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It’s May 8th. That means, here at MAPH, barest-minimum thesis survival mode has set in. You’re probably drinking way too much coffee. Staying up way too late in the evening reading and writing. Eating only what’s necessary to survive the day.

At this point last year, a blog post encouraging me to stop all of these bad habits would have been infuriating. That’s why I’m not even going to bother saying “please take care of yourself.” Instead, I’m going to suggest some REALLY AWESOME alternatives to stressing about your thesis and starving yourself that might be SO enticing, you just might do them.

1. Go to the POINT: The weather is supposed to be beautiful Thursday and Friday of this week. Start your weekend early. Grab a MAPH grill after Social Hour on Friday and head to the Point with some hot dogs and beer. Or, wander there on Thursday afternoon after your classes are over. Grab a Klondike from the little ice cream truck on the bike path. And stop by the Cove for a nice cold beer on your way home. Or just stay at the Cove.

2. Go to Nick’s Beer Garden: If it makes you feel better about taking an outing away from your nest in Hyde Park, you can spend the day at The Wormhole studying before you head to Nick’s for happy hour specials, a fabulous back deck, and live music on Fridays and Saturdays (no cover!).

3. Take a bike ride: The bike path located at our very own Point actually runs all the way past NAVY PIER! I know. Pretty unbelievable. Don’t have a bike? Well, our very own University of Chicago actually has a BIKE RENTAL program. I know. Shocked you again. This is the perfect answer to that antsy feeling you get from being in your apartment for three days straight without talking to anyone. Grab a friend, grab some bikes, and set out with a picnic on a day-long adventure.

Need more ideas? Come into MAPHCentral and we’ll hook you up.

Happy well-deserved break time!

Here are several things you should do or at least be vaguely aware of in preparation of Convocation, coming up on June 9.

Buy your robe. Remember how everyone has to be dressed exactly the same  at ceremonies meant to recognize achievements of original intellectual thought? If you’ve forgotten, here is your reminder: pick up your graduation robe so you can share your achievement in the anonymity only physique-obscuring, nondescript garments can provide. You can find robes at the bookstore–not the Seminary Coop, but Barnes and Noble at Ellis and 58th, where they will likely sell teddy bears wearing scale models of the very robe you are about to buy.  Go there, make sure to ask for the Graduate Student robe and they’ll give the correct size based on your height.

Log into Cmore and make sure all your personal information is correct. What could be more embarrassing than the dean mispronouncing your name in front of an auditorium full of people? The dean mispronouncing your name because it was misspelled on your diploma! There is decidedly no way to stop the first thing from happening, but the second is entirely within your power to prevent. Make sure you check your personal information on your cmore account and proofread all the essential logistics.

Look ahead and make travel and lodging arrangements beforehand. If you have far away loved ones visiting, make sure they’ve found a place to stay (and remember, convocation is the 9th, but the parent’s reception is June 8th). Hyde park hotels get flooded and booked way ahead of time whenever there is a conference or convocation.

Grades. Here are important upcoming dates for turning in your grades, and a few other deadlines:

Raphael Torch Memorial Service Core Fellowship, due May 18.

MAPH Postgraduate Research Fellowship, due May 18.

Thesis due May 21.

Last quarter grades due on May 25.

Thesis grades due May 30.

All grades due: June 1.

Thesis Works-In-Progress: It's really more like a tea party with friends.

Thesis Works-In-Progress is fast approaching and I’m sure that there are many of you out there going back and forth on whether or not you want to participate. That’s fair. I realize that in my original e-mail about the event, while I did an okay job describing what the event itself would be like, I never actually gave you all some solid reasons to participate. So, lest my lack of reasoning (but not really) be the reason why you haven’t sent me your proposal, here are the reasons why you absolutely SHOULD participate in this event. I hope I’ve covered every category of MAPHer at this point in the year, but if you’re in a place that I haven’t discussed, by all means, let me know.

1. If you are planning/hoping/thinking about going on to a Ph.D. program next year:

If this is you, your proposal should already be in my Inbox. Presenting your work (and what will probably become your writing sample) at ANY conference this year can only help your application. Not only because it will be another line on your CV and a good indication that you take your work and your professional development as a scholar seriously, but also because presenting your project can actually make it better. As some of you may have already realized over the past few months, talking with people about your work can have an incredibly positive impact on your thought organization. Just being forced to answer that constant question at family events–”and what are you working on in grad school?”–can be a helpful way to practice succinctly and coherently describing the crux of your project. So if even THAT can be helpful, then presenting your work in front of your colleagues and peers, with thoughtful feedback and questions afterwards, takes that usefulness to a whole new level.

(or maybe this isn’t you and you need to….keep reading after the jump)

2. If you don’t even want to touch a Ph.D. program with a ten-foot pole and are planning to start a job after MAPH:

Believe it or not, you may even be MORE in need of presenting at the MAPH mini-conference than the Ph.D. folks. Why? Because they have four or eleven more years to hone their presentation skills and learn how to succinctly articulate a large scale project. You, on the other hand, are going out into the world basically tomorrow and having “solid presentation skills” as a line on your resume (i.e., I presented at a conference and held my own) is an invaluable addition to the transferrable skills you’re getting from MAPH this year. Being uncomfortable speaking in front of groups is an understandable anxiety, but it’s one that you need to start facing and overcoming if you’re entering the professional job market. Just think of ALL the jobs you’ll need public speaking skills for (like community college/other teaching, for instance?).

3. If you have no idea what you’re doing next year/can’t even begin to think about the future because it gives you agita/are scared out of your mind about this project and feel like you’ll never get it done by May 21st:

Friends, you are actually the ones who will benefit most from Thesis Works-In-Progress. If there’s anything you’ve learned over the past year, we hope it’s that MAPH is an incredibly supportive community–whether it’s your core group of friends, your precept, or the larger MAPH staff and student body. If you’re struggling with your project right now (and believe me, I was completely there, as are plenty of your fellow-MAPHers right now), the best thing to do is force yourself to organize enough of those idea threads to present your struggles to your friends and larger cohort. This is such a laid-back, stress-free event that presenting will be easy. The harder thing to do will be to admit at the start of your presentation that you’re struggling with a particular section, or your entire draft is written but it still feels like you have no argument. But by admitting that at the start, that will allow those of us listening to provide you with potentially incredibly useful feedback and questions so that you can move toward a super successful end result.

