Advice for Grad Students

I originally wrote this bibliography for the ChristLit listserv, but since it's not letting me post right now I thought I'd put it here as well. All annotations are mine; most of the cited material belongs to others.
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I am myself but a lowly Master's student, so cannot yet speak from exact experience as to what works and what doesn't in pursuing a PhD in English. However, I have collected several websites, articles, books, etc during the course of my application process. Here is a brief bibliography.

On Christianity and grad school:
1. Intervarsity's Grad and Faculty Ministries (http://www.intervarsity.org/gfm/). If your target school has a chapter, it's worth checking out-- in my experience, they have great advice, people, and resources about life as a Christian grad student. More to the point, they offer a type of community that you're not likely to find in your local church. If you're curious about what an active chapter looks like, my group's site is at http://www.osu-cgsa.org. I also wrote a blog post for them with resources on Christian intellectualism more generally: http://tinyurl.com/2h2laq.

2. Alan Jacobs, "Thoughts on Graduate School" (http://ayjay.backpackit.com/pub/1037353). This is geared more towards undergrads interested in Christianity and literature, but has some good general advice nonetheless. Among others, Jacobs makes the very good point that "even in graduate school, you have a life beyond studying, you should spend a good deal of time thinking about what sort of environment you believe you would thrive in."

3. Intervarsity, Emerging Scholars Network (http://www.intervarsity.org/gfm/esn/). ESN offers a multitude of great information and resources for Christian intellectuals, no matter what your discipline or degree. Here you'll find articles on intellectual life, opportunities for mentoring, some great discounts on relevant periodicals, and much more. Membership is free.

4. Harold Bush, "The Outrageous Idea of a Christian Literary Studies: Prospects for the Future & A Meditation on Hope," Christianity & Literature 51.1 (Autumn 2001): 79-103. Good, concrete advice for pursuing literary projects involving Christianity, from a regular ChristLit contributor. (And if I may say so, Christianity and Literature is a good journal to read from at random.)

5. George Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) and The Soul of the American University. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.) Both longer treatments of Christianity's historical and present role in education-- worth a look.

On grad school more generally:

1. Phil Agre, "Advice for Undergraduates Considering Grad School." http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/grad-school.html. This is from a sociology/computer science perspective, but is quite extensive.

2. PhD-Survey.org, "English." http://www.phd-survey.org/advice/english.htm. Advice from current PhD students in English, generally more anecdotal than research-based. Buying a current grad student coffee can be another good source of such advice.

3. Marie desJardins, "How to Be a Good Graduate Student." http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html. Though the introduction to this site says the advice is primarily aimed at women in grad school, in fact much of it applies to students of both genders.

4. Ronald Azuma, "So Long, and Thanks for the PhD!" http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html. Another CS perspective, but very thorough and quite entertaining. I rather like this quote from it: "Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you're Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you are usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy). But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you're Happy."

5. About.com, "Graduate School." http://gradschool.about.com/. Lots of general-interest articles about the application process, survival, etc. Not necessarily from a Christian perspective.

6. Robert Peters, Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a M.A. or PhD (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997); Gregory Semenza, Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Emily Toth, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia (U Penn, 1997). There are lots of advice books out there for grad students, but these three are the only ones I'm familiar with. They all have their problems, but can be as useful for deciding what you don't want in a grad program as for deciding what you do. My personal nod would go to Semenza, and my personal blech-get-this-rubbish-off-my-bookshelf to Toth.