Arrrrrrrrgh, Grad School.

Dear Ashley,

Welcome to today's episode of "What Should I Do With My Life?" In today's episode, we'll examine the pros and cons of various Graduate Schools.

Princeton, Yale, Brown: All of them look like seriously good, seriously hard, and seriously expensive programs. My GRE score was not "high to very high" and I don't already speak three languages, so I think I won't even waste my time applying.

Dartmouth: unfortunately is just a Master's program. I may still apply, but at this point I think a Master's is just a waste of time. I don't want to teach high school, and adjuncts make less than no money, so I really need to go PhD or bust.

UMass Amherst: It's an MA/PhD program, so if I decide that I can't take it halfway through, I can still graduate with a Master's. I'll come out of it with a firm grasp of three languages, and likely be able to teach courses on any of them.
Con: I don't know what it costs, or what the chances of getting in/getting a scholarship are. I'll need to do more research.

Cornell: Looking at my list, I've just realized I never did the pros and cons for Cornell. Excuse me while I open a new tab...

...Pros: The program is SHORT. Their FAQ says generally two and a half years. That's half the time of most other programs. Huge pro.  Cons: Cornell is historically expensive and hard to get into. They accept maybe 6 people per year. My GRE scores weren't that good, but I guess I could try again. Also, I'd have to make Spanish my "primary language" because they want candidates to come into the program proficient in English and their primary language, because the program is so short, they won't have time to become proficient in more than one while they're in it.

Finally, Bing. Pros: The Little Russian Lady is there. I love her; she was my favorite professor at Bing. Cons: It's Bing. It's the 9th cloudiest city in the country and the single most dreary place in the world.

I'm going to apply to Bing, (because another pro is that I think I have the best shot of getting in there) UMass, and Cornell. Any insight you have would be greatly appreciated.

And now, to break up the monotony of grad school woes, a picture! Nothing nearly so exciting as Budapest, but it's the only thing besides drinks that I bought at the Irish Festival. It's a gorgeous and soooo soft merino wool that I've started spinning.

The festival was fun, but was a lot smaller than I imagined. We got there too late to dance- we missed the tutorial and everyone else there comes regularly and was really good- so we just watched. It was still fun. The next day Ben went to his workshop with Billy McComiskey, one of the few American button accordion players to win the All-Ireland Competition. He loved it, and hopefully will be taking lessons with Billy this winter, since Billy lives in Baltimore, not too far away. 


While he was doing that I listened to some local bands that were really good, and then Saturday night was the big concert with Billy, an amazing fiddle player, and a pianist as the main attraction, and a really fun local band that opened for them. All in all, it was a successful birthday weekend :)

Now I think I'll go try to write that scene with Glen. I really want to get query letters out for Rain, and work to revise some other stuff before NaNoProper in November. I feel like I should since I have an abundance of free time right now.

Can't wait to see more of Budapest,
-Lizz