IWTTBF Podcast

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, where you can convince graduate students to attend anything with promises of sustenance. We hope that IWTTBF has been that for many of you during this series and thank you for joining us for a year in the life.

Making it through the final weeks of another semester? This week Jen and Alex discuss the recent firestorm over technology in the classroom, and the new and old approaches to education which go into a 21st century higher education experience.

A serious topic for the holiday weekend. This week Jen and Alex discuss the details of the proposed tax reform bills in Congress and how they will impact graduate students and institutes of higher education. This is not a fun topic, but one every graduate student should understand thoroughly, especially with the passing of the House of Representative's version of the bill last week. Jen breaks down the numbers: https://www.recollectionhistory.com/blog/2017/11/14/is-it-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it More Details from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/11/14/563130814/heres-how-the-new-tax-plan-could-hurt-graduate-students Ethan Siegel, "The GOP Tax Plan Will Destroy Graduate Education," :https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/11/07/the-gop-tax-plan-will-destroy-graduate-education/#213eb2c63d2f

"....pouring out yourself a cup of ambition." as Ms. Parton would say. Though the academic job market is the dark cloud over many a graduate student conversation, there are ways to help prepare for the search and interview process. This week we review everything you should know about academic job interviews and hopefully help you feel a bit more prepared for application season.

Finding work-life balance in graduate school is always a challenge. Managing that time while also raising a family can seem almost impossible, by comparison. This week, we discuss what it's like to be both a graduate student and a parent, along with our special guest, Macey.

One of the two big milestones of graduate school, your comprehensive exams are potentially the most stressful experience on the road to graduation. This week we'll discuss our own strategies for completing the comps, offering suggestions of things you can start doing now — seriously, today — to prepare yourself. Or just indulge in the Schadenfreude of not having to worry about your own exams any longer.

Form and function - old and new - this week we tackle academic tech and the graduate school experience. Bibliographic and image editing software are new staples for the academic career track and yet so few historians have been keen to adopt them. We discuss the possible whys and offer insight on our favorite scholarly software. We'd also like your suggestions on the best new academic software worth adopting! "Historians and the Technologies of Research" - https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-2017/historians-and-the-technologies-of-research

Everything you ought to know before you're done and ready to graduate (and everything you probably haven't thought much about). Before you struggle with the post-docs and research applications, the teaching philosophy statements and student reviews, here are a few good ways to prepare yourself for a post-graduate career in the Academy...academia...academeme....

In no other job will you find a weirder relationship with your peers than in graduate school. Your community is told to constantly band together as you all develop professionally in different directions and the ambivalence can be maddening. Join our discussion of how to best deal with the emotional roller coaster of graduate cohorts.

Welcome to a revisiting of impostor syndrome — because it hasn't gone away and we hope you didn't notice how bad our first discussion was. In all seriousness, we tackle the bane of all academic and professional existence and maybe even find a few new solutions to help remind you that you are more capable than you might feel.

We told you all last week all of the good reasons that you shouldn't apply to graduate school. Apparently there are still a few crazy listeners, so we've decided this week to share our application experiences. What should and shouldn't you do when applying for graduate school? How do you decide what program, faculty, and graduate community are worth the next 5-7 years of your time? As always, start with promises of food.

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast about all things academia where this week we tell you why you should avoid joining academia. Are you considering whether or not graduate school is right for you? This week we discuss a myriad of reasons: limited job opportunities, stagnant income, mismatched skill development, identity crises; why you should seriously consider NOT becoming a graduate student...and hopefully better clarifying good reasons to still apply. Timothy Burke, "Should I Go to Grad School?" - http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/gradschool.html Joel Warner and Aaron Clauset, "The Academy's Dirty Secret," - http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/02/university_hiring_if_you_didn_t_get_your_ph_d_at_an_elite_university_good.html Laura McKenna, "The Ever Tightening Job Market for Ph.D.s" - https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/bad-job-market-phds/479205/

It's the start of a new semester and Jen and Alex are here to share tips, stories, and comic warnings about how to set yourself up for a good round of teaching. Now with extra fanfare! Music Employed for Fair Use Purposes of Education from United States Marine Band, performers. "True to the Flag March." Blon, Franz von, composer. Orange, NJ: Edison, 1922. From Library of Congress, control number: 00694039. MP3, WAV. https://www.loc.gov/item/00694039/ (Accessed September 3, 2017).

A new school year's upon us and funding is always a big concern. For many of us, it is a season for remembering to fill out grant and fellowship applications, but what are the best ways to go about selecting them? Help us help you prepare for the money angle of academia.

Just like most of the nation, we have also been drawn into the controversy surrounding Confederate statues. We discuss the history and also try to explain how historians contextualize such events.

Do you remember the first thing that you ever remembered, the first time you noticed events moving in a larger historical world? This week we discuss Katie's new classroom icebreaker - our first historical memories and what they say about the earliest role of history in our lives.

