Grad school statement of intent

I have been gradually developing guiding principles into the temporality involved with being a reader (which falls under the general reader-author-text hierarchy – rank them however you’d like to). The groundwork for this fledgling concept is based on mainly on Ulysses and Pynchon’s twin novels, The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow, and to lesser extents works ranging from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to Michael Ondaatje’s In The Skin of a Lion. So far, my belief is that there is a significant, albeit implicit, temporal gap between the reading of a text and the reader’s subsequent comprehension of it. In the interim, the text exerts authority and tacit influence over the otherwise ignorant reader, yet with a savvy and self-aware text like Ulysses, the reader can in turn gain the upperhand in this void space by, to appropriate a line from Lot 49, projecting a world. It’s not so much a contest to see who comes out on top (reader or text), but more like an idealized sporting event in which really who wins or loses doesn’t matter but how the game is played. Without getting too bogged down in details, it’s the very distance between text and reader that affords these transient advantages of one over the other (an idea also supported by the angel imagery in the two Pynchon novels).
Other periphery ideas include the frame which ostensibly limits and filters the narrative reality that a reader experiences (Mrs. Dalloway), but then the reader can transcend the text’s selectivity through the transgressive act of turning the page in a direction other than forward (In the Skin of a Lion). Intriguingly, the achronological series of events in Ondaatje’s novel subverts the linearity found in traditional narrative, even simulating (on a superficial level) a reader skipping around in a book; this structural quirk of Ondaatje’s occurs on the epistemological and linguistic level in Ulysses.

...BUT (without any knowledge of the conventions of writing these things)...

are modifying words like 'gradually', 'generally', 'fledgling' & 'mainly' suitable? To me they make you sound unsure, lacking in confidence and scared to commit yourself to your ideas.

You could take out all four of those words without it affecting the meaning of what you're saying. To take out mainly you would maybe need to change the later wording to '...and also, to a lesser extent, on works...'.

Also, I would use 'works including' rather than 'works ranging from'

Like I said though, I know nothing about what a statement of intent is meant to be like. This is just some food for thought.

I think I had in mind something that expressed your awareness of an existing problem or thing to study, preferably something appropriate to the faculty at the place you're applying. if you know a bit how to frame your idea in the context of some existing scholarship, that might make them happier. (then again, maybe this is something peculiar to english programs.)

I’ve been a critical reader for only a relatively short time, but it’s irrevocably part of my identity as a student of literature now. I’ve come to this realization during an extended break away from the rigors of academia, during which I experienced that trite old adage, “You never know how much you appreciate something until etc.” Reading for pleasure will always be integral to me, but in those times where I reach a novel’s ending without having underlined or circled a single word, whatever enjoyment I get seems incomplete. The dialogue I open with a novel when I literally take note of it is a separate delight because of the additional interactivity involved. I don’t mean to say that conventional reading isn’t fun, just that its dynamics are more tacit and nebulous. But when I put my critic’s hat on, I don’t just analyze but also synthesize, and this power gives me the thrill of creation.
Obviously from these remarks, ideas about readership fascinate me, around which my intended area of study centers. More specifically, the temporality involved with reading a supposedly linear text has been a concept whose principles I’ve been developing throughout my undergrad career (of course, I had no preconceptions of this idea from the beginning). The novels that have assisted me with this theory come either from the height of Modernism – largely Ulysses, but also Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway – or from more contemporary fiction – Pynchon’s satellite novels The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow and Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion. The Joyce and Pynchon bear the majority of the load. (Even the relative diversity of these works is an area for further examination.)
In addition to the relationship between book and reader and its subsequent temporality, the engagement of minds in discussion over literature is a similar passion of mine. Reading shouldn’t be confined to the private; instead, another context or method of reading can be done in the public forum and the fast exchange of ideas. If only for selfish reasons, this environment is the only one that I can imagine myself in.

As in: "After all, beneath my cold and calculating academic exterior lurks the palpitating heart of a fan of TV who just wants to talk about it at length."

Anyway, rather than being funny, just go for enthusiastic, interested with a purpose, willing and ready to learn and discuss and build upon the ideas you already have (that's where you show that you're smart smart smart to begin with.)

Okay, going back to visual rhetoric immersion now.

The day after I submitted this, I got a call saying that the grad chair of the department wanted to see me. I figured I'd gone too far and prepared myself for the bad news. Instead he was all like "we got your letter and we understand completely. Lots of students have difficulty choosing a field when they enter grad school". Then he pulled out a schedule and said that he wanted to arrange for me to meet some professors in very well-funded fields.

I felt a bit bad for being such a dick about the whole thing, but I was grateful for the way things turned out.

i know exactly what i want to do (and my head is already filled with fancy book-learnin' jargon), so i think i have a leg up on many other applicants.

In the US, many students aren't required to specialize in the sciences until their second or third year of grad school, so the content of the statement of intent (if required) is more or less immaterial.

Incoming students get swamped with courses and TA work, then they have to pass their qualifying exams (of which there is basically no equivalent in Canada), and only then can they focus most of their attention on research.

Actually my big concern is letters of recommendation; I'm not entirely certain that my profs are wholly on top of things, and I suppose I'm displacing my anxiety instead of bugging them about it.

and current, but yeah, that's the idea.

You're right, they do want to approximate who will study what, but students are encouraged to shop themselves around upon arriving. Over the past few years, our department has been encouraging new students to *not* decide on a supervisor until the end of first year, which is really unusual for a Canadian school.

$$$ is something of an equilizer ... the best students will have many prospective supervisors in well-funded fields, whereas others might not be able to work for their first (or second or ...) choice of supervisor, and could find themselves SOL trying to find work that really interests them. That's grad school, I guess, although most of the time everything matches up fairly well.

Re: ref letters, most people have no problem writing letters for just about anybody ... or stated differently, there are a lot of dumbasses out there who procure glowing letters of reference. So you have every right to get yours too (added bonus if you aren't a dumbass :) )

some of the schools i've looked at are asking -- as part of the application process! -- for a short list of the faculty members we'd be most interested in working with.

See, I'm glad that I've kept in regular touch with my favorite college professor, because I don't know that my current boss would be able to evaluate me as a person, considering a) I hardly interact with her, and b) I'm sort of a slacker at work, anyway. Maybe my old boss would do, but she's a total fruit loop.

In general, I think that seniority trumps familiarity ... that is, you're better off getting a letter from a more senior person who might not know you too well than you are with a letter from somebody who has worked closely with you and/or works in your desired field and knows you well.

This is kinda an extension of what I wrote a few posts upthread ... pretty much everybody will have great references (even if they're morons), so you might as well get yours from a former employer whose name and title will carry some weight, rather than from a personal reference who has never worked with you directly (or indirectly). (u

(unless, perhaps, the personal reference you had in mind is a major bigwig in the field).

Most profs will write you letters if you haven't seen them for years if you give them one of your term papers you did for them, your draft statement of purpose, and a transcript.

the departments don't actually want good people, they just wanna fuck with our heads, man.

Here in New Zealand, it's a bit more lax in many respects, but also quite rigorous. I'm seeing a student through the process at the moment and she's expected to put together a detailed plan of attack, which includes an annotated bibliography, abstract, time-line, etc. I'm inclined to think that in a thesis-based, one-year MA degree, this is the way to go as it cuts to the chase pretty much straight away. You do lose out on the collegiality bit (i.e. serious drinking), which is unfortunate.

So, uh, how do you usually format these? I wrote a good page or so only to find out I had done it all wrong. How much time should you spend before just jumping into what you're going to do there?

Several years, working in a bar or cafe. Repeats afterward.

touché.