afterMAPH is written by the staff and alumni of the Master of Arts Program in Humanities at the University of Chicago as a service to alumni to provide alumni news and announcements, as well as a discussion forum for MAPH alumni.
Spring? Ha. Yeah. Right. Didn't come to MAPH for the weather, that's for sure.
Prospective students have to decide by tomorrow whether to come to MAPH. I’ve always thought it is a useful exercise (whether you’re a current student just finishing up the first draft of your thesis, or an alum from the class of 1997) to think about the reasons why you came to MAPH in the first place. Thinking back to my own experience, I came to MAPH frustrated by the PhD application process, pretty panicked about my life, and very disappointed about my inability to make a decision about what I wanted “next.” MAPH settled me down and made me think clearly about what a PhD would entail (and why it might not be a good fit for me). Here’s an excerpt from my piece “Why a Terminal Master’s?” Full text can be found here.
What were your reasons for coming to MAPH? Are they the same now? MAPHCentral would love to hear your comments.
Over the course of the past year working with MAPH I have spoken with a lot of our 1500 alumni. Our graduates live around the world and work in diverse fields—everything from non-profit management to hedge fund risk management. They find jobs in development, investment banking, law, journalism, advertising and public relations, corporate finance, secondary education, and curatorial research. One alumnus ran the 2008 Obama campaign’s finances in Florida. One is studying to be a veterinarian. Others are administrators at charter schools, English teachers, guidance counselors, and of course, professors.
We have no astronauts. Yet.
Why has a program that focuses so tightly on the development of humanistic skills produced successful alumni in diverse fields? It can’t just be that we leave the University with a healthy understanding of the classics and wind up running creative departments at advertising agencies. Rather, the breadth of success serves as compelling evidence that graduate work in the humanities can be (don’t laugh) integral to one’s long term career satisfaction. Graduate work in the humanistic disciplines improves one’s ability to engage in most activities that characterize the professional world.
That said, no one should trivialize the financial commitment of student loans that are associated with graduate school. I certainly don’t. My loans are growing, even as I type. And they’re not going away any time soon. But I don’t cower in fear of them, and I certainly don’t dodge my statements when they arrive. The important thing to think about when considering whether to take the plunge (ie: take out huge loans) is that any graduate work should be seen as an investment in oneself, and an opportunity for self-enrichment that will accrue benefits in the long run.
I caught up with Steve Capone right before he embarked on a marathon grading session. Steve is in the midst of finishing his coursework in the Philosophy Ph.D. program at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City) and we spent a few minutes commiserating about grading. But it turns out that the life of the mind–at least in the Rocky Mountains–has some pretty great perks. Aside from his academic pursuits, Steve skis and snowboards. He has a season pass at Snowbird, and was planning on getting out to The Canyons Resort the day after we spoke.
“I’ve been so busy with work that I’ve probably been out there only ten days,” Steve told me. It’s the kind of complaint that would roil the blood of any skier locked in the frigid flatness of the nation’s midsection (read, any MAPHer past or present suffering through the useless cold early spring weather).
Steve graduated from MAPH in 2007 and spent a year in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Asked to describe his gap year, Steve recalled, “I managed a bookstore and prayed that I got into a Ph.D. Program.” Things worked out, and he is now on track to finish and defend his comprehensive paper (which Utah does in lieu of an orals exams) in the Fall. For this paper, Steve is working on a critique of luck egalitarianism. Though he is also working on a project related to the popular scholarship of Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein (authors of Nudge), we spent the bulk of our conversation talking about luck egalitarianism, and its various critiques. Continued…
In addition to the new MAPH website we have added a page to profile all the MAPH Alumni who are writing and their recent, current and upcoming projects.
If you are a MAPH alumni who has written something please let us know what you have been up to and we will happily add it to the growing list of MAPH writers.
The old MAPH website had been there since I applied to MAPH so we were long overdue for an update that would integrate more of the resources available for current students and alumni.
MAPH alumna Megan Austin and her husband Ricky set up the great website features. The mentors and Associate Director updated all the information about the program, and most of the photos are mine.
The new website is here. While we are all about newness, now is a great time to check out the website and let MAPH know what is new for you. It is also a good opportunity to RSVP for the MAPH alumni events on June 3, 2011.
MAPH Alums from the inaugural Class of 1997 have been checking in over the past week. I’ll be talking with Adam Richardson, based in San Francisco–where he is Strategy Director for Marketing at Frog Design–tomorrow. In what must be a copious amount of spare time, Adam blogs about design at Amphibious Blog. This very morning, he published a short piece on Failure (no matter what you might hear, Failure is Failure)on the Harvard Business Review‘s blog. And in the video above, find him talking about “misfits,” Space Tourism, and software at the 2010 TEDx Taipei.
(Oh, just by the way, he also wrote Innovation X: Why a Company’s Toughest Problems are Also its Greatest Advantages).
