dead, to buy an '06 Elantra in February.]. What sucks about the tax is that I'm the person who has to do our taxes every year...and I have no freakin' clue how to do taxes with investments in our possession. But I have time, so it's not something to worry about yet.
I've realized that all of my blogs suffer from the same ADD-esque jumps that reflect how my mind works. It's like the radio commercial where the woman says "I'm not dangerous, I'm just bi-polar. Oooh, look! A butterfly!" It's just one of my coping mechanisms (kind of how I laugh when I'm nervous [or upset, or any other emotion] or when I'm trying to reduce my bouts of anger...I never said that I was sane).
I put more music on my mp3 player recently. I can still put on more, but I forgot what songs I wanted to add, so I only added the ones I remembered I wanted to hear. I even added some of the Japanese Anime songs I got from a bittorrent download. One of which is from a show called Full Moon wo Sagashite, which I think translates into "Searching for the Full Moon", which sounded like a very sad song. I don't know enough Japanese to string together a sentence [I almost said "sandwich". Weird, huh?], but I understood enough words to hear that she was singing about her feelings. It was very beautiful. I need to finish the television series so that I can find out when that song is introduced into the show...and get at least some of the lyrics as this is most likely an ending theme song.
I need to make contact with a professor that I'm supposed to be meeting with on Tuesday to discuss the PhD that I would like to get. This guy teaches a course on Graphic Novels, and the man who wants to be my adviser believes that this guy would be a great contact. Unfortunately, we never settled on a time for our meeting, so I'm going to send him another e-mail soon. I also need to e-mail the curator of the Cartoon Research Library at OSU because not only would she be a good contact for starting on this project, she could be on my committee if/when the time comes. She was also my adviser for my practicum when I was working on my Master's of Library and Information Science (M.L.I.S.) degree, so she may actually talk to me :-).
Do realize that I have been laughing at myself while I write this. I'm a little scattered, which is better than being depressed or stressed out, so that's where I am right now...mentally.
I have determined that this post will not make any sense. So I will continue....
Anyway, what I want to study is strong female characters in comics. In particular, I want to look at Wonder Woman and Sailor Moon, their emergence in their respective countries, and the cultural ramifications that they may have had or reflect. I decided upon this when I was reading a collection of Wonder Woman comics and thought about how women's roles had changed in WWII (due to men being sent off to war), and I had read an article about how women in Japan are refusing to go back to the traditional roles of stay-at-home wife and mother, which got me to thinking about when that change had occurred over there. It's a concept that is evolving, but it is something I'm passionate about & hope I get to pursue. The biggest hurdle? Getting in the program. The Department of Cultural Studies has a 6% acceptance rate into their PhD program, and this will be the first time I have to take the GRE (and that is making me uber nervous). My husband says this is the first time I've been passionate about anything in a very long time, so he's being very encouraging of what I want to do (which helps a lot). I've already met with a professor in the department who actually took an interest in my project (instead of laughing me out of the room), so I'm off to a good start.
In other news, I have two songs I need to learn for church in the coming weeks. One is the alto part in a quartet of Wade in the Water on (ironically enough) the Sunday I'm supposed to get baptized [This may not be ironic (Like how nothing in Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" is actually ironic and may, therefore, be the most ironic part of the song) but it's the best term I could come up with], and I've been picked to do a solo on the Sunday my choir director (A very sweet Master's degree of music student) is going to be giving the message(?) to the congregation. It's not a sermon, because she's not a minister, so it's hard to figure out what to call it, but she's talking and I'm supposed to be singing, so it's a lot of work to get done in a short period of time. I love to sing, and I would love to do it professionally, but I've got to straighten out the rest of my life first, so I'm sticking to church choirs and the occasional solos until I can do more vocally.
I really need to get back to work. I finally figured out what I was supposed to do with this project (It took how many days to figure this out?), so I'm going to try to do as much as I can before I leave at 5:30 today. I didn't get to work until 12:30 due to sleeping in & my husband deciding that I needed sleep more than to be to work on time when the rest of my team is on vacation...and nobody seems to care when I show up, as long as I work my five hours and there is no meeting in the morning.
Randomness, thy name is me. Take care, everyone.
And after the rough night I had, I needed something to make me feel better.
I was going through our online bank records when I saw that we only had $239 in our account, which would be all fine and good except that our rent check hadn't been cashed yet...and our rent is far more than $200. On top of that, the bank mysteriously vaporized half of my husband's paycheck. I didn't know that a bank could be a magician; they certainly made $400 disappear! In a panic, I called my husband around midnight, and I kept calling until I reached him around 3am [He works 3rd shift, and I'm an unrepentant night-owl.] where he assured me that he would take care of everything. Unfortunately, that wasn't as reassuring as he would've liked it to be, but it was enough to get me to calm down and distract myself with some Gametap games until I could be trusted to go to sleep without incident.
