PhD: Bad Idea, Terrible Idea or the Very Worst of All Ideas?

[Datepalm]

Sure, planning is an absolutely political field (though it has a history of technocracy that was supposed to be above all that, which produced a lot of things that look almost laughable today, not to mention being a playing field for architects' megalomanias, like Le Corbusier's infamous proposal to raze Paris to the ground or Lloyd-Wrights fantasy America, in which no one ever has to see anyone else ever again except through a windshield. (I love that stuff.)) I kind of find it refreshing that a department is explicit about its ideological stance, because they obviously get built up through the personalities involved.

At the same time I'm a little wary of framing issues that way when it comes to research questions. It's definitely a seamless continuum between professional aspects of planning (say, how to measure traffic volume) and political ones (how to decide who gets a new rail line) but the whole reason I'm thinking about the PhD route is because I'm interested in the professional end before I can say anything about the political end. My politics are inevitably implicit in my proposal/interests, to my line of thinking - what writers and theories am I drawing on, what my focus is, what my assumptions are - not an explicit "I want to help the poor get better transit service. Here's how." I don't know what will help the poor, scientifically speaking (I 'do' as an activist, but I think that's at least a somewhat different) or even who the poor are, in this sense. Or what it means to be poor that way. Or not-poor. That's why I want to go study it. If I knew already, I'd be running for mayor, not trying to become a researcher.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

On 9/27/2016 at 0:56 PM, Datepalm said:

What are you working on?

My initial interest was in the intersection between theological anthropology (i.e. biblical and ancient Near Eastern conceptions of the human person) and literary discourse. I wrote on one facet of that in one particular book - life-breath (ruah) in Ecclesiastes - since my adviser and I share a similar interest in that book and theological anthropology. Now my research project has expanded to investigating how ruah is used to construct sapiential discourse in Israelite wisdom literature (e.g. Proverbs, Job,  Ecclesiastes, Sirach, etc.). 

[Raja]

I just about completed my 1200 word personal statement for my MA ( which is 200 words too long) . I hate doing these. That was pretty painful and I hate every word of it. To be fair, at least they gave me a set of questions to respond to, unlike almost every other university. 

[Datepalm]

Mine is currently a number of random phrases in a word document. The longest gramatically coherent fragment may or may not be "I like buses. They make me happy."

[Datepalm]

On 29/09/2016 at 4:00 PM, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

My initial interest was in the intersection between theological anthropology (i.e. biblical and ancient Near Eastern conceptions of the human person) and literary discourse. I wrote on one facet of that in one particular book - life-breath (ruah) in Ecclesiastes - since my adviser and I share a similar interest in that book and theological anthropology. Now my research project has expanded to investigating how ruah is used to construct sapiential discourse in Israelite wisdom literature (e.g. Proverbs, Job,  Ecclesiastes, Sirach, etc.). 

That's way over my highschool biblical studies :-). BTW, you have been to Israel, right? I have a vague recollection of you visiting Jerusalem at some point...

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Datepalm said:

Mine is currently a number of random phrases in a word document. The longest gramatically coherent fragment may or may not be "I like buses. They make me happy."

When your personal statement is something I can almost express in Hebrew, you should begin worry.
(Luckily for you, I only know how to say “truck”, not “bus.” But I could say “people-truck,” I’m almost there.)

[Raja]

4 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Mine is currently a number of random phrases in a word document. The longest gramatically coherent fragment may or may not be "I like buses. They make me happy."

Mine is mostly "HEALTH POLICY IS THE BEST AT XYZ UNIVERSITY, PICK ME, PICK ME" 

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

9 hours ago, Datepalm said:

That's way over my highschool biblical studies :-). BTW, you have been to Israel, right? I have a vague recollection of you visiting Jerusalem at some point...

Yep, in May 2010. I was lucky in that I saw Syria (including Palmyra), Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan before shit went down with Daesh and the Egyptian revolution. 

[Datepalm]

אוטובוס is an important word! (I've got 700 words so I'll let you have it. If I'm not done by the point you know how to say 'land-use integration', I'm in trouble.) People-trucks (combination-bus), by the way, also have a rich history in Israel and are still widely in use by the army. Official name is טיולית, though טלטולית is common slang. 

I have a feeling buses have a slightly larger role in Israeli culture than they do in most places, besides. Trains tend to be the glory hogs of the collective mass transit imagination - while delivering barely one tenth of the rides per day, globally - but I think they're associated with the British or even the Ottomans in some way, both economically and culturally - structured, respectable, effete, and a lot of the terrorist/guerilla stuff in the 1940s involved blowing up rail infrastructure - whereas the lone bus bouncing unfussily across an unpaved desert road has some authentic Israeli quality to it. (I totally just made all that up, but someone should clearly look into it.) 

@Matrim Fox Cauthon That was exceedingly good timing - I'm jealous. I have a few archaeologist friends who are genuinely personally devastated by the destruction. 

[Happy Ent]

On 1 October 2016 at 7:39 AM, Datepalm said:

אוטובוס is an important word!

Ah! Wonderful and easy. It’s just “autobus!” 

