(no subject)
Well, I was about to suggest death for health insurance and all colleges, but then something turned up in the college department, so I guess the health insurance might get let off the hook as well. If I get accepted. I've been trying to pick colleges to apply to for a few weeks now, and nothing is turning out to be exactly what I want. Deadlines are rushing up, Dec 1st, Dec 15th, and I'm gonna need to get recommendations in by then, and transcripts from all 6 or 7 colleges I've been to to each school (sometimes they want 2 copies!) and my GRE scores and basically I'm running out of time. I'm interested in a number of different topics, but finding a school that had even one of them I was finding difficult.
I'm interested in Sign Language, which gave me UCSD, which may or may not give me any money. I'm interested in Computer mediated communication (like IM, LJ, etc). It turns out the only people doing that research are in communications, or other even stranger departments, and the classes in communications just really don't look interesting to me. At the very least to got to have sociolinguistics. Basically I see three bits of linguistics, computational linguistics, structural stuff (syntax, phonology, grammar, etc) and socio-cultural stuff (communication, interaction, conversation analysis). I had to abandon my plan of going to UC Santa Cruz because they only have the structural stuff. I mean that interests me, but it's not what I want to be writing a doctoral dissertation on. So I was getting so frustrated going through all these colleges and not finding anything satisfactory.
So I've been taking notes on the colleges I looked at and what was good and what was bad, and I couldn't find University of Michigan on my list. I was sure I looked at it already, but now I'm guessing I got interrupted before I finished or something. So I was reading the website again, it looks pretty good, they seem to have a reasonable amount of sociolinguistics classes, the program looks interesting. Then I went and looked at the research interests of the faculty, and one of them listed ASL! And they guarantee full funding for everyone they accept! Sociolinguistics, ASL, and money! All in one college. And michigan! It snows there! So lets hope I can get accepted (looks like they accept about 6 people a year. That's not very many.)
I'm interested in Sign Language, which gave me UCSD, which may or may not give me any money. I'm interested in Computer mediated communication (like IM, LJ, etc). It turns out the only people doing that research are in communications, or other even stranger departments, and the classes in communications just really don't look interesting to me. At the very least to got to have sociolinguistics. Basically I see three bits of linguistics, computational linguistics, structural stuff (syntax, phonology, grammar, etc) and socio-cultural stuff (communication, interaction, conversation analysis). I had to abandon my plan of going to UC Santa Cruz because they only have the structural stuff. I mean that interests me, but it's not what I want to be writing a doctoral dissertation on. So I was getting so frustrated going through all these colleges and not finding anything satisfactory.
So I've been taking notes on the colleges I looked at and what was good and what was bad, and I couldn't find University of Michigan on my list. I was sure I looked at it already, but now I'm guessing I got interrupted before I finished or something. So I was reading the website again, it looks pretty good, they seem to have a reasonable amount of sociolinguistics classes, the program looks interesting. Then I went and looked at the research interests of the faculty, and one of them listed ASL! And they guarantee full funding for everyone they accept! Sociolinguistics, ASL, and money! All in one college. And michigan! It snows there! So lets hope I can get accepted (looks like they accept about 6 people a year. That's not very many.)