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, the podcast that proves that the promises of food can always motivate good scholarship. But where does that leave archives - the essential tool of the humanities where the material might be old enough to start eating at you. ("Careful, they have a taste for flesh.") Whether you've never visited an archive or if you're a finding aid veteran, join Jen, Katie, and Alex as we learn about that very special kind of knowledge...the information you can't find via Google-search.

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast about all things academia and history. Summer is half over and everyone is freaking out about the writing they still haven't done. What are the best ways to set writing goals for yourself and stick to them (or at least get your peers to guilt you into regular writing productivity)? What are the best ways to start a writing workshop or group review sessions? Is a taco a sandwich? All questions answered in this week's IWTTBF episode!

The second installment of "All the President's Food" where we talk chowder, Fresca, and iced cream. Tune in to find out which presidents match which food.

What's the weirdest question you've ever used to start a conversation? This week on I Was Told There'd Be Food, Jen and Alex try to puzzle out Katie's suggestion that weird food questions are the best lead into starting off a new discussion section. What are some of the best ways to get students to actually talk in class? Join us for another episode - and another round of history trivia that once again dabbles unnecessarily in 90s pop culture references (see footnote explanation for why that is presentist nonsense, listener).

Why should you go to conferences? The good, the bad, and the ugly and watermelon, because why not watermelon?

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast in which three academics attempt advice for making your graduate school experience better by undergoing all the rigors first. This week we discuss the politicking minefield of forming your dissertation committee. When should you choose someone for their strength in the field vs. their cohesion with the other committee members? Who best rounds out the corners of your research experience? What snacks can best placate the maddening crowd of academics? All topics on this week's episode!

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast for all things academia and history where Jen, Katie, and Alex attempt to survive and thrive in graduate school. Sometimes the biggest challenge of grad school is that period where you begin to feel that your work is less meaningful than you've always felt. Unlike Imposter Syndrome, the "Valley of S**t" as the Thesis Whisperer calls it, doesn't challenge your confidence as much as your sense of purpose. You already know how the world can beat you down, if you let it. So how do we take the hit and learn to keep on coming until we walk out of the valley? Join us this week. The Thesis Whisperer, "The Valley of S**t" - https://thesiswhisperer.com/2012/05/08/the-valley-of-shit/

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast about all things academia and history and sometimes the nitty-gritty arguments about when things actually happened that you wouldn't expect from historians. Of all the things to argue about, you might not expect the boundaries of historical periods to be that contentious. Yet here are Jen, Katie, and Alex trying to hash out how we define concepts as vague as "early modern" or "antiquity". Are distinctions like "xxth century" or medieval era useful, even culturally transferable terms? Is periodization appropriate beyond the discussions of historians? What the heck does it mean to even be "modern"? Join us this week and find out!

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food - a podcast about all things academia and history. Join us this week for the conversation that will probably convert us all to working in food history, as we discuss our first popular history panel subject. Politics often dominates the historical image of US presidents, leaving us to often forget about their day-to-day lives. This week, we discuss how food reflects something about the personalities and the eras in which these chief executives lived. And for once, we actually keep the promise of the pod title!

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food - a podcast about all things academia and history! Though not always the academic setting you might expect, as so much of the history we are exposed to nowadays doesn't come from a classroom. What are our favorite ways of engaging popular history: from top broadway musicals, movies, board and video games - history really is everywhere and popular histories can be found in every format. What are the best ways to enjoy and create in these settings? Join the discussion and find out! Anneke Emerson, "Teaching World History Through Pop Culture": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jba5HsWDsA

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast about all things academia and history. How do you get academics to attend anything...wait, what? There is no soup for you? At least that's how the history job market can look, sometimes. This week we discuss how you can better prepare for the modern history-related job market. Where can you learn about writing workshops, grant-writing seminars, and the myriad of other skills that prove useful to the modern historian? Join us and find your soup for the week!

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast by graduate students about all things academia and history - professionalization standards which you wouldn't think needed further explanation... What do historians know about the past and how do they know it? Join us this week as we discuss the rigorousness of historical methods and how they can help you avoid conjectural pitfalls - whether as civic officials or bar-trivia competitors. So, do you think you can history?

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food - a podcast about all things academia and history. How do you get academics to attend anything? Most weeks it's with promises of food, but sometimes it's with a reminder that the history we study might not last forever. This week we discuss recent examples of historical destruction in the modern world and how destroying the historical record shapes the stories that historians are (and are no longer) able to tell. How do we deal with and prevent the erasure of the past? Join the conversation! Rachel Van Bokkem, "History in Ruins: Cultural Heritage Destruction Around the World" - https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/april-2017/history-in-ruins-cultural-heritage-destruction-around-the-world

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food - a podcast about all things academia and history! AKA, for this week, anyway, NOT the one where Jen, Katie, and Alex are replaced by robot imposters in order to teach humans about humanities things, but the one in which we discuss the ever expanding role of digital humanities scholarship. In conversations with our guest and resident digital humanities expert, Camden, we discuss the tools and methods of digital humanities work. We even explore the ways in which digital tech can help us encounter the ever elusive beast - collaborative work in history. Do your part - help humanize the digitals! For further reading ~ Cameron Blevins "Digital History's Perpetual Future Tense": http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/77 Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette, and David Golumbia, "Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neoliberal-tools-archives-political-history-digital-humanities/