I’m beginning to encounter Hebrew words that make sense — the basic stuff (apple, orange – things that existed in biblical times ) is mainly WHATTHEFUCK and impossible to remember. But loan words like banana and ananas are easy.

I take  אוטובוס over משאית (truck/“masha’it”) any day!

[Raja]

After writing a 1300 word personal statement for one university, the other university I'm applying to wants 500 words max. 

[Buckwheat]

Two of my professors on MA (one of them was my MA thesis overseer) seem to want to see me on a PhD program, or at least they asked me if I am thinking about it and offered options about the scholarship. My parents seem to agree that this would be a great idea. Keep scaring me in this thread, otherwise I might actually go for it one of these years.

[Datepalm]

Oranges aren't in the bible! תפוז is actually a famous early neologism. It's a crude acronym of תפוח זהב. 

Buckwheat, go for it! It's months of labour and obsession that has no intrinsic purpose or function in the world, being entirely internally-directed, there's no one to talk to about it because there's no way not to sound like a prat - because you are pretty much a prat - and involves an Orwellian level of self persuasion. I think it most resembles doctrinally following a particularly obnoxious self help guide, maybe. 'Every evening, you will sit and write why you are the awesomest. And work on converting fractions into decimals on deliberately badly drawn charts, very quickly.'

(Edit: I mean the application process, not the PhD itself. I suppose.)

[Eponine]

My husband finished his PhD this year. Don't do this to your friends and loved ones! Make better life choices!

I am gradually getting over the urge to murder him.

[Datepalm]

Why do all the GRE essay writing prompts take the form of 'Here's a Fascistic Statement. Approach it with Nuance.'?

Also, in other USA education mysteries, how do the state university systems work? I understand that University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign and University of Illinois - Chicago are different, independent universities, but do they not, say, allow cross-registration for classes? Share faculty or research to any extent? California has a transport research center than appears to draw on the whole system, but then UCLA has it's own transport center that seems to be doing a lot of the same basic topics.  

And states seem to have multiple systems of public universities? Are University of Michigan - et al and Michigan State University and University of Central Michigan all more unrelated than University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and University of Michigan - Deerborn are, like a family tree? Or is it more of a caste system, where all the Universities of X get along, and look down on the X State Universities who wouldn't be caught dead with University of Compass Point X? (I don't know what to make of Portland State University.) 

 

[Altherion]

Keep in mind that US states can have systems and naming conventions that are completely different from each -- there is no unified standard. It could be a caste system. For example, California has a master plan which establishes three different systems: the University of California (world class schools like Berkeley), California State University (the middle tier) and the California Community Colleges System (the rest).

On the other hand, Michigan doesn't do that. The University of Michigan and Michigan State University are just research universities with different names.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Cross-registration for courses does exist, but in my experience it tends to happen when the universities are in close proximity.

UofM (Ann Arbor), MSU and CMU are quite spread apart (CMU is only 45 minutes from my place, MSU and UofM are 2 hours-ish in different directions). 

[Eponine]

In a lot of states, there's the flagship university - University of State, main campus. That university probably has a law school and medical school.

Then there's the state university - State State, main campus. That one was often an agricultural school, and usually still has that tradition. If you look at Michigan State, for example, their top ranked undergrad programs include supply chain management, operations management, and biological/agricultural engineering.

Each of those might have satellite campuses, like UofM, Deerborn. The satellite campuses generally do not have things like law schools and top engineering programs. These are generally not close enough to the main campus to have cross-registration or share professors. The satellite campus is for students who chose to go to school closer to home or who are non-traditional students (such as older adults going to school in the evening part time while working full time).

Then there are a number of state schools which are not a secondary campus of another school, like Central Michigan University (and they often are directionals). They often have students who either did not get into a better university, chose to stay closer to home, or are there for one specific top program (for example, CMU has a top undergrad neuroscience program). 

Not all states follow this. You'll notice that in several mid-Atlantic/Southern schools, the State State school is a HBCU (historically black) and the more well-known state school is a different one. I think NCAA football exacerbates how well known each is. (Virginia State vs. Virginia Tech. Kentucky State vs. Louisville. Alabama State vs. Auburn. In each of these, the first school is a HBCU and the second is larger and more well-known). And Virginia is kind of a special example because a lot of colleges were founded in colonial times or soon after, and the public schools tend to have private school names (William and Mary, James Madison, etc.) On the other hand, there's Wisconsin. It seems like all the colleges are satellite campuses of UW-Madison. I don't know that I've ever heard of another type of Wisconsin public college.

Now wasn't that entertaining?

[Datepalm]

Sadly, it totally was. :-) Exactly the kind of list-y, fractal things I like. 

[Eyelesbarrow]

So what usually happens during the PhD interview?  I'm up for one soon. The panel will have the PhD Admissions tutor, my 1st supervisor, and 2nd supervisor. I was told that we will discuss my proposal, which is what I kind of expected.  But what else will they throw at me? & how deep will the discussion be?  I'm in the social sciences, btw. Anecdata from my friends vary widely, some friends were heavily questioned about their theoretical framework and the like, some were not asked about it much, with the interview mostly about their interest and motivations.