So, bottom line, no matter where you are at in your project or how you are feeling about your future at this moment, Thesis Works-In-Progress will be absolutely beneficial to your project and its progress. Remember: proposals are due MONDAY, APRIL 30th to me. And, even if you really, really, really feel like you can’t present for some reason, remember to stop by on Thursday, May 3rd in Classics 21 between 3:00PM and 6:00PM to support your friends and get some cheese.

The MAPH summer internship opportunity at the Chicago Humanities Festival provides each student with the following: working experience in the country’s leading public humanities organization, access to world-renowned humanities scholars, interaction with Chicago’s top cultural institutions, and a mentored team environment in which to build varied skills for future employment.

MAPH SUMMER 2012 INTERNSHIP PROGRAM, Principal Responsibilities:

• Develop ideas for high-quality web content and make content requests of Festival presenters
• For assigned fall Festival programs, manage the core communications with participants regarding the actual programs, including live program, web content, and presenter logistics
• Solicit, write, and edit blogs
• Create rich media content from video and/or audio captured from Festival programs
• Assist with the coordination of summer Festival education programs Study guide conception and editing

The successful candidate will have:

• Expertise in one or more humanities, social sciences, or arts disciplines • Strong interests in inter- and transdisciplinary work
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• The ability to work both independently and on teams
• Excellent organizational and process management skills
• Excellent computer skills
• High level of motivation and strong desire to learn and collaborate
• Positive attitude

About CHF:

The Chicago Humanities Festival creates opportunities for people of all ages to support, enjoy and explore the humanities. We fulfill this mission through our annual festivals, the fall Chicago Humanities Festival and the spring international performance festival, Stages, Sights & Sounds, and by presenting programs throughout the year and on our web site. The CHF is devoted to making the humanities a vital and vibrant ingredient of daily life. We believe that access to cultural, artistic and educational opportunities is a necessary element for a healthy and robust civic environment. Tickets for most fall Festival programs are $5 in advance, $10 at the door and many programs are free of charge to students and teachers (with ID).
Fall Festival audiences can experience lectures and performances by a diverse set of presenters. Among the leading humanities scholars over the last few years have included Ken Alder (Northwestern U), Michael Bérubé (Penn State U), Tom Boellstorff (U of California, Irvine), Glen Bowersock (Institute for Advanced Study), Sarah Burns (Indiana U), Cathy Davidson (Duke U), Peter Galison (Harvard U), Michael Geyer (U of Chicago), Anthony Grafton (Princeton U), Ramón Gutiérrez (U of Chicago), Travis Jackson (U of Chicago), Laura Kipnis (Northwestern U), Jill Lepore (Harvard U), Ania Loomba (U of Pennsylvania), Dwight McBride (Northwestern U), Martha Nussbaum (U of Chicago), David Oshinsky (U of Texas), Michael Taussig (Columbia U), Paula Treichler (U of Illinois), and Sherry Turkle (MIT). Other recent presenters include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Laurie Anderson, David Carr, Umberto Eco, Jonathan Franzen, Amitav Ghosh, Jeanne Gang, William Gibson, Antony Gormley, Matt Groening, David Grossman, Sarah Jones, Tony Kushner, Robert Reich, Dan Savage, Sam Shepard, Steven Sondheim, and Elizabeth Warren.

To learn more, visit: http://www.chicagohumanities.org/

This is the first year we’re offering this internship and Newcity is really excited about having a MAPHer on staff. As the Newcity intern, you will work about twenty hours a week during normal hours for about three months, as well as cover stories or work events from time to time during evenings and weekends. Duties might include editorial and writing, as well as marketing support and other project-oriented tasks. In other words, you have the chance to get involved in all aspects of publishing in print and online.

The internship is virtual, meaning your “office hours” will be at your own unsupervised virtual office and occasionally in our office, or at a weekly intern meeting downtown. You’ll need a laptop (we don’t have extra computers) and access to an internet connection when you’re not in the office.

Editorial duties include researching stories, fact-checking, compiling listings and a modicum of special projects of varying degrees of difficulty and drudgery. Interns should be prepared to do a ton of writing, some for print, most for our web sites. That means great writing skills and reporting experience, or at least an inclination to report. Interns generally do not write reviews, at least till they’ve proven themselves as writers and with a discerning sensibility.

If you want to read a bit more about this awesome media company, their website has a lot of useful information, including some testimonies from past interns.

The Project on Civic Reflection (soon to be the Center for Civic Reflection) is the leading partner and resource for civic groups and organizations nationwide who seek to build reflective discussion into the way they do their work. Established at Valparaiso University in 1998, and with a Chicago office since 2008, the Project’s expansive partner list includes national service agencies (such as AmeriCorps and Campus Compact), cultural organizations (such as Illinois Humanities Council and Chicago Cultural Alliance), palliative and hospice care teams, universities and more. Among the resources that PCR offers are an extensive electronic resource library; an online forum in which facilitators share their experiences; expert training in facilita­tion; individual consultation with Project staff; and anthologies of readings that inspire rich discussion about civic engagement.

Intern Job Description

The MAPH intern will work on the program’s website redevelopment project, including content development for PCR Resource Library (identifying new readings, writing discussion questions and creating reflective exercises). Interns will:

• Explore social networking possibilities  – the new PCR blog, Facebook and many more;
• Assist with fundraising research and donor identification;
• Facilitation Trainings — marketing, outreach, logistics, working with participants;
• Have other opportunities — to be trained in civic reflection facilitation; to develop evaluation instruments and research proposals.

Requirements

Strong oral and verbal communication skills are a must, along with a robust interest in community and a good sense of humor. Good writing skills are needed and an interest in literature and/or dialogue/discussion is a plus.

Work schedule can be determined in consultation with PCR staff, though applicants should expect to work a total of 300 hours during the course of the internship. To learn more about the organization, please check out www.civicreflection.org.

Being the oldest cultural organization in town means that the Chicago History has had to rebuild.  The original building at Dearborn and Ontario Streets burned to the ground in the 1871 fire.  The parts of the collection that weren’t destroyed in that conflagration succumbed to a second fire three years later.  But this wouldn’t be a true Chicago institution if it didn’t have to start from scratch a few times.

Today, the Lincoln Park-located museum boasts an enormous collection of materials dedicated to the preservation of Chicago’s history of cultural, architectural, economic, and shady-political achievements.  Their upcoming summer exhibition, which you would obviously be around for as their summer intern, is the HISTORY OF MAGIC. I capitalize this because it sounds so incredibly awesome and I didn’t want you to miss the title. “You’ll witness live performances, visit a mysterious object theater, and examine exciting artifacts. Find out how to become a magician, and explore the secrets of the business. Discover the truth behind some of the oldest illusions.”