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast about all things academia and history. Sick of "Fake News!" We are too. Mostly because a certain someone highlights how many people can't tell the difference. Historical studies to the rescue! The way historians are trained to engage material helps teach critical thinking skills needed to sort fake from real news. "Students Have a Dismaying Inability To Tell Fake News From Real" - http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-news-from-real

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast about all things academia and history! Do you ever wonder about the right role for media in your classroom? Do you value exhibiting primary sources in the form of stirring songs, emotional visuals, and catchy bits of pop culture? Or are you, in fact, a robot, that cares not for the human voices in multimedia? Either way, join us for another episode of laughs and insightful teaching tips on the use of media in the modern classroom!

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast about all things academia and history. This week, we're joined by guest host Emily for a discussion of the particular experiences of women in graduate school. We discuss the challenges, seen and unseen, faced by female graduate students on a regular basis. 'Marriage Status and Tenure' Article: https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/being-married-helps-professors-get-ahead-but-only-if-theyre-male/267289/

Welcome to I Was Told There’d Be Food, a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. How do you get academics to attend anything? Promises of food - and maybe the chance to find a great mentor, as well. This week we discuss the ins and outs of cultivating a good relationship with your faculty advisors, beyond just responding to their e-mails. What are the best ways to make the most of the most significant professional relationship of your graduate school career? A little respect, a little daring initiative, and a lot of good humor will take you far.

Welcome to I Was Told There’d Be Food, a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. How do you get academics to attend anything? Love of food? Yep, that'll about do it. And it's our topic for this week's podcast! Given all the stresses and time constraints of the grad-student life, how can you manage to eat well, healthy, and on a budget? We may have even solved our namesake problem. Join us for a discussion of keeping food a part of your academic work-life balance, as well as suggestions for recipes and easy food prep. Proof that Historians can cook, too! The 99 Cent Chef: http://the99centchef.blogspot.com/ The Pioneer Woman: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking_cat/all-pw-recipes/

Welcome to I Was Told There’d Be Food, a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. How do you get academics to attend anything? Love of learning? Nope. Promises of food. And perhaps this week, some reprieve from the spiraling sense of failure many of us have come to be all too familiar with - Imposter Syndrome. How do we cope with a problem affecting most graduate students and how can you assist any of your peers suffering from it? We discuss all of this and more in as soberly-comedic a manner as possible. Listen in and help us feel like we aren't podcasting imposters!

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast by history grad students discussing all things academia and history! In this episode we discuss the the common notion of history being written by the victors and where historians have complicated that notion. What is the grad student's role in disrupting the narrative march of one darn thing after another? Where do we recognize the best popular efforts at telling the smaller, everyday stories of history? Was Thucydides any good at baseball? Join us this week and find out!

Welcome to I Was Told There’d Be Food, a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. This week we tackle the ever present challenge of being a graduate student - completing your degree without becoming a competitive jerk. How do we go about building healthy relationships with our fellow grad students? How can we best support our friends and colleagues and keep grad school from being a long and lonely journey? Join us this week and help support the idea of niceness in the academy!

Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. Join us this week as we follow the reading rainbow, deconstructing the myth that grad students read every bit of every book, talking about our reading comprehension strategies (though you don't have to take our word for it when you can try them out for yourself!), and discussing what makes a book an acceptably scholarly source. It's the week for geeking out about reading!

Welcome to I Was Told There’d Be Food, a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. How do you get academics to attend anything? Promise food. Which we're going to need this week, as we talk about long-term writing projects, explaining the dissertation process to friends and family, and a surprisingly 80s themed history trivia challenge. Join us for another week in the life of the graduate student!

Welcome to "I Was Told There'd Be Food" a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. This week we discuss delve into the history of public protests in context, and the innovative pedagogy of the Reacting to the Past role-playing games. You can find more information on the "Greenwich Village 1913" game, at the RttP website: https://reacting.barnard.edu/greenwich-village-1913-suffrage-labor-and-new-woman

Welcome to I Was Told There’d Be Food, a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. How do you get academics to attend anything? Promise food - Or in the case of Episode 2, promise exciting classroom activities involving Endnote citations! Join our discussion on classroom activities and listen to us attempt to best the History Trivia Challenge. CORRECTION: Or explanation. How can we say Bill O'Reilly doesn't use historical evidence and then say we haven't managed to read through one? Doesn't seem fair, huh? Well, it comes down to trusted colleagues. Someone's whose opinion I trust said Killing Lincoln doesn't even get the actual events of the assassination correct (there is no controversy or confusion about this event; there is ample evidence), so that's very disappointing. Also, would make me feel no need to read something a colleague has already said is wrong. We will talk in Episode 5 about how we read, how we choose what to read, etc.

Welcome to "I Was Told There’d Be Food," a podcast by history grad students about all things academia and history. We are going to talk about the ‘craft of history,' the joys and woes of teaching, navigating grad school, and maybe even the job market, if any of us ever manage to land jobs.