Do you have any advice for a sophomore?

[bookwormkmb]

I'm currently an undergraduate sophomore, and have just declared as a Philosophy major.  Ideally, I would probably be an English major, but I attend a small school that has a pretty weak English department.  The Philosophy department, on the other hand, is one of the school's strengths (they run the only PhD program at my university).

My question is

Comments

[tisiphone]

Start building relationships with professors now - take multiple classes with at least three professors if you can, and actually go to their office hours and talk to them. (If you have something to talk about, anyhow.) If you think you want to do grad work in English, absolutely you should double-major; you've got plenty of time to do that, and English is incredibly competitive at the graduate level. I would absolutely suggest one or more languages, as well. If writing is a problem for you, start actively honing your writing skills now, so you've got time for a super writing sample to come out of your coursework. If your school offers an honors program or a thesis option, that's well worth considering too.

Also, do not go to grad school for philosophy if you don't want to teach, because unless you're independently wealthy and idle, that's what philosophy grad school is for!

[ennifer_jay]

Lol seconding the grad school in Philosophy thing. My friend got her undergrad and master's in Philosophy and she can't do anything with it. She has to go back for another master's degree. She didn't realize she didn't want to study philosophy for her master's until she was done her first year of grad school, and by then it was more of a "well, might as well just finish it now" type of attitude.

[alegria_dreams]

I would start building relationships with professors outside of the classroom so that you can get LORs that say more than "He/She got an A". Do research. Definitely, definitely write an honors thesis if you have the option. Take the GREs early. Figure out what area of philosophy or english you'd want to specialize in and then take any languages that you would need to know to do research in that area.

Mostly I'd just focus on getting good grades and relaxing. You still have a way to go. :)

[roadtophd]

While you're building those relationships with professors as mentioned above, you could also seek their advice on graduate study. Being at a small school give you a big advantage in terms of getting to know professors. I was easily able to get 2/3 of my LORs from them even though I didn't apply to grad schools until I was 2.5 years out of undergrad. (The other letter was from my boss.) I'm a PhD student at a huge state school right now and I feel bad for the undergrads that have to jump through more hoops than I ever did. My adviser, for example, will only write letters for students working in her lab. Doesn't matter how brilliant you were in her class

[lifeofbai]

If possible, try to get some research experience too. This is not strictly required for grad school admission (plenty of people get into programs without it). But if you get to do some academic research, it will give you a taste as to whether it's something you would enjoy doing full-time.

If you go to a PhD program in English or philosophy, there really aren't that many things you can do with those except do academic research and teach at the college level (of course, you can always try to find jobs outside of higher education, but the jobs you would then be doing would most likely not require most or any of the training you got in a PhD program). So make sure that research/teaching is really what you want to do before applying to PhD programs

[erraticxthought]

I wish I hadn't worried so much about going to graduate school and instead just gone "with the flow." In reality though, I already have good relationships with my professors / good grades / a good writing sample. I also have professors [fortunately] who put up with my "Nevermind. I'm going to become an explorer instead" attitude. Which is to say, it's okay if you don't know whether you want to do philosophy or English as I think that graduate school will still be there in two, five, ten years when you do figure it out.