Hello everyone! Amid all the awful and distressing events that continue to batter our world each day, I do have some tentative good news pertaining to my personal future, which is that—after four years, three rounds of applying, and a total of eighteen applications—I have finally received my very first real, official offer of admission into a PhD program. Last week, I received an email informing me that I have been admitted to the PhD program in classics at the University of Washington in Seattle. This is a good sign, but I am not celebrating too much this early because I do not yet know whether this offer will be funded, since the department is still in the process of discussing funding. If the offer is not funded, then I will most likely not be able to accept it. The University of Washington is one of the eight total programs that I have applied to for the current application cycle; so far, I have not received any official decision from any of the seven other programs.
In the meantime, I am still working very hard on the novel I am writing. At this point, I think that the first half or so of the book is generally well polished. The current draft is 80,000 words and, as I’ve said before, I am expecting the final draft to be somewhere between 100,000 to 110,000 words. I still have a significant amount of material left to write (around 30,000 to 40,000 words concentrated in the later part of the book) and I still have quite a bit of polishing to do on what I have written of the later chapters, but I am making progress.
In addition to working on the novel, I have also been doing an enormous amount of independent reading and studying over the past two years, especially in the past year since I graduated with my MA. I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can and improve myself for my own sake, without posting about it online.
One of the reasons why I used to post online so prolifically while I was in undergrad was because I felt a deep, irrepressible need to show off how much I knew about a wide variety of subjects to as many people as possible. This benefited me in some ways and it gained me some opportunities that I am grateful for, but I’ve realized that it was very unhealthy of me to rely so much on impressing others for my self-esteem. In retrospect, I realize now (although I didn’t realize it at the time, since I was so accustomed to it that it felt normal to me) that I was also extremely lonely and socially isolated, with no close friends among my peers, and the comments that various internet denizens left on my work were one of the main forms of social contact I had.
As I have mentioned before, the fact that I have been focused on writing my novel rather than this blog is the main reason why I haven’t posted as much over the past year, but there are also many deeper reasons. One of them is because I no longer feel the need to impress strangers as strongly as I did when I was younger, which I think is actually a mark of personal growth.
One of the other reasons isn’t so positive. I generally don’t discuss my mental health on this blog, but I will say here that I have struggled with anxiety and depression my whole life and, due to a combination of several reasons, they have oppressed me especially greatly over the past year. Partly due to this, it has felt harder for me to write than it once was.
All of that aside, I do have a real, non-update post coming out very soon, which is the review of the film The Return that I promised I would write back in December. I finally saw the film and my review of it is now mostly written. I still have my review of Kaos saved as a draft and I have also been working on-and-off on a few other posts, including an analysis post about how online classics communities and discourses have changed over the past decade or so—change that has been very significant, but that no one has written about publicly in any depth to my knowledge.
Firstly – congratulations on your offer! You richly deserve it and I feel great happiness that your perseverance has shown reward.
Secondly – thank you for opening up a little about your situation. I think most of us can attest to struggles that have affected our motivations and behaviours. You always come across as thoughtful and mature and your reflections about your past decisions show how far you have come.
I hope you feel very proud of all of this, and of your commitment to your novel which sounds like it’s coming along nicely.
You know everyone that comments here likes what you have to say – it’s OK to have a mini fan club of strangers cheering you on, and it isn’t a character flaw that you have needed this from time to time.
Good luck to you in all of your pursuits. The people you’ve tried to impress are rooting for you now.
Thanks! I hope that things work out for me.
Hallo from Greece, i was searching something about the Epic Cyrcle and i came across your article on the subject which was quite interesting and it summarized nicely the whole topic. I reposted it on facebook. So thanks about that. Keep on working.
Cheers
Congratulations, Spenser!
Thanks!
Very good news about your offer, and I hope you end up with several opportunities to choose from. Thanks for your candor about some of the bumps on the road; I think your attitude and openness are strong signs of your resilience and personal growth. Very best wishes.
Happy to be a card-carrying member of the Spencer McDaniel fan club!
Thanks! I appreciate your support very much (and everyone else’s).
Congratulations on getting in! I hope it’s the first of a few full-funded opportunities. They are lucky to have you. And I am sorry you’ve been struggling. I hope it gets better soon. Can’t wait to read the book!
It’s a start, that’s for sure! RE: your work-in-progress — As a professional book editor, I’d be happy to take a look at a sample chapter or two (no charge). You can reach me at the email posted below.
First of all Congratulations!
Secondly, I believe that you are a generous person, and maybe that is the reason why you want to share your thoghts and ideas and all you know. Thank you.
Congratulations!!
I’ve been following your blog for several years, and have seen the long and difficult odyssey you’ve been on. It’s great to see you get a spot in grad school
UW is supposed to be really good, Seattle is great, and WA in general is good place to be given the current political environment.
