Just...................whatever

I think it would take me a month to get in condition. At the beginning it would be knackering. specially if you have bags of shopping or its raining.

You get a cart for shopping, everyone has one. Never more than a 10 minute walk to a grocery store. New York is basically a concatenation of small towns - pharmacy, grocery store, electronics, liquor store, hardware all within a few minutes walk from home.

Let's just say you DO get this fellowship, when would you find out? And when would you be expected to show up? One would hope that for a whole year's displacement they'd give you several month's warning. The cruelist thing they could do is make you show up in the dead of winter, when the city's a dismal place, with every park looking no better than a collection of sticks. April is a prime time: flowers coming out, time to search out a window AC before it gets blasted hot.

I showed up for work in January, and would have hated it except that I had checked in months earlier and took a stroll through Central Park, which convinced me I could live in the big city. Snow doesn't come often enough in winter to make everything pretty.

well I haven't even applied yet, the deadline is early November. I am still writing the application form and my supervisors are going to check it before I send it. So if the deadline is November I probably wont hear anything until next year, maybe early Spring? and who knows when the actual thing might start. It might be Spring it might be Autumn I have no idea. But I doubt it would be in the middle of Winter. That's if I get it, which is a big if, the competition must be crazy, but I do have an ace up my sleeve which might swing it. I have previously worked on one of the ceramic objects from the advertised conservation project here, which gives me a massive advantage. I am just hoping they don't only want youngsters because that would mean I am out of the running.

I doubt age would be an issue. A November submission does sound like a summer or autumn start, that's good. I suspect you'll hear by February. Hopefully covid will not throw new variants at us.

looks like Channel 4 is still off air, not the main news channel but all the others have been down since Saturday is it a government plot to shut it down.

I have to write a statement of purpose for this fellowship, and I need to blow their socks off because the competition will be mad. Trouble is I don't like having to 'boast' and that's what it feels like. I sent them the first draft and they said it was 'not good enough' what do they want, a degree in nuclear physics and a stint in the space station?

They want to know what the hell you plan to do, that's all.  I don't think boasting comes into it, a good idea for research is what you want.  There needs to be originality, something that if you read it in someone else's application, you'd think "that's brilliant!".

So come up with something brilliant.  You don't have to say YOU are brilliant, they should know that from the idea. And it has to have a certain clarity to it - something that they can see in a flash and go "but of course!"

So what DO you intend to do, anyways?

Just looked it up. They only want 1000 words? Holy crap, that's easy - don't have to spend pages justifying and proving every damn thing you say, you just say it. But it does have to be flippin' brilliant. And it's easy to circulate and have people read it and give feedback, less than two pages.

A $42K stipend is just enough to let you have a couple nice nights out each week if you keep the rest of your feeding and entertainment cheap. Not sure if you'll have to pay taxes, need to inquire. And $6K travel stipend! Hoowee! Okay, 3 trips home and 3 domestic trips: pick a nice museum each in New Orleans, Santa Fe and San Francisco that you've got to stick your nose into. Surely they won't suspect a thing.

halfwise wrote:Just looked it up.  They only want 1000 words?  Holy crap, that's easy - don't have to spend pages justifying and proving every damn thing you say, you just say it.  But it does have to be flippin' brilliant.  And it's easy to circulate and have people read it and give feedback, less than two pages.  

A $42K stipend is just enough to let you have a couple nice nights out each week if you keep the rest of your feeding and entertainment cheap.  Not sure if you'll have to pay taxes, need to inquire.  And $6K travel stipend!  Hoowee!  Okay, 3 trips home and 3 domestic trips: pick a nice museum each in New Orleans, Santa Fe and San Francisco that you've got to stick your nose into.  Surely they won't suspect a thing.