(More serious things, like the internship description, after the jump…)

As an intern at the Chicago History Museum, the goal will be to provide and support audience research, content research and development, collections research, and project planning for new interpretive products, including upcoming exhibitions.

You might conduct research on a variety of subjects in support of these projects using archival records available at the CHM and other institutions, secondary sources such as books and articles, and internet resources. You will be responsible for organizing the results of their research efforts into paper and database files and notebooks for use by the curator and other project team members. You also may be asked to support the curator in the development of grants, program materials, and draft label copy. The intern will be supervised by and report to John Russick, CHM Senior Curator.

The MAPH student who had this internship last year was Deborah Blumenthal, who is currently working as a consulting dramaturg on Angels in America at the Court Theater. “What?!” you ask in horror and surprise, “she isn’t doing something related to her internship experience?” No, friends. You can do an internship in something that doesn’t seem incredibly related to the job you might get and still have an excellent experience and obtain many varied and interesting transferable skills from your summer position.

So, in closing, look VERY carefully at the internship descriptions we’ve posted and the websites for each organization. Something that seems unrelated on a first, cursory glance may actually be more relevant on closer inspection. How do we know? Elementary, my dear Watson.

2010 Odyssey Project Graduates

The Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) is currently seeking a student or recent college graduate for an internship position with The Odyssey Project. The Odyssey Project Intern will support the Odyssey Project Director, as well as the Illinois Humanities Council staff in the overall execution of the organization’s mission.

A core program of the Illinois Humanities Council, The Odyssey Project provides college-level instruction in the humanities through seminars led by professors at top-tier colleges and universities (for instance, our very own Hilary Strang teaches for them).  The Odyssey Project offers free courses in philosophy, literature, art history, and history for men and women living below poverty level.  Students receive six units of transferable college credit. The Odyssey Project offers a first-year course, a Bridge Course for graduates of the first-year course, and a Spanish language course.

(“A Day in the Life of an IHC Intern” after the jump)

As an intern with the Illinois Humanities Council you will be exposed to an exceptionally dynamic, mission-oriented environment. Each year, the IHC produces and/or funds over 1,000 public humanities activities throughout the state which are attended by more than 40,000 participants.  The IHC values collegiality, imagination, and flexibility in the workplace.

As the Odyssey Project Intern, some of your responsibilities will include: assisting the director of the Odyssey Project in recruiting new students and identifying/visiting potential recruiting outlets, assisting current Odyssey students in their college application process by helping request transcripts, fill out financial aid documents and complete applications, prepare reports on student/teacher evaluations, helping to prepare Odyssey Project public communications, helping to plan and execute the Odyssey student magazine (on-line and print), assisting in the planning and carrying out Odyssey events–solicit food donations, help set up, clean up.

For more information about the Illinois Humanities Council and their programs, visit: www.prairie.org.

Founded in 1971 by the late Jane Jordan Browne, Browne & Miller Literary Associates is Chicago’s only full-service, independent literary agency. They currently represent authors writing in most genres of commercial adult fiction and non-fiction, as well as select young adult projects. As a hands-on, editorially-focused agency, they work closely with their clients in developing manuscripts and proposals for submission and sale. They also maintain an active subsidiary rights business and regularly license audio, film/television, and foreign translation rights to the works they represent.

Currently, they are most interested in representing commercial women’s fiction, especially elegantly crafted, sweeping historicals, edgy, fresh teen/chick/mom/lady lit, and CBA women’s fiction by established authors. According to their website, they are also very keen on literary historical mysteries and literary YA novels. Topical, timely non-fiction projects in a variety of subject areas are also of interest especially prescriptive how-to, self-help, sports, humor, and pop culture.

As an intern with Browne and Miller, you will be afforded the unique opportunity to develop practical skills and acquire tangible experience in trade book publishing within a busy agency setting. Their interns are exposed to all aspects of agency work. Duties range from basic clerical tasks including typing, filing, and packing and shipping to reviewing query letters, reading and evaluating manuscripts and proposals, conducting market research, and more.

They’re located in the historic (and beautiful) Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue, right in the heart of the Loop and across from Millennium Park. If they give you an hour for lunch, you could easily hop, skip, or jump across the street to eat by the lake and relax in one of the best people-watching places during Chicago summers.

As if this wasn’t already a fabulous opportunity, past MAPH intern Anna Jarzab published her first novel All Unquiet Things with Joanna McKenzie at Browne and Miller as her agent.  Also, last year’s MAPH intern, Matt Seidel, had the chance to do a really interesting extended research project on e-book publishing and presented his findings for Joanna and Danielle at the end of summer. Don’t miss the chance to get your foot in the door in the Chicago publishing industry!

Prospective 2012-2013 MAPHers:

Welcome to MAPHtastic, the blog for our current MAPHers and, now, you. If you haven’t already read A-J’s much more thorough “Welcome to MAPH” blog post, you should. It’s full of useful information that will help you start thinking about whether or not you want to join us next year.

It’s my purpose here, though, to get you thinking about your upcoming visit. Now that you’re on your way to town, how can you make sure to get the best experience out of your 48-hour preview of the MA Humanities Program? I remember Campus Days being slightly overwhelming, as I had not yet discovered the MAPH Blog and the helpful mentor posts about how to make the weekend as productive as possible. So, if you’re reading this, you’re already one step ahead of the April 2010 me.

