meta Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Update on My PhD Applications (March 10th, 2024)

Long-time followers of this blog may remember that, two years ago, during my senior year of undergrad at IU Bloomington, I applied to four different PhD programs in classics and ancient history. Unfortunately, although one program—the Graduate Group in Ancient History at Penn—did interview me and seems to have seriously considered me for admission, in the end, none of the programs I applied to made me an offer of admission. As a result, I entered the terminal MA program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at Brandeis University, which I had applied to as a backup option in case none of the PhD programs I applied to accepted me.

I am now in my second and final year in the program at Brandeis. I am in the process of finishing my master’s thesis and am on track to graduate with my MA in May of this year. In December of last year, I submitted PhD applications a second time for the current application cycle. This time, I applied to six different PhD programs. I had a much stronger application this time all around than I had the first time, including much stronger statements of purpose, a stronger writing sample, much greater experience, significantly stronger Greek and Latin, and an almost-complete MA. I was sincerely hoping to receive better results. Sadly, I now know the results of most of the applications I submitted and I am disappointed to say that, although there is still a possibility that one program may admit me, so far, my experience this time has not gone much better than it did the first time.

Update: I Have Applied to PhD Programs Again! (December 16th, 2023)

Hello everyone! Some readers may have noticed that I haven’t made any posts in nearly a month. That’s because I’ve been busy this month writing the first chapter of my master’s thesis and applying to PhD programs. Long-time readers may recall that, two years ago, in 2021, during the final year of my bachelor’s degree at IU Bloomington, I applied to four PhD programs. Unfortunately, as I described in this post, none of those programs made me an offer of admission. This led me to go into the MA program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at Brandeis University, which I had applied to as a backup option in case none of the programs I applied to accepted me.

I am expected to graduate with my MA in May 2024, so I have now applied to PhD programs again for the 2024-2025 academic year. This time, I am applying to the PhD programs in classics at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, Princeton University, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of California Los Angeles. As of the time I am writing this, I have submitted my applications for all of these programs except UCLA, which has a later deadline than the others. I think I am in a much stronger position this time than I was last time, I have applied to more programs than I did the first time, and I am hoping that this time at least one program will make me an offer of admission. We will see how this turns out.

My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 8

This is the post that many of my readers have waited months for: the eighth and final installment in my series of posts about my experience in Greece as part of the 2023 ASCSA Summer Session in June and July of this year. (For those who may have missed them, here are the previous installments: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh.)

In this installment, I will describe how I gave my final site report about the temple of an obscure goddess who may be of pre-Greek Aegean origin and whose name ancient etymologists interpreted to mean “the Unseen One,” how some other students and I found a bunch of ancient potsherds in a random hole we dug, how I feared my life while walking to Plato’s Akademia, and how I returned home to the United States, forever changed by my time in Greece.

My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 7

Hello everyone! Even though I’ve been back in the U.S. for over a month now and the fall 2023 semester has already started, I still want to finish my account of my time in Greece this summer. Thus, this is the seventh installment in my ongoing series of posts about my experience in the 2023 ASCSA Summer Session, covering the period from Monday, July 17th through Thursday, July 20th. (Here are the previous installments, for those who may have missed them: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth.)

This will be the second to last post in this series; once the series is finished, I will return to my usual research posts. In this installment, I will describe how I went inside the Kasta tomb, how I got heat exhaustion in Thessaloniki, how I visited an ancient sanctuary of Zeus under the shadow of Mount Olympos, how I saw the site of the famous Battle of Thermopylai, and how our bus driver got lost in Athens on our way back to the school.

My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 6

This is the sixth installment in my ongoing series of posts about my experience in the 2023 ASCSA Summer Session, covering the period from Thursday, July 13th, to Sunday, July 16th. (Here are the previous installments, for those who may have missed them: first, second, third, fourth, and fifth.)

In this installment, I will describe how I saw the ancient site of Delphi and the archaeological museum there, how I saw the hanging monasteries of Meteora, how I saw the tomb of (probably) none other than King Philippos II of Makedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, as well as its spectacular contents, which are perhaps the closest ancient Greek equivalent to the Egyptian treasures of Tutankhamun, and, finally, how I saw the birthplace of Alexander himself.