Well done!
Woo-hoo!
As we continually edge closer to seeing your name on a peer-reviewed paper (and on a published novel), and as I eagerly await your next few non-update posts, I wish you (assuming you get the funding, of course) good luck in Seattle or wherever you end up going. I congratulate you on everything.
I have some questions about the ancient world you may be able to answer, so would that be possible at the moment?
Yeah, sure, go ahead and ask them and I’ll try to answer.
Here’s one: I know that most people in Ancient Greece and Rome believed in and worshipped the deities, although there was no central religious authority so beliefs varied. Anyway, when authors wrote about the deities in plays and epics and the like, did they ever wonder what the actual deities thought of their depictions of them?
Congratulations on your acceptance, I truly hope it works out! I appreciate so much your passion and your observation on the things you’ve written about. As far as the mental health, I completely understand, the reasons are both obvious and I’m sure personally complex, so I hope in the midst of everything you are taking time to rest for yourself. Very much rooting for you.
Congratulations on your admission to UW. I encourage you to accept. Also, I am eager to read your book when it is published.
Thanks! Unfortunately, it sounds like the odds of receiving funding are not exactly in my favor and I won’t be able to accept the offer without funding.
I would very much discourage anyone from accepting a doctoral program admission that isn’t fully funded. If no one is willing to fund you, how likely is it that someone will be willing to hire you when you graduate? The university is just taking your money and will spit you out at the end without compunction. You don’t want to end up as the wandering adjunct. It would be better to end up as the corporate flunky who manages to a find a Latin reading group.
At this point I’m assuming that, realistically, even if I do get into a PhD program with funding, there is very little to no chance of me ever landing any kind of long-term employment in academia. Making a career in the academic humanities has always been difficult and now the field is rapidly dying out. There may not be any job openings in classics or ancient history at all (or at least, judging by the direction that the U.S. and the field of classics both seem to be moving in, none that would hire a person like me) six years from now. At this point I’m just trying to stay in academia as long as I can get away with it, knowing that it most likely won’t turn out to be a career. That being said, I do not plan to accept any offer of admission that does not come with funding because I will not be able to afford to pay tuition plus Seattle-area living costs for six years as a full-time student on my own without support.
I doubt that I would have a chance of landing any kind of corporate job. I applied to jobs all last summer and couldn’t land one. I doubt corporate employers will see much value in me having a bachelor’s degree in history and classics and a master’s degree in classics, my work experience is all academic and I’ve heard that employers don’t view academic work as “real” work, and I have no connections in the corporate world. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of history and literature and I am very good at writing, researching, presenting and lecturing, but I fear that those skills are not valued and are rapidly becoming obsolete to the corporate world due to the growing trend of replacing human workers with AI. Basically, my skills that would have previously been most marketable are all things that AI can do faster and cheaper and that’s all that corporations care about. I’m not even sure if I would even want a job working for a corporation, since I despise capitalism.
If I’m lucky, I might be able to get a job as a high school history, English, or Latin teacher or as a help desk worker in a museum or library or something like that. Those are the kinds of jobs that most of the graduates of my MA program have ended up in and probably the only kinds of jobs I would have a realistic chance of landing. They don’t pay well and I’ve been told that they are hell, but I don’t think I would have a chance of finding any other kind of job.
I think you would be a fantastic high school teacher! You may also be surprised about employers attitudes toward some real expertise in thinking, writing and interpersonal skills. After similar doctoral studies in ancient languages, I was hired at a lower-than-entry-level free-lance editor and learned the business from the ground up, eventually becoming a director of scientific communications in the medical publishing field reporting to the president and owner of the company, all with zero scientific or medical training or experience.
Please do not underestimate your potential!
Thanks. I really appreciate your encouragement and optimism. I am naturally a pessimist and it is hard for me to see a bright future ahead of myself. It is good to hear stories about other people who have managed to find success with similar educational backgrounds to mine.
Congratulations on finally being admitted to a PhD programme! I very much hope it will be funded so that you can accept it.
I’m also glad to learn there will be more posts soon. As someone who’s read your work for several years now I much like your old articles, but I’m sad to learn they were partially caused by your loneliness.
Additionally, I can say that I’m very grateful for your blog as it was through it that I and Gibbor came into contact two years ago. And now he is among my closest friends!
That’s awesome! I’m glad to have brought you two together.
Unfortunately, it appears that the odds of receiving funding are not in my favor, but there is still hope.
Way to go!
