Oh yeah
Sorry I've been rather quiet lately. There hasn't been much to report besides "I'm getting more rejections but I still don't know what I'm going to do about PhDness", "I should be working on my essays--but they're actually not due till April 24", and "I'm starting my dissertation--which sounds exciting but consists of reading lot of Charlotte Bronte's letters."
Enthralling, eh? Oh, the exciting life of an international glamo(u)r girl.
Current PhD tally: acceptance: one: Indiana University. Waiting List: one: UVA. Still haven't heard from: NYU. Rejections: Everywhere else.
It's beginning to look a lot like Indiana. (Everywhere you go....) Of course, we'll see if NYU offers me a place and if UVA offers me a place before I have to decide about IU (which, btw, is April 15), but... yeah.
IU is also a distinctly attractive possibility. Every PhD student there is required to do a minor, and one of the minors is in Victorian Studies -- so I'd be required to take interdisciplinary classes and classes in other departments that relate to the Victorian period. Oh, poor me. There are also a number of Victorianists doing really interesting work. And they have a stellar music department, which means A) the music history classes I could take as part of my VS minor would be cool, B) they have lots o' ensembles I could audition for, and C) they have awesome concerts! Also, they're offering me a good fellowship package, whereby I wouldn't have to teach the first year... And although some New Yorkers tell me Bloomington's not terribly exciting, many Chapel Hillians like it and say it's like Chapel Hill. Which is good, because I like Chapel Hill.
AND Andy's there. Which is distinctly a plus. Although it has caused me some consternation -- many debates about whether I'm excited about it because he's there or in spite of the fact that he's there or what. But the fact is it was also the place I was most excited about before Andy even decided to apply there. So I saw it first. Hah. :)
We shall see, we shall see.
Just as I'm thinking concretely about leaving, I'm discovering that I actually am settling in nicely here in Brum. I went over to my friend Nathan's house last night with a bunch of English Dept. MPhils and watched a horror movie (well, hung out, ate Chinese food and chips (oh, British food), drank some tea, made rabbits out of Play-Dough, watched the first fifteen minutes, remembered that there's a reason I don't like horror movies, went upstairs to Nath's room, read The War of the Worlds till they were done then came down and ate some biscuits and shared a cab home with Alice). I'm discovering how to make tea properly (with milk and sugar and kind of weak), beginning to forget which rules of usage and spelling are British and which American (which is kind of annoying), and learning to devine what my flatmates had for breakfast based on what's in the dish drainer (Alicia had two pieces of toast with cheese and soft cheese; I know because there's a knife and a plate in the dish drainer).
I have my last class on Friday. Aaaah! And then I have my essays due April 24 (but I'm going to try to hand them in before I leave for the US--I'll be stateside April 4-19, when I'll visit IU and possibly NYU--and possibly UVA), and then after that I'll just have my dissertation! 12,000 words. On the Brontes. And what they read. And how they read. And stuff. I'm starting to get a tiny bit stressed about the dissertation, but on the other hand, I'm into the second volume of Charlotte Bronte's letters (I'm really annoyed at the lack of umlauts (sp?) in this user interface), so I'm actually in good shape. For the shape I'm in. Which is specifically a hexagon.
Ok, that's all, folks! I'm going to go try to do something before lunch. Should I take more notes on CB's letters or work on the second draft of my marginalia essay? Your votes will decide. Well, not really.
Enthralling, eh? Oh, the exciting life of an international glamo(u)r girl.
Current PhD tally: acceptance: one: Indiana University. Waiting List: one: UVA. Still haven't heard from: NYU. Rejections: Everywhere else.
It's beginning to look a lot like Indiana. (Everywhere you go....) Of course, we'll see if NYU offers me a place and if UVA offers me a place before I have to decide about IU (which, btw, is April 15), but... yeah.
IU is also a distinctly attractive possibility. Every PhD student there is required to do a minor, and one of the minors is in Victorian Studies -- so I'd be required to take interdisciplinary classes and classes in other departments that relate to the Victorian period. Oh, poor me. There are also a number of Victorianists doing really interesting work. And they have a stellar music department, which means A) the music history classes I could take as part of my VS minor would be cool, B) they have lots o' ensembles I could audition for, and C) they have awesome concerts! Also, they're offering me a good fellowship package, whereby I wouldn't have to teach the first year... And although some New Yorkers tell me Bloomington's not terribly exciting, many Chapel Hillians like it and say it's like Chapel Hill. Which is good, because I like Chapel Hill.
AND Andy's there. Which is distinctly a plus. Although it has caused me some consternation -- many debates about whether I'm excited about it because he's there or in spite of the fact that he's there or what. But the fact is it was also the place I was most excited about before Andy even decided to apply there. So I saw it first. Hah. :)
We shall see, we shall see.
Just as I'm thinking concretely about leaving, I'm discovering that I actually am settling in nicely here in Brum. I went over to my friend Nathan's house last night with a bunch of English Dept. MPhils and watched a horror movie (well, hung out, ate Chinese food and chips (oh, British food), drank some tea, made rabbits out of Play-Dough, watched the first fifteen minutes, remembered that there's a reason I don't like horror movies, went upstairs to Nath's room, read The War of the Worlds till they were done then came down and ate some biscuits and shared a cab home with Alice). I'm discovering how to make tea properly (with milk and sugar and kind of weak), beginning to forget which rules of usage and spelling are British and which American (which is kind of annoying), and learning to devine what my flatmates had for breakfast based on what's in the dish drainer (Alicia had two pieces of toast with cheese and soft cheese; I know because there's a knife and a plate in the dish drainer).
I have my last class on Friday. Aaaah! And then I have my essays due April 24 (but I'm going to try to hand them in before I leave for the US--I'll be stateside April 4-19, when I'll visit IU and possibly NYU--and possibly UVA), and then after that I'll just have my dissertation! 12,000 words. On the Brontes. And what they read. And how they read. And stuff. I'm starting to get a tiny bit stressed about the dissertation, but on the other hand, I'm into the second volume of Charlotte Bronte's letters (I'm really annoyed at the lack of umlauts (sp?) in this user interface), so I'm actually in good shape. For the shape I'm in. Which is specifically a hexagon.
Ok, that's all, folks! I'm going to go try to do something before lunch. Should I take more notes on CB's letters or work on the second draft of my marginalia essay? Your votes will decide. Well, not really.
posted by L @ 10:43 AM
1 Comments:
At 10:39 PM,
L said…
Darling,
Actually the :'s over the final e. And I think it's trying to be French. Although it's the standardization of an Irish name, the spelling being chosen because it corresponds to the Greek word for thunder. So it's anybody's guess.
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