Unfortunately the $42 is for senior fellows, I would classed as a junior fellow because I am in the last year of the PhD, they do accept people with just a masters though so I fit in as a junior, and thats the problem, I am up against senior fellows with a doctorate so my supervisors told me I have in their words, 'sell myself' which sounds like I have to puff myself off a bit to me.
The junior fellowship stipend is about $35-ish per annum, so a lot less. I doubt if they would let me wander off-piste and go to Hollywood for weeks looking for Vigo and Sean. mores the pity.
I don't need to send them a research proposal, they want a statement of purpose in 1000 words. So I won't get the chance to propose a brilliant project, I have to follow their project. Its called the Slifka fellowship, it involves working on their Renaissance Della Robbia collection, so in their curatorial/conservation department. I would be working on their archives, don't know if its towards an exhibition. So the statement of purpose isn't as straight forward as a research proposal, and I suppose I have to wow them with my past experience and go into current stuff like 'diversity' access, and all that trendy guff that they seem to be obsessed with these days.

Hmm...if they already know what they want to do with you, your purpose must be more how you will use this experience to augment your calling into the world of art history.  I still think it's more forward than backward looking, though you still have to root it in your past accomplishments.  The "selling yourself" is presenting a trajectory that you are already on, and how the fellowship will help you with this trajectory.

If you don't have a trajectory (and who does at this stage of life?  Trajectories are for people who haven't realized they are only partway in control) then come up with something.  You just have to look like you have a trajectory.  They want the self satisfaction of thinking they helped launch you into something.

But I dunno where I get off thinking I can give you advice.  The art world is far beyond my experience, I should shut up.

I appreciate any advice, I bet no matter what field people are in the people shelling out the money want the same things. They want to know they are not wasting their moolah on someone who is just going to float around looking gormless.  Which is where I fit in. I can float around looking gormless all day long, between coffee breaks.

They don't need to know that yet.  And the trick is to start out looking gormless then fool them into thinking you are actually figuring things out.  As time goes by walk more purposely between things, act like you're too busy to stop and answer silly questions like "how are things going?"  or "what did you actually do today?"

But yeah, I think the main advantage young folks have in these things is they actually think their lives are going somewhere specific and make indications to that effect.   So pretend your life has direction just for the purpose of writing this damn thing.   Us more mature beings know what a crock that is, but nobody giving out money wants to hear that.

Trajectories are for accountants, they like that kind of stuff. The rest of us just float around trying not to look gormless.

I can tell you're a graduate student.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-month-later-five-escaped-zebras-are-still-roaming-the-suburbs-of-maryland-180978810/

{{ Dunno if this is a bit of north of England you know Figg, Halifax, 1902



But what really gets me is the shot right at the end of the young lads, I call them lads but you can see that there was no such distinction between child and adult as  teenage years or their indulgences as we would know them, they look young in body but already so old in the face. }}

So the good news, I got a publisher interested in publishing my book , the bad news, I have to pay for the first 300 copies, and that's 2000 euros.  that sucks.

What's the book?

(might be useful for snagging this fellowship)

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ Dunno if this is a bit of north of England you know Figg, Halifax, 1902



But what really gets me is the shot right at the end of the young lads, I call them lads but you can see that there was no such distinction between child and adult as  teenage years or their indulgences as we would know them, they look young in body but already so old in the face. }}

I'm thinking the sound was foleyed in recently? Don't think they had sound synced up back then.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ Dunno if this is a bit of north of England you know Figg, Halifax, 1902



But what really gets me is the shot right at the end of the young lads, I call them lads but you can see that there was no such distinction between child and adult as  teenage years or their indulgences as we would know them, they look young in body but already so old in the face. }}

No I don't know Halifax at all, I think its West Yorkshire, and I came from the Cheshire/Lancs border. I always love these old films though. You are right about them looking prematurely old.

halfwise wrote:What's the book?

(might be useful for snagging this fellowship)

Its written in Italian, its about nineteenth century Thailand and the Italian artists and architects who went over to Siam to work for King Chulalongkorn. I never thought about adding it to my application, but its a good idea.

well....fuck yeah you can work this into your application (I mean, like duh!).  Get the damn thing published before the November submission deadline (or make some progress in that direction: be vague - "being prepared for publication with so and so house"), then somehow tie the topic to what you'll be doing.  Hint at passion without taking it over the top. It's this type of thing that raises you above the pack.

 I really can't believe you didn't think about working this into your application. How am I supposed to gain a drinking buddy in the Village if you don't pad things out appropriately?