(Hopefully helpful advice, after the jump)

To start off, here are a few helpful reminders and tips for the weekend:

• Ask questions. We’ll have panels of current students, alumni, and faculty.  MAPHCental (that’s our nickname for the MAPH department office) Staff and Preceptors will be milling around both days.  Essentially, we’re all here to answer the questions that you are bringing–about academics, loans, jobs, social life, food, health, weather, Hegel, whatever.  And, even if your current goal is to use MAPH as a stepping-stone to Ph.D. programs, don’t miss the chance to speak with alums about gap year plans and potential career changes. That being said, there will also be individuals who graduated from the program and are either enrolled in or will soon be enrolled in Ph.D. programs (so talk to them, too). Also, if you’re staying with a current student, it’s a great chance to get a glimpse into a few days of a real-live MAPH student, so take advantage of that perspective.
• Attend a class. Get a feel for grad life at UChicago. And, for those of you who may be returning to school after a long sojourn in the real world, here’s a chance to clean out your brain a bit and remember what it feels like. A good reminder before you take the plunge, in other words.
• Read up. If you haven’t looked at it already, our website (http://maph.uchicago.edu/) has a ton of information about every aspect of the program. AfterMAPH (our alumni blog) runs various profiles and pieces on the resources available to alumni. And, as you already know (since you’re reading this), MAPHtastic is the current student blog with everything from advice on course registration and thesis time management to recipe swaps and ridiculous videos.
• Get to know the other prospectives. Arguably the most important aspect of MAPH during your time at the University of Chicago and afterward will be your fellow MAPHers. Therefore, it’s important that you take the time to get to know some of them during Campus Days and, yes, that you actually like them and feel like you would be comfortable with the culture of the incoming class.
• Get out of Hyde Park. If you’re getting in on Saturday or staying through Tuesday, leave Hyde Park. Being at UChicago means living 15 minutes away from what might be the greatest city in the universe (according to an April 2012 MAPHCentral survey).  If you’ve never been to Chicago before, we suggest some of the basics: Millennium Park, The Art Institute, Wrigleyville, and Gino’s East Pizza. Let us know if you want more detailed recommendations.
• Relax and enjoy yourself. This is a great preview of what is, for many of our students, an incredibly important and formative year professionally, academically, and personally. Of course this weekend is a chance to meet new people and shake hands with faculty members. But it should also be about getting a feel for the program culture and relaxing into the MAPH groove (we say “groove” a lot).

And, in preparation for your weekend, please feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Here’s our contact info:

Benjamin Shurtleff: benjamins@uchicago.edu
Whitney Sperrazza: wsperrazza@uchicago.edu

We’re excited to meet you all on Sunday! In the meantime, our congratulations to the prospective class of 2013, and we hope that you’ll be thinking seriously about joining us this fall.

Originally endowed by Alfred and David Smart (publishers of Esquire and Cornet, among other magazines), the Smart Museum of Art first opened to the public in 1974. Since then it has housed an ever-expanding permanent collection and hosted a variety of special exhibitions, as well as educational outreach programs and public events. With a focus on research and teaching, the Smart is dedicated to artistic education–within the University community, but also extending beyond into the wider public.

Continue reading for a description of the internship…

The MAPH Communications Internship offers the opportunity to get broad arts communications experience by assisting the Smart Museum of Art’s external relations team with new and ongoing efforts. The internship will focus on a few longer-term projects: (1) writing and editing content for the Smart Museum’s quarterly newsletter and other channels; (2) researching magazines, journals, and writers to further develop and maintain the Smart’s press database; (3) developing a campus communications plan to engage the University of Chicago community in the Smart Museum’s upcoming Awash in Color exhibition, which opens in October 2012.

C'est beau, non?

Other day-to-day activities may include producing event flyers and other promotional materials, composing e-mail campaigns, updating the Smart’s Facebook page and Twitter accounts and overseeing potential expansion into other social media channels, as well as providing other communications support as needed.

Great writing and editing skills are a must, as is the ability to handle a variety of projects while on deadline (does any of that sound absurdly relevant to the work you've been doing for the last 7 months?). Applicants should have an interest in the arts and museums, but they do not have to have concentrated in art history. Familiarity with Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Photoshop) will only help you!

Over the next two weeks, we’ll be profiling all of the places where you could potentially work as a MAPH intern this summer. Just think, three more months in Chicago, living off MAPH’s dime and working in an incredibly cool and famous place in the city. Wow. It’s enough to make me wish I was still in MAPH.

So stay tuned, folks. And for your first internship profile, we give you: The Newberry Library.

Oh heavens, what a delightful garden for luncheon!

(Read the profile…after the jump)

Located near Gold Coast, the Newberry Library is an independent, privately operated research library that focuses on the humanities.  It is free and open to the public.  Founded after the death of Chicago patron Walter Newberry (opened in 1887), the library has a large variety of special collections materials that focus on European and American letters and history.  According to its mission statement, the Newberry promotes and provides for the effective use of their special collections materials, fostering research, teaching, publication, life-long learning, and civic engagement.

The Newberry Library Reading Room, 1894

This is a ten-week internship position. You’d be reporting to the Lloyd Lewis Curator of Modern Manuscripts and the Senior Project Archivist, working with archivists on an NEH-funded processing project. As the “Manuscripts and Archives Intern,” you would participate in the preservation, arrangement, re-housing, and description of the records of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company. Dating from 1847 to 1965, the firm’s archives record more than 100 years of Midwestern, Great Plains, and Mountain States history. The CB&Q collection is a vital resource for an array of topics including labor history, rural history, environmental history, immigration history, gender history, the history of travel and tourism, geography and cartography, the history of photography, and the history of advertising and design.

According to students who have held this internship in the past, it’s incredibly hands-on. Past interns have had the chance to sort and catalogue large collections of material (letters, poems, old playbills, photographs, etc.). The archive team you’d be working with is very cool and they have an awesomely decorated office (according to Hilary). Generally MAPH interns are given the chance to be incredibly creative and to take on a lot of responsibility working with the archives.

Plus the Newberry is in a fantastic neighborhood, so you’d get to spend your summer hanging out in a very chill Chicagoland area. And you’ll only be a short bus ride from the Lincoln Park Zoo!

While spring quarter will, ultimately, be your favorite quarter here at UChicago by the time you’re done, right now it probably feels awful. You just turned in your first major thesis draft. You’re starting to feel a lot of pressure to start job searching. And you’re embarking on your last two courses here at UChicago, feeling like you will FINALLY be that rock star student who manages to read everything.

With all of this mounting pressure, we’d like to remind you to: EAT. Some things can get moved to the back burner for the next few weeks (like, perhaps, cleaning out your closet, catching up with your aunt on the phone, and washing your towels). But, alas, eating is not one of those things you can just stop doing. So, in true MAPHcentral fashion, we want to help you out. Here are a few of our favorite quick, easy recipes so that maybe (at least) once a week (please!) you can throw together a home-cooked meal.

(See the recipes…after the jump!)

My grandma’s go-to “I have to feed the grandchildren quickly” entree: Chicken Milanese

Ingredients:

1 packet of boneless, skinless chicken breasts
breadcrumbs (Italian seasoning for better flavor)
mayo (or an egg, whatever you have on hand)
salt & pepper
parmesan cheese (optional)
lemon wedge (optional)

1. Prep your station. Put some mayo (or whipped egg) into a small bowl. Pour breadcrumbs out into plate or larger bowl (sometimes I use a pie dish, which is handy for keeping the breadcrumbs from getting all over). Mix salt and pepper (and parmesan cheese) in with breadcrumbs.