I’m partial to UW because it’s so close, however, wherever your path takes you, us readers support you. Just keep us in your loop. Over the years I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading what you know along with your thoughtful opinions, especially regarding myths and ancient/classical history of Greece. I’d be interested in your thoughts on early Greek education, colonization, power struggles, and how people moved around the Mediterranean while spreading their culture and myths among the local inhabitants who incorporated them within their own spheres. I am amazed how Greece moved around and created so many towns and cities all over the Mediterranean and further in such a short period of time. Archaeology is a fascinating study of peoples. I’m happy to know you will be that scholar you are pursuing in your dreams and your future.
I’m glad to read that you’ve been accepted to a Ph D program. I admit to being fairly ignorant of academia, but have you tried publishing any work in professional journals? Forgive me if you’ve answered this before. I ask it because it seems a lot of work to write 80,000 words on something which won’t help you professionally. My brother has a Ph D from Princeton in astro-physics, but he had a hard time getting a job because he hadn’t published much. It’s been a perennial problem.
I hope you get funding for the program.
Seattle sounds great!
Also, the anxiety’s rough buddy.
Congratulations on your offer – hope the funding is confirmed soon.
Thanks! Unfortunately, it sounds like the odds of receiving funding are not in my favor, but there is still a chance.
“Then it’s a chance you should take!”
-Irving Morell
Congratulations on the UW offer, Spencer! That’s great news! Hopefully it’ll be funded and you’ll also have other PhD options soon.
It’s good that you don’t feel like you need to impress strangers anymore. Still, it is a fact that you did impress me and many other people who love reading your posts. I hope you’ll continue with them, even if not as frequently now.
I also know what it’s like to have no real close friends and most of your interactions be online. I hope you’re not as lonely now. They’re probably harder to find irl but I know there are many people who share your interests that garnered you a wide online following, and would enjoy hanging out with you. If you haven’t already found them, I’m sure you will soon!
Congrats on the offer. I’m a man only a few years younger than you with similar interests in the social sciences and humanities as well as an avid reader and writer and it’s always been interesting to hear a sort of insider’s perspective of someone climbing up the education ladder in a field I’m adjacent to. I’ve personally learnt a lot from your writings, and I owe you thanks for my transitioning from not caring about school at all to realizing the importance of an education. I’ve also dealt with wanting attention, being attached to the idea of wanting to be perceived as an “expert” because I want to feel good about myself. To hear that someone I’ve looked up to for quite some time has gone through similar issues really puts things into perspective for me. You’re not alone on this.
Wishing the best for you. And here’s to hoping for people with our interests and skills can still find our place in a world that’s getting increasingly grim for us.
You may have (internally) considered that you were trying to impress with what you know, but the result was I got learn and experience a lot of stuff.
Wishing you best luck with the however slimish PhD chance outcome.
Spencer, doing good stuff to impress others is not something inherently bad.
Most of academia and scientific research is fuelled by ego of professors who want to show that they are better than their peers and want to prove their colleagues wrong.
Most historical figures who helped advance humanity in many different fields from technology to art, music and literature did what they did in part because they wanted to be recognized.
Human flaws like ego and pride can give motivation to do good work if you focus them in the right direction.
What’s important is to never be consumed by them.
I started reading your blog during the pandemic and I want to tell you that you’re a really knowledgeble person and your content is always very informative.
I really hope that you can be recognized in academia as well and can be accepted in a phd program.
I’m so sorry for the state of your country right now, with all the defunding of science and education.
Unfortunately, that’s the drawback of democracy: most americans voted for what’s happening knowing that it would happen.
Stay strong during these difficult times and take care of yourself!!
Miss Spencer,
First, congratulations on the tentative/potential offer. Like another poster, I’m also partial to UW for many reasons.
If you do get funding and choose there, I think you’ll find Seattle a very supportive city for you. Yes, there in the Seattle freeze, but be patient and you’ll fit in. Happy to help out if you need a local contact.
Thank you for sharing your inner thoughts. You do have a lot to give the world. People will recognize your gifts and celebrate you for you.
We all have our inner demons we struggle with, you are not alone. This blog has shown you that people love you.
As for any commercial jobs sometime in the future, I wouldn’t worry too much. Even in tech, enlightened hiring managers look for people who will add to their team. Often the “different” people are most needed. I can teach somebody to code. I can’t teach them how to think or synthesize different concepts or understand “we are here now because of this and that”.
Best wishes, I and I’m sure many others have faith in you and are rooting for you.
Mark
Is anyone still here?
Yes, I am still here. I’m sorry for the long gap in posts. I have another update coming today. I meant to post it several days ago, but I’ve been putting it off.
You never answered the question I asked above. I know you’re busy with your PhD applications and your novel, but I’d like to know the answer before this post’s comments close.
I’m sorry, I must have missed your question. I will go back and answer it this weekend.
Pleas don’t apologize. After you’ve given us so much, we can always talk amongst ourselves. “The study of Greek philosophy and religion is fruitful and intriguing…” Discuss.