As good of a place to start as any....

reposted from the contents of a recently sent-out email

Dear friends, family, advisors, caretakers, and the what-not:

Communication has admittedly been sparse (and frequently unreturned) lately from your (step-)daughter/(step-)sister/former student/friend/advisee/that girl you met once ( i.e., me), leaving what I'm certain is a nearly non-existent amount of gossip floating about concerning me. Even so, that's how rumours get started, so let's recap a little.

Applied to six graduate schools. Didn't get into any of them. No, you may not ask why; most of the time, I don't know, and in the one case where I do have an idea, I'm still not telling you about it.

For those of you playing along at home, that means I'm /not/ going back to school in September, but will be waiting another year for the application process to cycle back around and give me another chance. Now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing and what I'm up against, I'm hoping that in this coming year, I will have a better shot at it. Doing 40 hours a week of intensive tutoring of kids with learning disabilities (I've been working for Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes since the summer) is no longer a shock to the system that saps my will to live and leaves me a broken shell of a human being at the end of every weekday -- it's sort of like training for a marathon; with practice, even the impossible begins to seem easy -- and maybe this time I'll even manage to budget my schedule to go visit some of these places. There's a metaphor about horses kicking you off here, but I'm too tired to expand on it.

But what does this mean for the interim year? Well, Ashlea's still working on her Ph.D at Drew, hoping to finish up in May of 2008, but she's in the stage where she's mostly writing on her own and meeting occasionally with professor-type people, so she's pretty free to pick up and go. And I personally would like to get out of New Jersey, as everything here costs too much and is rather surly. I've done my four years here, and I think it's time to go see somewhere else.

Where else? Bryn Mawr. No, Texans, I'm not just making up words, it's a real place -- just west of Philadelphia, in a pretty part of Pennsylvania. There's another Lindamood-Bell office there, and my boss has already been on the phone with them, so there's definitely a job for me, and possibly a receptionist-type position for Ashlea (who could also find gainful employment in one of the many fine libraries in the area). Also, Ashlea spent a great deal of her growing-up years in that part of the country, which means that for her it'll be not unlike going back home (except that her parents have now moved away, so mine don't have to get jealous).

We're going in on tomorrow to look at one (and possibly two?) apartment(s) less than a mile away from the Lindamood-Bell center. Hopefully we will be cute and nonthreatening enough, and also that the place will be awesome enough. Assuming everything works out, we will leave here (the townhouse we are house-sitting for Ashlea's boss) and head to PA in mid- to late June.

We are looking specifically for places that will let us have dogs. Mallory, discharging faithfully her duties as my little sister, said, 'You know, I have to say I'd never imagined you'd be moving to Pennsylvania, buying a puppy, and teaching children.' Thank you for putting things into perspective, Woogs.

Anyway, that's about the state of the me. If you'd like to save face, family, please feel free to tell curious well-wishers that I did not get into the grad school I wanted, and that it's due to a whole confluence of factors, many of which I cannot control, and that I'm just taking another year off and earning money at a job I honestly like in the hopes that next year's effort will be moderately more successful. All of these statements are entirely truthful.

Many thanks and much love to all of you who have helped me in this process, as well as those of you who have convinced me to stop fretting over my internal academic clock that tells me I'm a complete failure if I don't have a Ph.D by the time I'm 30. (hey, some women want babies....) Seriously, I'm not only pretty much completely fine by now, I'm actually looking forward to the move and the change of pace.

And who knows where I'll go next year?