2. Cut the chicken into smaller, thinner pieces (if you want to be really Italian about it, pound it into thin slices, about 1/2″ thick). Depending on the size of the chicken you found, you should be able to get 3 or 4 smaller pieces from each chicken breast.

3. Spread thin layer of mayo onto either side of the chicken (or dunk the chicken in the egg). Then coat both sides of the chicken with the breadcrumb mixture.

4. From here you can use a few different cooking methods for your chicken:

a. If you’re feeling unhealthy, or just want to eat sooner rather than later, put a frying pan with a coat of olive oil on the stove at medium heat. Once the oil’s hot, cook the chicken in the pan for about 4-6 minutes on each side (depending on how thick the pieces are).

b. If you’re in the mood for a healthier option, put the chicken into a glass casserole dish and bake it in the oven at 350 for 20-30 minutes (again, depending on how thick the pieces are). Sometimes I’ll cover it with aluminum foil for the first 15 minutes or so (that way the inside will cook but the outer breading won’t get too dark).

5. Then, if you’re using lemon, squeeze a bit of juice over the chicken and enjoy!

My favorite healthy chocolate snack: Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients:

1 box devil’s food cake mix
1 15 oz. can of pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie mix, just regular canned pumpkin)

1. Pour the dry cake mix and the can of pumpkin into a bowl and mix. It will take a while (and your arm will get a really good workout), but the batter should end up being really thick and slightly lumpy.

2. Line your muffin tin cups with cupcake wrappers (or lightly grease) and place a spoonful of batter into each cup. Bake at 400 for 20 min.

Guest Recipe from Jess: Curry!

So I hesitate to call this a recipe, since I have no measurements, just as a warning.

Ingredients:

Onion(s), chopped
Garlic, chopped
Ginger, grated
Salt
Pepper
Cayenne
Cumin
Coriander
Turmeric
Crushed Tomatoes
Whatever veggies you want to be making a curry with

1. Put enough oil to coat the bottom of the pot you will be using and get this hot.  Add the chopped onion, cook til they get translucent.  Then add the chopped garlic and grate in some fresh ginger.

2. Once those start getting soft, add the spices—I don’t have measurements, but you’ll want a fair amount of salt, and probably more cumin than coriander or turmeric. The cayenne should be to taste, and you can substitute other spicy things if you prefer.  If you use peppers, put those in with the onions at the beginning. There are also premade curry spice blends you can experiment with, if you prefer.

3. Once the spices start to release their aromas, add the crushed tomatoes.  The amount depends on the size of your pot—either two of the small cans or one of the big ones is probably good for a medium-big pot.  Let that simmer, and adjust the spices to taste.

4. When that tastes good, add whatever vegetables you want—I frequently do cauliflower and lentils (cook the lentils ahead of time, and use some of the same spices).  The veggies will release liquid, so you may need to add spices/adjust the flavor balance again, as well as potentially letting it reduce.  Then enjoy!

(Note: If you over-season or over-reduce, you can add some broth to the curry to dilute it a bit, or more of the crushed tomatoes, depending on your preferred consistency. If you made lentils beforehand, any leftover liquid you cooked the lentils in can also be used for this.)

From Maren’s Kitchen: Cranberry Chicken

This is a super simple meal that always seems to work out well and requires very few ingredients and little prep time (and you can serve it to parents with impunity)

Ingredients:

boneless chicken breasts
1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
1 8 oz. bottle of French dressing
1/2 envelope of onion soup mix/ onion powder or 1/4 chopped white or yellow onion

1. Line a lasagna pan with foil.

2. Place boneless chicken breasts in pan.

3. Make the sauce–in a separate bowl mix together can of cranberry sauce, French dressing, and onion mix of choice. (Sauce is sufficient for 2-3 chicken breasts.)

4. Pour sauce over the chicken. Bake at 350 for 1 1/2 hours (if it chicken darkens cover with foil)

Also graciously provided by Maren: Swedish Oven Pancake

This pancake recipe makes a light thin puffy pancake and you don’t have to stand over the stove but can leave it alone for half an hour. Plus it can be made with just a few ingredients.

Ingredients:

1/2 c milk
2/3 c flour
2 T sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 c butter (for pan)

1. Beat together all ingredients – except butter- until  smooth.

2. Place butter in a 9 inch pan (a pie plate works great) and place in a 400 degree oven until butter melts.

3. Pour batter into melted butter and bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown and puffy. Enjoy!

We hope these are useful! Feel free to post your own cheap/easy recipe in the comments for your fellow MAPHers to enjoy!

DO NOT let this be your spring break. Unless you plan to write Anna Karenina, you won’t get anything productive done. Which is why you should come to the MAPH Thesis Write-In (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of next week). We just ordered the snacks today and, rumor has it, they’re phenomenal. Also, there might be some MAPH Mentor cameos at the write-in. But we don’t want to get you too excited.

We’ll leave you with this: if you’re in Chicago during spring break, you can either be at the write-in or at The Point. Those are your only options. When you’re not doing one, do the other.

MAPHCentral Out.

An afternoon of gentlemanly competition outside of MAPHCentral. Just one way that you can spend these first days in spring’s infancy. (You can borrow the croquet set).

Welcome to our newly admitted future-MAPHers! This is our informal current student blog (current students are currently finishing up the tenth and final week of Winter Quarter. They’re just about 2/3 of the way done with their degree, and almost 80% done with Winter). It’s a stressful time of the year, but a week during which we’re all suddenly able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

First of all, congratulations. We hope that we’ll see you April 15-16 for “Campus Days,” which a great opportunity to preview the University and meet faculty, MAPH staff, and most importantly each other. You’ll get a brief glimpse of the diversity, energy, and rigor of our program–and with any luck, campus will already be in its warm, welcoming spring colors.

I’m MAPH’s Outreach Coordinator. I graduated the program in 2010, having spent two years in Washington, DC as an advertising sales representative (which means, essentially, that I went home and screamed as loud as I could every night for 690 consecutive nights). I applied to PhD programs as a kind of escape from the horrors of the “real world,” hoping to spend some years reading books in the safety of the academy. I wrote a personal statement about politics and modern literature, a writing sample about 9/11, and mailed off what I thought were 10 very strong applications.

And I got nine rejection letters over the course of three weeks between February and March.

