Hellions, grab your ice skates
Because it's pretty much just frozen over.
Yep, I'm heading off to grad school in the fall. I refrained from saying anything publically until I knew for sure, because applying and not getting in = embarrassing if you're me, and even if accepted I wasn't sure I'd be able to afford it. But I applied to BU's School of Print Journalism back in January; I had had just about enough professional catastrophe that I didn't want to continue being a journalist if I couldn't be good at it at that point. Not losing-my-job kind of catastrophe; in fact I've been phoning it in here so hard since finding out I've pretty much come to the conclusion I'm bulletproof. No, it was more along the lines of 'we're going to gag your stories because they're true and the truth might offend the advertisers and there's nothing you can do about it because you probably wouldn't get a job at a bigger paper nyah nyah' fuckery. And that pissed me off, because when it's a little town like this you actually KNOW the people your silence is dicking over. You stand next to them in the grocery line. I've never made it a secret that I don't want to stay here, but that doesn't mean I don't care about the people and think they deserve to, oh I don't know, NOT get cancer from toxic drilling muds. But that's just little old liberal-pansy me. You know how it is.
Anyway, I applied to BU, which was really a stretch, since I attended the world's most obscure undergraduate institution and did okay, but not fantastic when I was there. And the job experience since has been...well. The stint at Highlight Magazine editing the Hidden Pictures is probably the most impressive part of it. I called admissions when I was applying and got their average GPA, average GRE scores, all that, of their accepted postgrad students, and on pretty much every scale I was nearly exactly average, maybe a little bit above. And BU, in addition to being competitive, is EXPENSIVE. Like, exceeding the national madate for a federal stafford loan by about fifteen thousand dollars expensive. To say nothing of the special joy of living in Boston, home of the five-dollar Yuengling. I could be accepted, not offered any merit based aid and I still wouldn't have been able to go.
Anyway, suspense is probably pretty much forgone at this point. They accepted me, and offered me 10k merit based off the bat. That shrinked the gap between stafford loan and cost to just under 5k, which I can easily come up with. So I know I can go. And there is much rejoicing.
That brings us to yesterday, when they offer me a chance to apply (ergo, not in the bag yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic) for their biggest assistanceship, which would make me a TA for 20 undergrads and pay 6000 a SEMESTER plus full tuition remission.
And today, they sent me an email about a full-time features writer job for their alumni newsletter.
If I get both, Boston University is effectively paying me to go to school.
So yeah, I'm slightly shellshocked and not long for NEPA. I had originally planned to stay until July because that's when I was promoted and I promised Steve a year, but we've sinced talked and he wants to hire a college grad to replace me, so he'd like to start looking in May or so.
So there it is. As of this weekend, I have about seven more weeks in Honesdale. I'll probably sublet my apartment furnished so I don't have to get storage or break my lease, and just head up to town with a suitcase to find some kind of starbucky thing for spending money and an apartment. I might even be able to afford my own place if both jobs work out, which is great, because as I told Trillador, I was half afraid I'd be sharing a basement in Mattapan (read: Harlem with a dumber accent) with two sculptors, a bank teller, and their homemade crack pipe collection.
Maybe I could get a place with a little balcony, near the ocean. I miss the ocean. I miss walking on the sand after work. I haven't even allowed myself to think about things like that for a long time, because it'd be like saying "I miss steak and fur coats." And now, it can maybe happen in a little less than two months. I'm still in a bit of a state of shock in case you couldn't tell, and waiting for the parts of the plan still up in the air to fall through. And I do know that time and money are going to be tight, and one way or another I'm in for two very stressful years of preparation for and even more stressful proffession. I know I'm probably going to dislike all the things about gradschool that I disliked about college the first time, and that I'm probably going to feel like a hayseed, and that I'm probably going to be the old woman in a room full of 22-year-old valedictorians from Amherst. But I'm still happy.
So be happy for me, bitches!
Yep, I'm heading off to grad school in the fall. I refrained from saying anything publically until I knew for sure, because applying and not getting in = embarrassing if you're me, and even if accepted I wasn't sure I'd be able to afford it. But I applied to BU's School of Print Journalism back in January; I had had just about enough professional catastrophe that I didn't want to continue being a journalist if I couldn't be good at it at that point. Not losing-my-job kind of catastrophe; in fact I've been phoning it in here so hard since finding out I've pretty much come to the conclusion I'm bulletproof. No, it was more along the lines of 'we're going to gag your stories because they're true and the truth might offend the advertisers and there's nothing you can do about it because you probably wouldn't get a job at a bigger paper nyah nyah' fuckery. And that pissed me off, because when it's a little town like this you actually KNOW the people your silence is dicking over. You stand next to them in the grocery line. I've never made it a secret that I don't want to stay here, but that doesn't mean I don't care about the people and think they deserve to, oh I don't know, NOT get cancer from toxic drilling muds. But that's just little old liberal-pansy me. You know how it is.
Anyway, I applied to BU, which was really a stretch, since I attended the world's most obscure undergraduate institution and did okay, but not fantastic when I was there. And the job experience since has been...well. The stint at Highlight Magazine editing the Hidden Pictures is probably the most impressive part of it. I called admissions when I was applying and got their average GPA, average GRE scores, all that, of their accepted postgrad students, and on pretty much every scale I was nearly exactly average, maybe a little bit above. And BU, in addition to being competitive, is EXPENSIVE. Like, exceeding the national madate for a federal stafford loan by about fifteen thousand dollars expensive. To say nothing of the special joy of living in Boston, home of the five-dollar Yuengling. I could be accepted, not offered any merit based aid and I still wouldn't have been able to go.
Anyway, suspense is probably pretty much forgone at this point. They accepted me, and offered me 10k merit based off the bat. That shrinked the gap between stafford loan and cost to just under 5k, which I can easily come up with. So I know I can go. And there is much rejoicing.
That brings us to yesterday, when they offer me a chance to apply (ergo, not in the bag yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic) for their biggest assistanceship, which would make me a TA for 20 undergrads and pay 6000 a SEMESTER plus full tuition remission.
And today, they sent me an email about a full-time features writer job for their alumni newsletter.
If I get both, Boston University is effectively paying me to go to school.
So yeah, I'm slightly shellshocked and not long for NEPA. I had originally planned to stay until July because that's when I was promoted and I promised Steve a year, but we've sinced talked and he wants to hire a college grad to replace me, so he'd like to start looking in May or so.
So there it is. As of this weekend, I have about seven more weeks in Honesdale. I'll probably sublet my apartment furnished so I don't have to get storage or break my lease, and just head up to town with a suitcase to find some kind of starbucky thing for spending money and an apartment. I might even be able to afford my own place if both jobs work out, which is great, because as I told Trillador, I was half afraid I'd be sharing a basement in Mattapan (read: Harlem with a dumber accent) with two sculptors, a bank teller, and their homemade crack pipe collection.
Maybe I could get a place with a little balcony, near the ocean. I miss the ocean. I miss walking on the sand after work. I haven't even allowed myself to think about things like that for a long time, because it'd be like saying "I miss steak and fur coats." And now, it can maybe happen in a little less than two months. I'm still in a bit of a state of shock in case you couldn't tell, and waiting for the parts of the plan still up in the air to fall through. And I do know that time and money are going to be tight, and one way or another I'm in for two very stressful years of preparation for and even more stressful proffession. I know I'm probably going to dislike all the things about gradschool that I disliked about college the first time, and that I'm probably going to feel like a hayseed, and that I'm probably going to be the old woman in a room full of 22-year-old valedictorians from Amherst. But I'm still happy.
So be happy for me, bitches!