We're moving to Texas! That's right! Come August (the month,
not the dude) we'll have a new mailing address. Okay, so that was the
short version of the story, if you'd like the long boring version keep
reading...
To explain why we're moving to Texas I need to establish some
background information. Two years ago I completed my (first) MA at
UGA. At the time I was accepted to the University of Texas at Austin,
UGA and Penn State. We liked all of the schools, but decided to come
to Penn State because we liked the smaller town idea and the idea of
milder summers (which we've really enjoyed a lot!) Well, when we came
here we told them here that I was only interested in working in Second
Language Acquisition with Spanish (SLA), and they had an awesome
professor here who works with SLA so it seemed like a great fit.
Nevertheless we did feel a bit awkward about coming here because we
had already been accepted to, and accepted the offer from UT and
because the program here would require an extra year of work because
they wouldn't fully recognize my MA from UGA. Nevertheless, we
decided to come anyway in spite of our misgivings. Well, a few weeks
ago I took the comprehensive exams, which are supposed to be the last
step in getting my MA here and the last step in getting admitted to be
an official PhD student here. I passed the comps, but I was only
provisionally accepted to stay, which meant that basically I would
have to retake the comps in November. Well, that was kind of a
bummer, but we decided to stick it out. Then I found out that the
awesome SLA professor that they have here just got denied tenure,
which means that she's now looking for a job elsewhere. Okay, we
still decided to stick it out. Then I met with the two other
professors with whom I was at least somewhat interested in working
about projects that involved blending SLA with the areas of Spanish
linguistics that interest them the most. Both professors thought my
ideas were great, but both hinted that I should probably think about
working with other professors on those projects...professors whom I
had either not yet met or with whom I had absolutely no desire to
work. Well, that made us think: Hey, maybe we shouldn't stay. This
was about three weeks ago, which was about 6 months after the
application deadlines for most graduate programs. It seemed like we
were stuck. Then I remembered that a very friendly professor that I
had met my first year here left a year ago to go work at UT, so I shot
her an email to see what she thought the odds were of my being
accepted there for this Fall or next Fall given that I had been
accepted before, but I had kind of been a jerk by accepting their
first offer and then changing my mind. Well, she responded quite
positively, and within three days I had filled out and submitted all
of the paperwork, including three letters of recommendation. Because
this was kind of a last minute thing and I didn't want to get people
thinking about us heading over to UT again and then letting everyone
down again I asked Jenny and Sarah not to spread the word too much,
which is why this may be a surprise to most of you. Anyway, this
morning I got an email from UT accepting me for this Fall!!! And I
quote: "I am pleased to inform you that the Graduate Admissions and
Financial Aid (GAFA) Committee of the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese has recommended your admission to our graduate program.
Congratulations! The selection process is quite rigorous: we have
offered admission to only 14 of the 105 applicants." We are very
happy for this new opportunity! Yes, we're still intimidated about
living in a big city. Yes, we're not looking forward to temperatures
above 85 again. Yes, we would rather shave our heads and shine them
with turtle wax rather than move across the country again. Yes, we're
worried about finding a nice place to live in a nice school district
for our kiddies. BUT, this program seems like it would be a really
good fit! Other than the things just mentioned we don't have any
other misgivings, which means that we feel pretty good about going to
UT! And UT has a stellar SLA program with two leaders in the field
working there (both of whom already have tenure), and one of whom I've
already spoken with on the phone. :) So, I'll be teaching here in
July, and Jenny will be doing some courses through sometime in June.
After which she'll be heading down to Austin for a few days to try and
find a place for us to move to. We know that it's probably hopeless,
but we're going to try and see if we could potentially buy a place
like we did in Grovetown, instead of renting. But with our massive
student debt and my extremely small income, it doesn't seem likely.
So we'll probably rent, but hopefully a nice place like we have here.
Well, that's the long version, sorry to bore you. (If you want
the really, really short version: we're moving to Texas so that we can
get in more paintball practice before Christmas!) ;) Oh, and we're
still trying to figure out a way to convince Sarah to come with us.
:) (An interesting anecdote about that: Yesterday William and Michael
were watching a movie and William pointed out to Michael that the
family in the movie didn't have a "Sarah" (i.e. awesome live-in
aunt).) :)
No comments:
Post a Comment