Btw, Gametap has brought out a bunch of free games that I actually like playing...I'm paying for too much crap as it is, so I need something to be free.
My husband's grand scheme to fix things? Go to the bank and get the paycheck issue resolved, then go to Fidelity to raid our mutual fund for some money to make sure that the rent check doesn't bounce higher than the Chrysler building (as I am rife with sayings older than my grandmother). He then promised that we could return any of the money that we don't need back into the account, but I may want to keep it out and put it in a CD or something to help pay the Capital Gaines tax that we are going to have to pay next year [We used this fund, which his mother gave to him after he finally convinced her that the car she gave us was all but truly dead, to buy an '06 Elantra in February.]. What sucks about the tax is that I'm the person who has to do our taxes every year...and I have no freakin' clue how to do taxes with investments in our possession. But I have time, so it's not something to worry about yet.
I've realized that all of my blogs suffer from the same ADD-esque jumps that reflect how my mind works. It's like the radio commercial where the woman says "I'm not dangerous, I'm just bi-polar. Oooh, look! A butterfly!" It's just one of my coping mechanisms (kind of how I laugh when I'm nervous [or upset, or any other emotion] or when I'm trying to reduce my bouts of anger...I never said that I was sane).
I put more music on my mp3 player recently. I can still put on more, but I forgot what songs I wanted to add, so I only added the ones I remembered I wanted to hear. I even added some of the Japanese Anime songs I got from a bittorrent download. One of which is from a show called Full Moon wo Sagashite, which I think translates into "Searching for the Full Moon", which sounded like a very sad song. I don't know enough Japanese to string together a sentence [I almost said "sandwich". Weird, huh?], but I understood enough words to hear that she was singing about her feelings. It was very beautiful. I need to finish the television series so that I can find out when that song is introduced into the show...and get at least some of the lyrics as this is most likely an ending theme song.
I need to make contact with a professor that I'm supposed to be meeting with on Tuesday to discuss the PhD that I would like to get. This guy teaches a course on Graphic Novels, and the man who wants to be my adviser believes that this guy would be a great contact. Unfortunately, we never settled on a time for our meeting, so I'm going to send him another e-mail soon. I also need to e-mail the curator of the Cartoon Research Library at OSU because not only would she be a good contact for starting on this project, she could be on my committee if/when the time comes. She was also my adviser for my practicum when I was working on my Master's of Library and Information Science (M.L.I.S.) degree, so she may actually talk to me :-).
Do realize that I have been laughing at myself while I write this. I'm a little scattered, which is better than being depressed or stressed out, so that's where I am right now...mentally.
I have determined that this post will not make any sense. So I will continue....
Anyway, what I want to study is strong female characters in comics. In particular, I want to look at Wonder Woman and Sailor Moon, their emergence in their respective countries, and the cultural ramifications that they may have had or reflect. I decided upon this when I was reading a collection of Wonder Woman comics and thought about how women's roles had changed in WWII (due to men being sent off to war), and I had read an article about how women in Japan are refusing to go back to the traditional roles of stay-at-home wife and mother, which got me to thinking about when that change had occurred over there. It's a concept that is evolving, but it is something I'm passionate about & hope I get to pursue. The biggest hurdle? Getting in the program. The Department of Cultural Studies has a 6% acceptance rate into their PhD program, and this will be the first time I have to take the GRE (and that is making me uber nervous). My husband says this is the first time I've been passionate about anything in a very long time, so he's being very encouraging of what I want to do (which helps a lot). I've already met with a professor in the department who actually took an interest in my project (instead of laughing me out of the room), so I'm off to a good start.
In other news, I have two songs I need to learn for church in the coming weeks. One is the alto part in a quartet of Wade in the Water on (ironically enough) the Sunday I'm supposed to get baptized [This may not be ironic (Like how nothing in Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" is actually ironic and may, therefore, be the most ironic part of the song) but it's the best term I could come up with], and I've been picked to do a solo on the Sunday my choir director (A very sweet Master's degree of music student) is going to be giving the message(?) to the congregation. It's not a sermon, because she's not a minister, so it's hard to figure out what to call it, but she's talking and I'm supposed to be singing, so it's a lot of work to get done in a short period of time. I love to sing, and I would love to do it professionally, but I've got to straighten out the rest of my life first, so I'm sticking to church choirs and the occasional solos until I can do more vocally.
I really need to get back to work. I finally figured out what I was supposed to do with this project (It took how many days to figure this out?), so I'm going to try to do as much as I can before I leave at 5:30 today. I didn't get to work until 12:30 due to sleeping in & my husband deciding that I needed sleep more than to be to work on time when the rest of my team is on vacation...and nobody seems to care when I show up, as long as I work my five hours and there is no meeting in the morning.
Randomness, thy name is me. Take care, everyone.
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