No longer pretending to be a grad student

I have been accepted to my grad school program in urban and regional planning at the University of Minnesota! I'm really excited and can't wait to start. I even enjoyed the orientation that they offered last week, even though it was billed as a session all about OneStop and how to register (topics so ingrained in my soul from actually being involved with setting up the course schedule so people could actually register).

Pretending to be a grad student

I'm enrolling in urban and regional planning courses this fall as a non-degree-seeking student. Yes. I didn't get into the Master's program at the U of MN's Humphrey Institute for Fall 2008. I am optimistic. Instead of emailing me and telling me exactly no and don't bother us again, the director emailed me and told me that the committee encourages me to take a few courses and if I'm successful, I should reapply. She also explained that they are keeping my application open, and will not have to fully reapply for next year.

So I'm definitely going to take PA 5211 Land Use Planning. It meets before work and the course guide description is really exciting.

How did I end up with plan F

A few years ago while I was graduating from college, I composed a list of plans.

Wow. I'm living plan F and have been for 2 years!!! Yikes.

Last November I felt like I was in a hole that I couldn't get out of.

I better start composing more plans!

A. Get into the MURP program and work at the Center for Writing until finished.
B. Get into the MURP program and work as a grad student somewhere, supplementing my income with something like a loan or a second job.
C. Get a job that requires a linguistics degree.
D. Work teaching ESL.
E. Get a job that requires a bachelor's degree

So. I guess that I would be on to plan C or D if I didn't get into graduate school for a Master's in Urban and Regional Planning from the Humphrey.

New home

I am no longer on the OIFS blogroll so there is no pressure to actually blog about biking, which I haven't managed to do a lick of all summer. I did manage to put on my Nitto handlebars purchased at Hiawatha Cyclery and fucked up my brake cords.

I moved in with my boyfriend. I have never done this before, despite my 27 years. My best friend with whom I was living with for the last 5 years understands, I think.

We have our apartment almost completely set up. I'm going through my books and selling them on Amazon. Some are ridiculously valuable and after entering 37 in last night, I got 2 sales within a few minutes.

We bought a shower head with that detachable thing. We are seriously customizing this rental property, including adding value to our storage unit with track shelving.

job with a laptop

I just started my part-time admin assistant job this week and it comes with a Compaq nx6110 laptop! I'm living my fantasy of sitting around in a coffee shop and working on a laptop. I think that I will actually get a banjo brothers bag now with a laptop sleeve as I don't really have a suitable bag for this thing yet.

I'm on my way to the 5th Congressional District DFL Debate at the Temple Israel tonight at 7:30pm. I was chatting with my new boss about this election and it wasn't even supposed to have a debate because the MN DFL wanted to put their energy behind the governor race (more important races) then a shoe-in election to replace Martin Sabo in a District that has been Democratic since time began. But some candidates didn't want to take the endorcement convension into account so here we are with a debate. I'm always up for a debate. Bring it on.

blogging must not be my forte

I'm impressed that I stayed on OIFS blogroll and I'm a little sad that one kid stopped blogging about bicycles and bathrooms. It is my last week at CCLC. It is a sad one, but I'm ready to move on. I've downloaded as much of my knowledge as possible into our new student worker. We even had beinah telepathic experience. And they hired a resourceful new web person.

I've been trying not to freak out too much about my prospects. I managed to completely finish my B.A. in Linguistics this May. So now I'm a little closer to actually being a linguist. I will post the final draft of the page-turner senior project "Nominalization in Dene Suline" later. I've been applying to different places at the U. A large percentage actually made it through Donhowe. So far I have had one call for an interview. I don't know why I won't get this because they seem really harried and busy. I hope that I fall in with a bunch of kooks, like I normally do. It is possible that I draw the kookiness out of people, so in that case, no worries.

I get to go to Boston on Friday for a few days for my volunteering thing. That should be fun.

off to Ireland in a few days; new word for snow

Until today, as a former-North-Dakotan Minnesotan, I thought that I had experienced almost every kind of snow.

I left to go on my training run-walk this evening (if you, addressing ,of course, the legions of souls who patronize this here site have not noticed, I'm raising money to cure leukemia and lymphoma, see sidebar at right). I didn't believe the forecasts for snow. It was warmish (34 degrees fahrenheit) and dry (my hands were really dry at least). I started my 4th run time (12 minutes left of the run-walk) and I noticed tiny snow flake. They got bigger. I started inhaling them. It was a good kind of inhale, fresh and clean. After my last run period, I was walking down 25th Street and I heard the snow fall. I had never heard it before. The snow was icy-ish and frequent. It made a sound like paper being rippled. A few people commented on my lack of winter clothing and pitied me for getting caught in the snow fall, until they saw from my expression how much I was enjoying it. I can only explain my recent acquaintance with this sound with a) avoiding the snow fall by watching Star Trek episodes one after the other. b) being in a car or on a bike during this kind of snowfall c) global warming introduced me to the paper crackle snow.

I recently became fascinated with the idea of reintroducing the classical education to the young people in K-12. Not in the home schooled christian sorta way though. It just seems sensible to incite debate during junior high, instead of continuing to force students to memorize shit. If you let the younger kids know that the memorization part of their lives will be over at some point, they might get into more it. They might find songs to memorize stuff. I'm all for the trivium. I might even make a t-shirt that says trivium on it.

"You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older, and now you're even older. You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older, and now you're older still."
--They Might Be Giants

bike/grad school update

I finally got my 3-speed into a shop to have the internal hub overhauled. I also managed to have my work pay for it because of some pitch-hitting that I did over the weekend.

I won an ebay auction for a shimano rear derailleur for the mtn bike. The seller hasn't told me how much the shipping is yet.

I got an email from Saarland. I do not have the "pertinent prerequisites". Being ever tenacious I emailed them back to make sure. The coordinator told me in February that they would not make a decision about me until May.

A part of me is relieved. I don't really want to leave the comfyness of the Twin Cities.

Strong interest inventory

I spent pretty much all day at an event for work making popcorn (I love my job). The goal was to lure wayward freshmen and sophomores into the Great Hall, and then pounce on them with interest inventories so that they can discover their place at the U. I took the short version of the inventory just to see what it was like. You mark on a list things that you enjoy doing. The things are catagorized into the 6 categories that some guy named Strong developed as attributes of employees not being in complementary distribution.
Investigative: enjoy researching on your own
Conventional: low tolerance for ambiguity
Realistic: the only one that really needs explaining. Working with your hands on something tangible
Social: helping people, etc
Artistic: like to do artsy things
Enterprising: if you said you like to sell stuff, duh.

Theoretically we were supposed to have 3 categories with the highest things marked.

For me, the first two tied and the second two tied.
First 2: Investigative and Social (I am told that this is very weird as they are on the opposite sides of the spectrum)
Second 2: Realistic (makes sense, I like working with me hands), and get this
Conventional!

I'm going to go to bed. My apartment is cold and my bed looks warm. I started running again in the evening so I hope that I have a good night's sleep.

Applied to the next 2 years of my life

I can't stop procrastinating. I have 3 reports that I have write up for my Field Methods course in Linguistics. I emailed the last bit of my graduate school application to Germany with minutes to spare (I'm still in denial about the fact that when the German website said "submit all materials by February 15, that they mean the applicant's time zone of February 15 and not the February 15 in Germany).

I better start preparing for plans B through F.