But I also got an unexpected letter from the University of Chicago. I knew nothing about MAPH three years ago, and I almost immediately wrote off the possibility of coming to UChicago. Looking back, three years later, I can’t really recall the specific reasons that I changed my mind. But I’m glad that I did.

Many of you applied directly to the Program, so you already know a lot about our community, our interdisciplinary approach to humanistic inquiry, and the degree to which our students improve their writing and thinking over the course of nine incredibly short months. At the University of Chicago, you (no bull) will have the most intense academic experience in your careers as students. But equally importantly, you’ll have the opportunity to find out what your chosen discipline–English, philosophy, art history, linguistics, anthropology, and whatever else–means to you. You’ll not only develop critical skills. You’ll also think hard about what the next step will be.

For many of our students, it’s a PhD at a top institution. Friends of mine from the past two years of MAPH have recently been admitted to programs at places like Duke, Wisconsin, Indiana, UCLA, UChicago, Johns Hopkins, and NYU (in English); UPenn (anthropology); Northwestern (philosophy); Cornell and UChicago (Linguistics and Southeast Asian Studies), and the list goes on.

For others, MAPH is an opportunity to decide how to pursue life of the mind in any number of career tracks. Every single one of our students is a committed life-long intellectual. But probably only about a quarter decide that they truly want to get a PhD after doing a year of graduate work. A huge part of my job is to connect current students with alumni and career resources. We have extensive professional advising opportunities, and a new syllabus of curated career events (called Career Core) to help students find work that they can be passionate about after graduation.

We have over 1600 alumni, and each year our vibrant and international base of support grows. We hope that it excites you to be part of a growing community of artists, writers, scholars, ad executives, program managers, political activists, consultants, musicians, acrobats, screenwriters, photographers, and whatever else. (STILL no astronauts–so if any of you have aspirations in the area of space flight, it might be better to attend that Physics Program instead…). But for everyone else, we hope that you’ll accept our invitation!

Finally, please consider looking into these various resources that might give you a better idea about our community. And email us! I’m at ajaronstein@uchicago.edu and you can also email ma-humanities@uchicago.edu. We’re happy to answer any questions that you might have about the program, about UChicago, or about our home in Second City.

Congratulations again, and we hope to see and hear from you soon,

A-J Aronstein (MAPH 2010)

• What does a Quarter look like at UChicago?
• “Bringing the Humanities Into the World”
• Studying Creative Writing at MAPH
• Doing service in the Community at MAPH
• MAPH Facebook Page

Please also explore our website, where you’ll find a lot of information about the curriculum, our program options, and about the experience.

MAPH Yoga Night is Wednesday, March 7th. I know that those of you who already practice yoga won’t miss this chance for a FREE yoga class. But, for those of you with some misgivings and hesitations about whether or not it will be worth it, here are some reasons why I love yoga and why it is so beneficial for you (especially during such a busy, soul-sucking time of your life).

Contrary to a recent New York Times article, yoga isn’t actually related at all to tantric sex orgies (sorry for those of you that were expecting that on MAPH yoga night). While, yes, yoga may limber you up a bit for aforementioned activities, the actual benefits have much more to do with your overall well-being and mental health.

If nothing else, one of the best things about practicing yoga is that it allows you to take a moment of quiet just be at peace with yourself and your surroundings. If you take a 45-minute yoga class a few days a week, that adds up to a few hours every week during which you have just allowed yourself to RELAX. It’s a moment to focus on what makes you feel good about being you. Even if you start yoga with feelings of inadequacy or doubts about whether or not you can keep up with the class, you will always finish yoga feeling stronger and much more appreciative of yourself. Even if you don’t feel like you got any of the poses or movements correct, the goal is that you will leave feeling satisfied at having tried it. And, you’ll have taken an hour to meditate on the development and relaxation of your physical and mental being.

(More thoughts, after the jump)

Okay, so what the heck does it mean that yoga gives you time “to meditate on the development and relaxation of your physical and mental being?” Well, if we were going to do an analytic exposition of this statement….just kidding. In my experience, another huge benefit of practicing yoga is that you become much more aware of your body, its capabilities, and its needs. Taking a few hours every week to tune into your body is something that can have outstanding long-lasting benefits. During MAPH especially, it’s really easy to keep your physical needs on the back burner. Feeling like you just need to push through a paper or a reading assignment…and consequently ignoring your well-being to do it. You’ve all done this. Shaved off a few hours of sleep in order to pound out a paper. Skipped breakfast to get to the library before class. These are things that can really throw off your body’s equilibrium and yoga will help you become aware of what your body needs so it becomes harder to ignore the important things. Maybe you’ve been getting headaches for the last few weeks or have had serious back pain since the start of winter quarter. News flash: these are probably related to stress. Stretching out your muscles and taking the time to recognize where your body needs attention can help relieve major tension.

And finally, while yoga may not ever allow you to do what the man in this picture is doing, it will help you build strength and will make you feel stronger and more limber. Basic hatha yoga, which is the strain of yoga most predominant in the United States, will stretch and build the strength of your muscles. The first time you do yoga it will be hard. But that’s no reason to avoid it. Your body has never moved this way before and you’ll use muscles that you didn’t even know existed. The next day you will probably be pretty sore. But, you will feel so good when you lie back to meditate for a few moments at the end of class and you will leave feeling relaxed and powerful. It may even give you that boost of energy you need to head back to the library and get a few more pages written afterwards. If you decide to keep practicing, consistent yoga will allow you to build strength in those unfamiliar muscles and will make you increasingly limber. Maybe one day you actually will be able to do what this odd looking man is doing…

If you didn’t already get this out of my preach-y blog post, I think yoga has outstanding benefits and it’s one of the most perfect things for MAPHers to do. It’s relaxing, while still being a good work-out, and it gives you time to slough off the anxieties and stresses of the program and just focus on taking care of yourself. Besides, free yoga classes are UNHEARD of these days. So, if nothing else, here’s a chance to try yoga without having to pay lots and lots of money to do it. I’ll be there downward-dogging it up and I hope I’ll see lots of you, too!

Jeff McMahon (MAPH '02) and Genie Williamson (MAPH '06) at the "Making Writing Work" Panel in January

After a two-year break, The Baffler is returning this March. First published in 1988 by Thomas Frank and Keith White, The Baffler is a magazine of  criticism, culture, and politics focused on “blunting the cutting-edge.” Suspended and relaunched various times since its inception, The Baffler will be back with issue no. 19 early this month, released out of MIT, in print and with online content. I got a chance to sit down and talk with MAPH alum and the publication’s Associate Editor Genie Williamson in January. Despite her frantic in advance of The Baffler’s revival, Genie managed to pay us a visit at GradUCon and shared her insights about the publication–and her own career path–on the “Making Writing Work” panel discussion.

