Posts by Amy Pistone

Amy Pistone

We’re Flattered, but Please Make the Articles Stop

April 30, 2013 | By Amy Pistone, Ph.D. Student, Classical Studies

Every few weeks or so, someone writes another article about how humanities Ph.D. programs are a bad choice and how grad students are either victims who have been bamboozled into a dead-end career in a dying field or are the children of privilege or—my personal favorite—a drain on society. And while it is certainly hard to choose a favorite among such a long list of choices, the most recent incarnation of this popular pastime is charmingly entitled “Thesis Hatement: Getting a literature Ph.D. will turn you into an emotional trainwreck, not a professor.” In it, Rebecca Schuman hopes to disabuse…

Published in: Student Voices

Amy Pistone

Finding a Balance

April 9, 2013 | By Amy Pistone, Ph.D. Student, Classical Studies

I’ve noticed that there’s a really interesting divide in the sort of polite small-talk that goes on when I meet new people. When I meet someone, conversations tend to involve some variation of the “Oh, so what do you do?” question, and we each talk about where we work and what we do professionally. Then, if I’m talking to someone who isn’t in academia, things eventually move toward the “So what else do you like to do in your free time?” question. That doesn’t usually happen with other grad students, because they already know that the answer is likely to…

Published in: Student Voices

Amy Pistone

Conferences Offer an Opportunity to Recharge One’s Academic Batteries

February 14, 2013 | By Amy Pistone, Ph.D. Student, Classical Studies

I love what I study. I really, truly do. And I also love teaching. But there does come a point in the semester when I’m really tired. It’s around the point where papers are ominously looming in the future and sleep is an increasingly rare commodity. This usually happens to coincide with the times when my students need the most pre-finals help, but my own classes and research also need the most help. And because this is toward the end of the semester, my brain decides to team up with all of these other distractions and I start thinking about…

Published in: Student Voices

Amy Pistone

Unofficial Lessons

October 22, 2012 | By Amy Pistone, Ph.D. Student, Classical Studies

When I was asked to write about professional development for this blog post, I had a lot of trouble getting started. The funny thing about a grad program like Classics is that we all work on a variety of closely related topics, but by the time we’re done, we’ve also become highly specialized in a very specific topic. So there isn’t really one sort of professional development we need, since there isn’t really one model that all (or even most) of us fit into. Most of us would like to get a tenure track job, sure, but it could be…

Published in: Student Voices

Amy Pistone

Meet Our Bloggers: Amy Pistone

September 6, 2012 | By Amy Pistone, Ph.D. Student, Classical Studies

Hello, gentle reader! It’s the beginning of the school year, which means the only conversation opener anyone has heard in a while is “So where are you from? What do you study?” And sure, I could come up with something really creative and inventive to start out here, but grad students are required to have unique, innovative thoughts an awful lot. There’s no reason to start blowing through innovative thoughts in September! I wouldn’t exactly say I’m your standard, Classics graduate student. I went to a small high school in rural northern California that didn’t even offer Latin (or German,…

Published in: Student Voices

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