New Haircut

Back to Baylor

So, here's the drama. I e-mailed all three schools I hadn't heard from on Tuesday afternoon asking about my admission status. I got the nasty e-mail from Purdue that I posted yesterday, I heard nothing at all from Penn State, and I got a lovely e-mail from Baylor telling me that I had been accepted, but they couldn't offer me funding. Boo. So, I e-mailed Dr. Ray at Baylor asking him about future funding opportunities thinking if I couldn't get funding for the fall, maybe I could get it for Spring or for 2009. He wrote me another lovely e-mail saying that he was working on getting me funding and that if nothing else he could probably get a couple of hours of tuition remission.

Then, at 11:oo last night, I got an e-mail from him saying that one of their TAs had just quit, and they could offer me her TAship. I accepted! I am going to Baylor! I am getting my PhD! And I don't have to pay for it! Huzzah!

Grad School Woes

I got a rejection from Purdue. Here's the e-mail:

Laura -

I'm sorry but we can't offer you admission or a teaching assistantship.

Jill

Seriously, that's it. Way to break the news gently, Jill.

Finished

I turned my thesis in yesterday. It's done. I kept waking up last night thinking, "Oh, I've got to change this" and "I forgot to add this." Wait, no , I don't. We bought a bottle of my favorite champagne and drank it.

Next up is my oral defense. I have no idea when it is, but the report is due on Apr 28, so some time within the next two weeks. Wish me luck!

5 Down, 3 to Go...

Just got my official rejection from NYU. It was a very polite, professional e-mail which is more than I can say for the jokers at SMU. I am obsessively checking both my e-mail and my regular mail to find out about the last three. AAAAAAAAAAAH

Peru - Last Day

We actually got to sleep in! Before we went to the airport, we visited a pre-Incan burial site that was in a beautiful valley near a small lake. It was nice to be outside for a while although it was quite a hike! We left straight from there to go to the airport and come home.

Peru - Day Six

This day we sailed on Lake Titicaca to these little artificial reed islands. People have been living there for centuries now on these teeny tiny islands made of reeds, in huts made of reeds, sleeping on mattresses made of reeds, sailing in boats made of reeds, and sometimes even eating - you guessed it - reeds. We got to try some. It didn't taste like much.

The weird thing is, these people have to sail to some other part of the lake to use the bathroom, but when we went inside one of the huts, they had a TV that ran on solar power. So weird. Armando, one of the people who lived in the hut, was a student at the university. He commuted to the mainland every day for class, and he was studying tourism. "Why do you live here?" we asked. "Because it's our tradition. My family lives here, and I want to live with my family," he answered. Wow. That's a pretty good answer.