An Illinois native, Genie accumulated a lot of writing experience in Chicago before leaving. She reviewed music for New City and You Are Chicago, which she describes as roughly “the blog equivalents of the day.” Though she initially began these reviews “almost just to get the free cover for the shows,” the writing experience eventually allowed her to move onto a more established freelance position at Time Out Chicago.

Along with other panelists, Genie expressed the importance of individual initiative, of finding a focus or specialized topic for your writing, and of networking (she got started the gig at Time Out Chicago through  a friend). While freelancing, Genie had an office job at an international real-estate conglomerate, which she held for four years. According to Genie, it’s important that writers don’t turn their noses up at jobs that take the pressure off financially. As she put it, for young writers it can be useful to find jobs that “don’t take up a lot of mental space”.

Genie also offered practical advice on how writers can go about finding a focus, a tip echoed by nearly every writer on the GradUCon panel. “Writers should not be afraid to work on spec,” she said, adding that it can be better the write a story first and then search for a publication with a readership that fits.

Congrats to Genie and the staff of The Baffler. Be sure to check out the newest issue in print and online early this March. If enough current students and alumni are interested, Genie said it might be possible to arrange a MAPH discount.

http://thebaffler.com/

Reposted from the Court Theatre Blog.  The first part of Angels in America opens  March 30, 2012

“The World Only Spins Forward”

by Deborah Blumenthal  MAPH ’11

Above: ACT UP New York advertisement, 1969, 1982-1997 (bulk 1987-1995).

I was seventeen when I first saw Angels in America, and it did, as it does, change how I saw the world. It was the magnificent HBO miniseries; I remember two cold, snowy Sunday evenings, tip-toeing around my house, covertly staying up far past my school-night bedtime to see it, and from my naive perch among the couch pillows, watching an entire unfamiliar history unfold from the glow of my Dad’s big-screen TV.

I don’t know that my parents would have let me watch it if they had known what it was, but it was almost by accident, really. I had tuned in just to see one of my favorite then-obscure stage actors on television, none the wiser to what I was about to see, other than that it had been adapted from a play I had never seen.

My most distinct memory from either of those two evenings is that I couldn’t sleep after watching the ending of Millennium Approaches. Not that I was afraid of an angel crashing through my ceiling (though of course you never know), but because Prior was so sick, and I was so scared. Watching it became, very quickly, about much more than just a beloved actor. Recorded VHS tapes were joined immediately by paperback copies and DVDs, a few years later by working copies for thesis notes and a holiday-gifted first edition. There’s a Tony Kushner section on my bookshelf, and each resident is worn with love.

I was born during the period in which Angels in America takes place. Having grown up in a school system that ignored, or at least sugarcoated, the existence of the AIDS crisis (I did have one teacher—elementary school art—who taught second and third graders about Keith Haring, much to the chagrin of some parents), encountering some of the AIDS plays as a teenager—first Angels, and a few months later, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, with Rent sandwiched in between—was like opening a pop-up book. Even in my high school health classes, AIDS was just a bad thing that happened to you if you didn’t use a condom, in no major way separated from  other STDs. The curriculum gave some clinical biology, here’s what happens to your cells, but the politics and the details and the terrifying history were left out, and real understanding was foregone.

It’s not uncommon to hear from people my age, or even younger, that Angels in America changed their lives—which might be strange considering that we weren’t there. But for us it’s like a history lesson, live in living color, opening our eyes to a reality that we can only try to imagine. Progressive sex-ed or sugarcoated evasion, the AIDS epidemic has become incorporated into our cultural consciousness. My generation has no idea what it was like for it to barely even have a name. The immersion of the theater may be the closest we’ll ever get to understanding.

More on Angels in America after 20 years after the jump

Nearly twenty years have gone by since Part One opened on Broadway—a whole generation. A new, or at least altered, context begs a new way of thinking about how we relate to this play—one that includes having to think about that time gap. Angels in America has been living against a changing backdrop as long as it’s been around, and so this process of contextual evolution has always been in motion, but major revivals are asking us to think about what that looks like, and what it actually means. How do we negotiate the gap, not just for the younger generation, but as a rich and complicated cognitive and emotional space? What lives there for this play is about so much more than chronology. What can we make of a discrepancy small enough that audiences still include people who lived these events, yet large enough to have produced a generation born into their aftermath—and further, one that houses events that aren’t over yet? If the play serves as a history lesson, it’s a history still very much in the making. Revival is about looking back, but the ways in which we look back on and with Angels in America are varied, deeply emotional, and often markedly complex.

I remember taking a seminar on history plays when I was in college, and brainstorming for a topic on which to compose the final paper. I couldn’t dismiss from my mind a quote I once read that had always stuck with me, from one of the actors in the 2004 revival of The Normal Heart I had seen in high school, about the way in which, twenty-odd years later, this family of plays take on an eerie, heartbreaking dramatic irony that they didn’t have when they were written or first performed. The audience knows what’s going to happen. They know more than the characters, and they know what it’s going to look like five, ten, twenty years down the line. They know it isn’t going to go away.

I was trying to find a way to bring my love for and fascination with the AIDS plays into the open-ended assignment of this essay, when I realized that the key to historical drama is in fact a kind of dramatic irony. It’s that space between where the audience sits and where the play lives on the big historical timeline, the space that allows for the very particular kind of art-to-life mirroring that we see in historical plays, where the past is used to speak to or about the present. Contemporarily relevant issues are portrayed in historical contexts, the lessons from history poised for applicability to current circumstances. We have the perspective, from the future, to look back at the events and know their outcomes, which even if they can predict, the characters certainly cannot know.

