odd phenomenon

In a work meeting right now. Two girls with engagement looking rings on their right hand ring fingers.

 

Possible reasons:

1)       Left hand ring fingers both happen to be tired.

2)      Both ladies angrily not engaged any more but refused to return ring and wear it as a sign of their anger.

3)      High set solitaires are no longer only appropriate for engagement rings.

 

please read vacation blog

and give my mother some encouraging comments.
new bloggers need the love.

plus, we are braving some crazy internet cafes.

Read all about the vacation

My mother is going to be introduced to the Blogging World... we will be co-authoring the Vacation Without Regrets blog.

Right now it is fairly ugly and plain, but I just spent several days feverishly typing away so I could break loose and take a vacation. No need to stress myself out about a recreational computer based activity now. And, you can bet that about a week into this vacation I will have a deep longing for more computer time.

off to sleep!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I am going on vacation. tomorrow morning. early.

Costa Rica. again. with my mother.
I will keep you posted.

odd things to hear in the airport

Sure, in this new world of Bluetooth headsets it is uncommon to catch someone’s conversation inadvertently. I can’t help it, if you scream something as I walk by and no one else is within 5 yards of us, I take it personal.

Anyhow – an odd thing I heard on Friday: the word hubris used. Correctly. Twice.

Odd.

 

The lady next to me on the plane Friday was reading a Bobby Flay cookbook.

Number 1, I have never seen anyone read a cookbook on a plane before.

Number 2, she has a LOT of perfume on. Of course this is far superior to the large man with BO problem, but still.

Number 3, one of my man picks for the island is Anthony Bourdain and he HATES Bobby Flay. I sort of like Bobby Flay, but of course I will side with my man Anthony. This isn’t because he is a man and I am not. Nor is it because we are on an island and we shouldn’t argue. Sometimes we will need angry sex on the island to change it up, so arguments are good. I just assume that since both are in the culinary world they must have met and he must know something I don’t.

 

Other random thoughts that I might as well put into this post. 

I can spend all of my “do-er-ness” in a two day binge and then be task-light for the next two days. I should spread it out a bit. Of course, now that I have put this in writing I will have a monstrous amount of work dumped on me and I will never have a light day again.

 

Congratulations to Sara, Master of her Domain... in a non-Seinfeld sense.

Thanks Sara! And we all look forward to the amazing things you will be doing in the field considering the meteoric path you are currently on.

Now back to regular scheduled programming.

one last jab

A little P.S. on my last post-- the obnoxious coworker I mentioned just called my supervisor, who is out sick, to tell her my news. How heinous is that??

I'm kind of a big deal.

6:30 am: aforementioned call from SSPP (did I mention full funding, no legwork required? Yes, 11frogs, there is a Santa Claus.)
6:35 am: received aforementioned email from Putter-Together, actually sent at 1am from the director's personal email account
7:35 am: call from "$600 in Manhattan" offering admission. Ever the diplomat, I thanked her kindly for the offer but explained that from a strictly financial perspective, I could not possibly decline SSPP's offer. She got a little New York curt with me, but that's just those New Yorkers' way of showing they care.
7:45 am: "$600 from Manhattan" called back to ask me my ethnicity, hoping to be able to get me one of their two minority scholarships for 50% tuition. I told her that it wouldn't affect my decision anyway but in retrospect, I should have asked her to pursue it. It makes me chuckle to imagine her arguing that an Indian deserves a minority scholarship to the medical school. If she could have lined that up, that would have been a feat worthy of my acceptance.
7:47 am: missed a call from "Your Welcome". I left a long, rambling voicemail message in return, praising the director, the program, the students, the town (some of you may know it)... and declined the offer.
8:30 am: Knockout called, and it gave me heart palpitations to see her number on my cell. I know what we need is closure, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Over the phone just seems so harsh. She was very understanding, told me to take as much time as I need to think things through and make sure I make the right decision. I don't deserve her.
8:40 am: OC called and said they hope they can "entice" me to choose their program. Mmm, wonder what that meant.
8:50 am: My student contact from SSPP called to congratulate me and see if I had any questions. These little details make me feel special. It makes a difference.
9:00 am: Arrived at work and was showered with attention, including from the loud, annoying, middle-aged coworker whom I would blog about incessantly if I did this on a regular basis. She then proceeded to spread the news-- typical of her-- completely violating gossip protocol by doing this within earshot of me. But I don't care because she is in a deadend job with a crappy marriage and bratty young son, whereas I am... kind of a big deal.
Thanks, Lucia. It's been real.

tell me I was dreaming

In the 4 hrs of sleep I managed to allow myself last night, I dreamt that I was accepted to SSPP (dream school) but I answered the phone groggy, with a froggy (Kermit?) voice, and asked the director to hold on for 30 seconds while I woke myself up. She practically rescinded the offer.

In real life, I woke up at 4:40am groggy and assuming 20 minutes until the first call. Like, surely East Coast directors have been dreaming of me for the past 3 months and biding their time until 8am EST on May 2. I have been a bit cocky in this process since being told I'm a good application-putter-together.

