GOGSoc Episode V: The GOG Strikes Back

that awkward moment when you get rejected by your safety school ...



Seriously, fml.

UNLESS THEY WERE JUST INTIMIDATED BY ALL MY AWESOME

No, that's not likely. This really doesn't bode well for my other applications, and has got me thinking - there is literally nothing more I could have done. I guess there's just something fundamentally wrong with me.

Either way, try not to think that you're not good enough

No, no, no, you know that's not true. Even in the UK there are numerous accounts of people being rejected by Oxford and accepted by Cambridge or vice versa (and similar at other top unis). It just means you didn't fit at one place.

good luck!!

oh... thanks guys It just sucks, because I feel like after last year I was breaking out of this horrible cycle of depression/underperforming/hating myself/sucking at life, and if I take a serious beating this admissions cycle, all that will go away. At the moment I'm holding up OK, because that university would have been difficult for me to attend - bad location, etc. The prospective supervisor would have been amazing and a perfect fit, though, so I don't understand why it didn't work out.

I guess one year of extreme overachievement is never going to make up for not being perfect all my life.

BLEURGH!

I'd kill to get into Yale, and become Rory, and live the Ivy dream, but I have this sinking feeling it won't work out.

Still, I keep saying to myself, it's easy to be good and positive and happy when things are going well. Right now I feel awful, and it's actually really, really hard to break out of it. Therefore, I will go running, and maybe practise Chinese, and see if I'm actually stronger than I used to be.

oops ... got Britney stuck in my head.

I guess there's just something fundamentally wrong with me.

Rubbish! These decisions are made on very fine shades of difference between large numbers of applicants. Stick at it!

Very trivial grumpy post in relation to your application worries, cinosia, but I had my last chance to get into the Norwegian weightlifting championships today and I didn't manage it Comforting myself with a night in, watching my Frozen Planet box set, a cup of tea and ringing my mum and dad.

oh... thanks guys It just sucks, because I feel like after last year I was breaking out of this horrible cycle of depression/underperforming/hating myself/sucking at life, and if I take a serious beating this admissions cycle, all that will go away. At the moment I'm holding up OK, because that university would have been difficult for me to attend - bad location, etc. The prospective supervisor would have been amazing and a perfect fit, though, so I don't understand why it didn't work out.

I guess one year of extreme overachievement is never going to make up for not being perfect all my life.

BLEURGH!

I'd kill to get into Yale, and become Rory, and live the Ivy dream, but I have this sinking feeling it won't work out.

Still, I keep saying to myself, it's easy to be good and positive and happy when things are going well. Right now I feel awful, and it's actually really, really hard to break out of it. Therefore, I will go running, and maybe practise Chinese, and see if I'm actually stronger than I used to be.

oops ... got Britney stuck in my head.

Teaching only posts require more experience than I was able to gain. My publication record stands (or will by the time everything comes out this year) at 1 book, 4 articles in my name, 2 chapters in edited collections, 1 co-written chapter, and about a dozen book reviews in various places.

Good grief Well you're bound to get a job somewhere with that eventually, but in the meantime you might need to just get a basic job to keep going while persistently knocking on all the doors.
How long did you take on your PhD? I have no idea how I'm going to manage 3 publications as well as teaching experience and finish in 3 years But I don't really have a choice.

I'm planning on fixing up my MPhil thesis for publication, and writing a first chapter (as my transferring up piece) that can be used for publishing, but from here it feels impossibly hard.

I finished my PhD in 2 years 7 months. With some delays over the viva because of the summer holidays, I was viva-ed precisely 4 days after my funding ran out. The major problem in history is that fashions are changing once more. My field (labour history) was almost killed off by post-modernism and the linguistic turn. Now it's modern British history that's being forced into a corner by a resurgent interest in early modern study and the creeping dominance of Chinese and Indian and Arab history in all chronologies. Of all the bits of British history, Wales has the fewest jobs and the least interest outside its borders. One Welsh job has arisen in the 4 years that I've been paying attention to the job sheets. I have zero faith at the moment that things will change.

That sounds all too similar to how I've been feeling recently. The others are definitely right that a rejection somewhere might not mean rejection at other better places. At undergrad Bristol rejected me for Politics, and Cambridge made me an unconditional offer (and I far preferred the Cambridge course and everything). If the worst does happen, though, do your best not to see it as a personal failure. With competition like that, it is far more likely to be about impossible numbers than personal quality. And you can't afford to get hung up about it or it will actually make you underform more in the future. I've gotten hung up over my undergrad and MPhil results, and it doesn't matter anymore but it still affects me even though it shouldn't.

Why do you have to find work in Wales? I think most people accept that if you want to be in academia you have to be willing to go where the jobs are - even if that's in Australia Also there might be some interdisciplinary departments that like your specialism. Labour is a hot area in Sociology. Some of the academics in my old department came from History backgrounds.

Sticking. Though if I get rejected from everywhere, I will reconsider. Already working on alternative life plans. Shame I just can't stay away from academia, however hard I try...

no way, my worries are totally trivial. I'm basically acting like a spoilt princess because I didn't get into a school I wouldn't have attended anyway!! Silly me. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. Wow, I wish I could lift weights, I can't even do one push up. SO PUNY! I need to watch Frozen Planet, I watched Planet Earth and was so obsessed with it, it actually made me cry in places because of the sheer beauty of everything!!

I'm going for cider rather than tea, though.

It's not really that I need search for work in Wales but that for a historian of Wales, it's more likely that Wales will offer the opportunity for work in the fisrt instance. If you follow my logic. I'm generally interested in leaving this ****ed up country into which I was born and so Australia, New Zealand, Canada, wherever would be great. My experience from the one or two of academic job interviews I've had now is that the RAE is killing our chances - as you said earlier. Maybe it'll change in a couple of years when that's over. Sociology, or at least historical sociology, certainly does interest me.

Given the breadth of your thesis, surely you are able to apply for a wider number of positions (e.g. nineteenth and twentieth-century history)? Is everything you have published been exclusively 'on Wales'?

thank you for your kind reply I am going to try to hold it together till some more results come in! I haven't lost all confidence yet. I know I'm a strong applicant. I really hope the American universities actually understand that breaking 90 in the UK is a big deal. BLEURGH! I'M SO GRUMPY!

I do have a tendency to get really hung up on things, and you are right. It has made me underperform. You worry about your results, but then I worry that I've never attended a "brand name" university, and that this will always hold me back. I think we just have to let these things go, and try to have faith in our individual strengths.

I <3 GOGs

I've no idea what a pharynx is

Yay!

I think that even if US unis don't fully comprehend the importance of your 80+, Oxford will.

Well yes since that's my evidence dataset. Unlike countless historians, I'm not really that comfortable using the generalising term "British" when I've not done the research in other parts of the country. Apply to positions is not really that hard, getting an interview is and well put it this way, I didn't even get an interview for a labour history position. There you are.