My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 5 (August 9th, 2023)

This post is the fifth installment in my ongoing series about my experience in the 2023 ASCSA Summer Session, covering the period from Sunday, July 9th, to Wednesday, July 12th. (Here are the previous installments, for those who may have missed them: first, second, third, and fourth.)

This post will describe, among many other things, how I went back to the Akropolis for the last time in my adventure, how I visited the ancient quarry where the Athenians quarried the stones they used to build the monuments on the Akropolis and a cave at the quarry that was a sanctuary of the god Pan in antiquity and is known today as the site of all kinds of supposed paranormal activity, how I visited two of the most famous battlefields in Greek history, and how I visited an often-overlooked ancient city that, for a brief period in the fourth century BCE, became the most powerful in mainland Greece, surpassing both Athens and Sparta. It will conclude with my arrival at Delphi, which was one of the most important sanctuaries in the ancient Greek world.

My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 4 (July 28th, 2023)

Hello everyone! As of two days ago, I am now back in the United States after having spent the past just over six weeks in Greece taking part in the 2023 ASCSA Summer Session. Unfortunately, while I was in Greece, I was so busy that I was not really able to keep up with my blog of my experience. Now that I am back in the U.S., though, I intend to continue posting my account of my experience until I have covered the entire six weeks. Partly on the advice of my parents, from this point onward, I intend to break up my account into shorter, more frequent posts than I have been previously.

This post is the fourth installment in my ongoing series, covering the period of Tuesday, July 4th, through Saturday, July 8th. (Here are the previous three installments: first, second, and third.) In this installment, I will describe how I got to see behind the scenes at an archaeological excavation with restricted access, how I got to go inside an astoundingly well-preserved ancient Greek temple that very few people even know exists, and how I participated in a footrace in the stadium of the ancient Olympic Games at Olympia.

My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 3 (July 11th, 2023)

Hello! This is the third installment in my ongoing blog of my experience in the ASCSA Summer Session for summer 2023, covering the period of Wednesday, June 21st through Monday, July 3rd. The first installment can be found here and the second installment can be found here.

In this installment, I will describe how I (among many other things) saw the mountain underneath which Zeus is said to have been raised by nymphs, tried octopus, hiked to the top of the Akrokorinth, ran in a footrace in the ancient stadium of the Nemean Games, recited ancient Greek poetry in the ancient Greek Theater of Epidauros, went down an over-three-millennia-old tunnel, and tried alcohol for the first time in Sparta. There will, of course, be plenty of photos of the various sites, monuments, and artworks that I have seen.

My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 2 (June 20th, 2023)

Hello everyone! I’m making this post to give a further update about all the exciting things I’ve been doing in the past week in Greece. This will be the second installment in my ongoing blog of my experience in the ASCSA Summer Session for summer 2023, covering the period of Wednesday, June 14th, through Tuesday, June 20th. The first installment can be found here. In this installment, I will describe how I (among many other things) went inside the Parthenon, walked in the ruins of a 3,500-year-old Minoan city, hiked through the Gorge of Dead, and went swimming in the Aegean Sea.

My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 1 (June 13th, 2023)

As regular readers of this blog are already aware from this post I made back in early March, this summer, I am participating in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA)’s six-week Summer Session in Greece, which began yesterday (Monday, June 12th) and will continue until July 26th. This is not only my first time ever being in Greece, but also my first time ever visiting any country other than the United States, so it is a very new and exciting experience for me. I have been obsessed with Greece for over a decade now and have wanted to go there for just as long. Now, for the first time, I am finally here.

The program is intensive and, as a result, I will not have time to research and write my usual variety of long, heavily-researched blog posts while I am taking part in it. Instead of writing my usual research posts, I have decided to write short updates about what I have been doing and seeing in Greece, along with photos I have taken myself. Thus, for the next six weeks, this blog will temporarily become a travel blog. After I go back to the U.S. near the end of July, I will resume my usual posting.