By 6:30 I had worked out the froggy voice and decided to move onto other morning activities that use my mouth. As I spit the last toothpaste residue from my mouth (this is another reason I don't blog. Who wants to know this minutiae?), the phone rang. I didn't recognize the area code so I figured it was "Graduate Housing for $600 a Month" (the only other East Coast school that would be calling). But hark the herald angels sing-- it's the "SSPP" director calling from her cell phone. She apologizes for waking me up and tells me she is delighted to offer me a position! The admissions committee all thought I would be a great fit! (And, I think, that works for me because your MD and PhD programs are so highly esteemed.) She said she had been trying to hold off on calling me until a reasonable hour. I think she was trying to make me sweat. Playing hard to get-- another quality I like in men and grad schools.

When I logged on to Gmail to blog, I saw the acceptance email from "Putter-Together" and frankly, I scoffed.  It's not even personalized; it's one of those "Dear Candidate" emails.  The next steps feel rather anticlimactic from my high horse. If and when I have to reject the "Knockout" offer for the more lucrative and equal caliber SSPP offer, that will be what hurts me inside. It's not you, KO... but it's not me either. It's just all about the Benjamins.

It looks as though we will be making an early return to your regularly scheduled Lucia programming. 

off-the-charts nervous

Thanks for the warm welcome, Lucia! So now I am faced with a ticking time bomb of grad school decisions and the pressure to be funny enough to justify my guest appearance here. I am off-the-charts nervous, but I just imagined you naked, and it helped a little bit.

My program isn't like your program. Here are some key features:

• 25 programs across the country, each of which takes between 4 and 6 students each year
• approximately five Y chromosomes in the entire profession
• we're not going to be MDs or PhDs (this is a sore spot) but we'll have to work as hard as them for the next two years, starting with the interview process
• no clear hierarchy among the programs; applicants are encouraged to find "the best fit" for them during the interviews. I preferred to create my hierarchy based on the strength of the MD and PhD programs.

Interviews took me to six schools, nicknamed as follows:

1. "Your welcome"-- perfectly good program. Current students were nice and helpful. Wonderful, supportive director. However, the director tragically responded to my post-interview Thank You email with a two word reply: "Your welcome." Now, I imagine that certain readers may already have noted several grammatical errors in this post. But this director lady misspelled 50% of her correspondence! That is how I will make myself feel better if Your Welcome says No, Thanks to my application.
2. "Smart, Sexy, P, P!"-- smart, sexy, and all about public policy. Or... OK, this is why I don't blog. Because this story should not be told to an audience of unknown size and composition. So here goes. This school wooed its applicants, made us feel elite, wined and dined us (black bean fajitas) the night before the interview. And I was off-the-charts nervous then too (and didn't meet the interviewer who I wanted to imagine naked until late afternoon). 10 minutes before my first interview of the day, I think maybe I should make a quick run to the ladies'. And... I clog the toilet. Holy crap where is the plunger. Must be in the closet that is, thank god, within the bathroom. Closet door is locked. Holy crap 8 minutes until my first interview at my dream school and I have clogged the only toilet on this entire floor. Quick review of my options: a) walk away and pretend I didn't do it and pray no one is waiting outside, b) tell the administrative assistant what happened and hope she isn't tight with the interviewers, c) try to simulate plunger action without a plunger. Option C was ruled out first, but not as quickly as you might hope, because I was wearing a suit and needed to be presentable in about 6 minutes. Mildly disturbing that these were the only 2 reasons that led me to rule it out at the time. I went with Option B, and I think it was the right choice. The admin asst was perfectly discreet and I arrived on time, smelling like roses, for my first interview. So that's "Smart, Sexy, and Plunger, Please!"
3. "Putter-together": Perfectly OK program; probably the closest thing to a safety school that I have. The director spent the first 2 minutes of the interview showering me with praise such as "you're a great application-putter-together." I kind of tuned out the rest.
4. "Graduate housing in Manhattan for $600 a month"-- I guess there might be some classes or something involved too. My third choice.
5. "KO"-- Knockout. Amazing. Smart, sexy, young, promising. These adjectives describe the program, its director, and my ideal man. But this is a man that wouldn't pay for me, whereas #2 would. So KO is my second choice.
6. "OC"- Perfectly ok program, fabulous directors, too close to home. 

The acceptance process is kind of like for MDs, but better. Starting Friday morning (eek- today!) schools start calling everyone on their acceptance list and wait list. Lucky to be on the West Coast... if all goes well, I'll be getting at least one wake-up call at 5 or 6am from the East Coast. Applicants have to make their decisions by next Wednesday. So the next 5 days will be chaos in my little world as applicants turn down offers from places like #3 in favor of sexier options and directors continue to call as wait lists change. 

Will blog as real-time as an overbearing boss permits. 

guest blogger: Sara of Sara y Lucia fame - Graduate School Live Blogging!

Sara, of last year's Costa Rican trip blogging duo, is currently applying to graduate schools. Well, she has applied and interviewed.
now it is response time!
Apparently folks in her program are super civil and across all of the country, they announce who they are extending offers to on May 2nd. So, tomorrow she is going to be getting random calls from schools about their offers or waitlists... I am so excited, I can't even imagine her level of excitement.

I have invited Sara to be a special guest blogger here. I recommend she give each school fun nicknames and then give us some status updates...
like the "Smart, Unsexy, but all about public policy school", etc.

please welcome Sara!