As the AIDS plays grow older and affirm their places in the canon, the distance between our “now” and their “then” grows wider—the process has already begun in which they become pieces of the past, and we see them from a time-educated future. There’s a peculiar thing happening where they are starting to look like the history plays they were not written to be—never becoming irrelevant, but rather gaining new meaning to go with the new perspective. Young people might not see their own stories played out on stage in these plays, but we can see our own stories and our own world mirrored in them. There is a kinship and a connection forged in the bond of historical progress—the results of the events of the 80s and early 90s are threaded into the world as we’ve inherited it. As much as Angels in America can serve as a history lesson, it also speaks to our politics, our continued struggle against the AIDS crisis, and our fight for LBGT equality. We look back for guidance and connections. It’s why history moves us.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the first reported cases among young gay men in New York and California, and of the first article in The New York Times about the “rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer.”  Anniversaries seem to beg a sense of nostalgia, or at the very least, ask for a consideration of everything that’s happened since. It’s the impulse for retrospectives, or anniversary markers, commemoration and reflection. It’s all about, like a revival, looking back, and there is something about revivals, too, that seem to hinge on feelings of nostalgia. Nostalgia is wrapped up in memory and longing, an emotional condition that bridges the past and the present, not unlike the theater can do.

The nostalgia inherent in revival is two-fold; it can be for the play itself, a great work collectively missed, rekindling of a golden era, or it can be linked to the events captured in the play. But Angels in America seems to rattle that premise. It’s fair to say that theater aficionados probably feel nostalgic about the play—one of the greatest works of the 20th century is surely something people long to see again. But looking back on the events portrayed in the play is hardly a glance toward the good old days, where nostalgia evokes a soft-focus glow of warmth around the memories.

But there is a way in which nostalgia helps to mediate the time gap, and doesn’t have to be about the discomforting and possibly disturbing idea of longing for Reagan’s presidency or pre-AZT death rates.

At the end of the play, Prior addresses the audience in an Epilogue monologue filled with hope:

The fountain’s not flowing now, they turn if off in the winter, ice in the pipes. But in the summer, it’s a sight to see. I want to be around to see it. I plan to be. I hope to be.

This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not goingaway. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.

It’s the moment in the play that most easily makes me cry, probably for that reason—the beauty of the absolute strength with which Prior faces a lifetime of disease, and the strength behind his ability to still be so hopeful. But in one a recent viewing on stage in New York, I started to look at it in another way, considering it from that perspective of the twenty-year time gap. Prior is no longer speaking to an audience contemporary to 1990, when the Epilogue is set. We’re seated two decades in the future. His hope is still inspiring, but when I thought about it this way, I was struck by an engulfing twinge of sadness: would he still be alive now? He might well have made it to 1992 or 1993, and maybe he could have lived another twenty years after that—but I wondered about the likelihood, something that, accepting the written vantage point, I had never considered before. That’s harder to wrestle with, not just looking at a character you’ve spent eight hours falling in love with, but also looking at a representation of the millions like him, who have struggled and lost, or survived. Watching the play now, we look back on the Epilogue as a more distant past than it was originally—we know better than to think that by the time twenty years had gone by, there might be a cure or equal rights, or at least more progress than we’ve made. There’s a solemnity in that disappointment. We long not only, like the Angel, for a past free of disease, but perhaps also for some of the optimism that time has now taken away. It is terribly painful to be aware that you know too much.

Does that pain, though, somehow offer us perspective? I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men recently (perhaps an exercise in nostalgia itself), and in a pitch for the Kodak slideshow Carousel, Don Draper says that nostalgia, which comes from the Greek for “pain from an old wound,” creates a “deeper bond” with a product than does the allure of something new.  In this Greek translation  then, the pain is central to the feeling of longing. That “deeper bond” part is what made me rewind and listen again, though—it’s the idea that we are bound to our past by emotional wounds. The question then is, what makes us want to go back there?

If Prior’s hope, and the hope that he instills in Angels in America’s audiences, is the unfulfilled longing, the emotional space between the play’s present and ours, time seems only to exacerbate it. The longer that hope remains unfulfilled, the heavier will become an audience’s burdened nostalgia. However, the flip side of that pain looks toward progress. We look back on this past knowing the devastating reality of what AIDS would become, and as much as we see the shortcomings, we also look back and see, even if it’s not enough, how far we’ve come. “We live past hope,” as Prior says.  It is the best we can do.

Deborah Blumenthal is a 2011 graduate of the MA Humanities program at the University of Chicago, where she wrote her thesis on historicizing Angels in America and the rhetoric of revival. She also holds a BA in American Studies from Columbia University. Deborah recently re-located to Chicago from New York, where she worked with Second Stage Theatre, The Public, Ars Nova, and Clubbed Thumb.

Just be cool...about spring registration.

Spring quarter course registration can be as anxiety-ridden or as exciting as you want it to be. Bottom line: you’re registering for your LAST quarter as a MAPHer. Yes, it’s sad. But think of all the blood, sweat, and tears that have already gone into this year and be slightly grateful that you’re coming to the home stretch.

But, with all that in mind, what should really be at the forefront of your thoughts is that this is (for most of you) the last time you will get to choose classes to take at the University of Chicago. Therefore, it is more important than ever that you choose wisely and be an active advocate for the remainder of your master’s education. A few tips to keep in mind to make sure that happens:

1. Do NOT take the easy way out this quarter. If you’re thinking that it will be nice to use your last MAPH quarter as a well-deserved break by sitting back on your haunches, then you’re not getting the most out of this year. Instead, think about this last quarter as a chance to push yourself a bit. Take a Ph.D. seminar. Take a class with that crazy hard professor everyone’s always warning you about. Trust us – you’ll be handing in your thesis at the start of 9th week spring quarter. That means you’ll have two FULL weeks to just enjoy the classes you’re taking. You’ll kick yourself if they’re boring.

(More mentor-ly words of wisdom…after the jump)

2. Get OUT of your comfort zone. Take a class in a department or field other than your area of speciality or research. Maybe you’re an early modernist who has been ogling the Anthropology courses all year. Or an Art Historian who’s been secretly wanting to read more philosophy after core. This is your chance to do it! And, you never know. You might find a really exciting new perspective on your thesis topic. Or just read some really interesting things. Either way, you’ll feel good about challenging yourself and you can walk away from this year knowing you took advantage of the short time you were here.

3. SHOP. Have we mentioned this before? Yes, I seem to remember very clearly pushing you all to shop every time course registration comes around! This is especially important for the spring. Please don’t let yourself get stuck in a class where the professor or the course content isn’t going to hold your interest. Again, because you’ll be done with your thesis in time to actually just hang out and enjoy being a graduate student the last few weeks of spring, it’s so important that you really enjoy the classes you’re taking.

4. TALK to your mentors. Yes, we’re still here! And no matter what sort of anxiety or excitement you are feeling, we probably went through it and can help you sort things out.

Other than that, hooray for making it to your last quarter!