It kind of makes me want to go for a run, or do some pushups, or at least think in a sustained way about something for more than five seconds.
Archaia's beautiful edition of Andrew Rostan's (MAPH 2010) "An Elegy for Amelia Johnson"
A quick Google search for Andrew Rostan will produce a video of the 2010 MAPH alum dominating on Jeopardy! in 2007. But his run as one of the top 10 all-time winningest contestants is almost old news as of March 8, 2011. Today’s the day that Rostan’s anticipated (and already well reviewed) graphic novel An Elegy for Amelia Johnsonhits shelves.
Rostan is spending his AfterMAPH time working on a project that tracks the life of Anthony Trollope. He is also employed, and working in the Rag and Bone shop of the heart in his spare time.
We at AfterMAPH congratulate Andrew on the publication of his first Graphic Novel, and look forward to more in the future.
Michelle Ruvolo: Proof that there's life in the Corporate World after MAPH.
Michelle Ruvolo applied directly to MAPH during her senior year of college and arrived in Hyde Park the following fall. “I didn’t have any plans,” she recalled when we spoke on the phone last week. Like many incoming MAPHers, Ruvolo did have a sense that the academic life was where she wanted to be after graduation. “I thought I wanted to do a PhD and be a professor in the humanities,” she said. But her perspective changed by the end of first quarter.
“I came to terms with the fact I wasn’t going to do a PhD,” she remembered. “I needed to decide what skills I would need in my next life.”
As a MAPH student, Ruvolo took courses across departments—everything from Social Thought and Philosophy, to English and Math. She completed her thesis with then-Program Director Professor Candace Vogler as her advisor, on a topic inspired by readings from Professor Arnold Davidson’s Foucault class. Continued…
Are you planning on coming to Reunion? Comment below! Better yet, register TODAY! We’ll keep track of how many people are signed up and will let you know.
If you haven’t RSVP’s on the Official MAPH Facebook Page yet, get on board! For more ways to get connected to the Program and Hyde Park, check the previous post on Official MAPH Social Networks.
Keep an eye out for new alumni profiles (we’ll be publishing more of them as we get closer to June 3), and if you have any questions, email ajaronstein@uchicago.edu.
Tell me he doesn't look like a MAPH dude. He does.
MAPH will have almost 1500 alumni by the end of this year. Many of you are in Chicago, but we have alums in London, Singapore, China, India, Australia, and other faraway sounding places. You are professors, non-profit fundraisers, curators, art gallery directors, program coordinators for corporate giving, heads of communications, attorneys, investment bankers, teachers, and independent consultants. You work in government, education, finance, journalism, the arts, advocacy organizations, publishing, and any number of other fields.
Finding everyone is a bit like herding cats. Cats educated in psychoanalytic theory. In other words very, very strange, unnervingly smart cats.
And we would love for you all to check in. Here are several easy ways that we’re hoping you can plug yourself back into MAPH:
Join the official MAPH Facebook Group “Master of Arts Program in the Humanities.” This is the central clearing house for all announcements from MAPHCentral. You can find our blog content, events announcements, and reunion updates!
Check out the AfterMAPH blog (which you’re already doing), and volunteer to be interviewed for the “Meet an Alum” feature. We love talking with you, and our current students and alums all love reading profiles of interesting people.
Join the MAPH LinkedIn Group. Whether your searching for a job, or are just interested in staying connected, LinkedIn is still popular among MAPHers and we’d love to keep it that way. CAPS is great, but the best resource for you (and for our current students) will be the growing alumni network.
Twitter. Yes, we have it. Right now, you can follow @MAPHMentors, but we will start up a new @AfterMAPH alumni feed soon.
COME TO WINTER the WINTER QUARTER MAPH ALUMNI MEETUP. Clark Street Ale House on March 3 at 6:00 until whenever. MAPH will pony up for the first round.
COME TO REUNION. It’s on June 3, and it’s going to be awesome.
You can always email me at MAPHCentral (ajaronstein@uchicago.edu) if you have questions or just want to check in.
To celebrate the graduation of MAPH’s Fifteenth Class, we are holding a full day of activities and events on campus and downtown on June 3. The Early Registration period (which allows you to reserve $10 tickets) opens on March 1. We will be sure to send you the link to register.
In the past, your ten bucks has bought entry to the downtown party. This year it will again get you entrance to our reception at English Bar and Restaurant. But you are also warmly invited to several events throughout the day:
Breakfast and presentations of recently-completed thesis projects
Lunch!
A reading of MAPH alum creative work.
Our reunion committee is meeting for the first time this week to get these events off the ground. We hope to have the biggest attendance in MAPH’s short history. Feel free to email if you have any questions about the festivities or want to find out if there’s a way for you to get involved. ajaronstein@uchicago.edu.
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