At this point I was smiling so hard that I was sort of reflexively laughing and nearly crying at the same; thank God there was nobody coming up on the sidewalk behind me. Being myself, I needed to share this exciting news with someone before I burst, so I did what any sane girl living abroad would do; I whipped out my posh phone (as Josh calls it), logged into my skype, and used by skype credit for landlines to call my mom at her office! Fortunately for me, she picked up and I was able to half-laugh/cry my news to her via 3G. Oh the wonders of technology. As I explained the details of the email--that I had been invited to visit the institute and get to know the community (and vice versa) before final admissions decisions were made, it dawned on us--that was the weekend I had planned my trip to Sweden. I was fairly nonplussed, however, and figured I would just re-book it. Complications happen, and this was a really important one. Did I mention they were paying for my international flight and expenses? It would turn out this even meant my coffee while I was in Providence. Good deal!
A month later (on the bottom bunk in a beautiful youth hostel in the Lake District in Grasmere, England, via some slightly more expensive, roaming 3G) I received more exciting news from Harvard--I had been accepted outright to their program with full funding and had been invited to attend their get-to-know-you/wooing weekend as well! I was ecstatic that I had at least one, excellent option for grad school (seeing as Brown wasn't yet a certainty), and also more than a little bit stressed; the Harvard weekend fell smack in the middle of our vacation in Greece, and Gilder and I had already bought the flights. Nonetheless, we both knew how important the visit was, and I'm fortunate to have an incredibly supportive boyfriend, so we decided I absolutely had to go and that Gilder would see about exchanging his ticket for a partial refund and a flight to Boston instead of Athens. The upside of all of this? Given my chosen profession and graduate school plans, the possibility of us getting to visit Greece together in the very near future is extraordinarily high!
And so instead of heading to Sweden on March 16th, I hopped the lovely bus from Tuebingen to the Stuttgart Airport (which is so much easier to deal with than either the trip to, or the enormous facilities that make up, Frankfurt Airport) and boarded a flight to Heathrow and Boston. Many hours later, and not having slept a wink on the flight, I was met (along with another visiting prospective) by current Joukowsky students, Müge and Clive, at the arrivals area of Boston Logan. They handed us large bottles of water and gave us poor jet lagged souls a speedy (and entertaining) lift back to campus--could you ask for anything more?
The weekend at Brown was a full one, with days full of planned activities and events: panels, interviews, discussions, tours, presentations, and of course lots of food and some social events. Anyone who is sure to schedule time for delicious food (and oh was it delicious) and parties? Those are my people. I had an absolutely fabulous weekend, and was essentially blown away from the first moment I arrived. The institute building itself was unbelievable, the students and faculty were all extremely nice and very awesome (I guess this is what happens when you let everyone meet your prospectives before you finally select whom to admit), and though I was jet lagged and exhausted for the entire duration of visit, we were so well taken care of that it didn't really end up mattering. Whenever we all gathered together the director, Sue, would stand taking us all in and then ask, "Where are my jet laggers? How are we doing? Do we need coffee? We can send someone to get you coffee!" Needless to say we did not go without, and the weekend ended with some, er, excellent festivities. I was proud to say that, though I was exhausted, I made it til the very end!
I headed home on Sunday for some rest and recuperation at the Griffin-Steidl homestead, and enjoyed lazing about with the animals and my family after lots and lots of traveling. My anticipation factor was high--I couldn't wait to hear back from Brown about final decisions, and I desperately wanted to be admitted after meeting everyone there and getting to know more about the program. I had been warned, though, that given all of the other things going on at that moment, it was possible it might be a couple of weeks before I heard back. So I steeled myself for a bit of a wait and some certainly possible rejection--of the eight, entirely qualified, extremely intelligent, not to mention just plain nice prospective students who visited, they would only be able to offer full support to three. Gilder arrived three days later, and we spent some very enjoyable time stuffing our faces at Hanover's breakfast/brunch/lunch institution, Lou's, with my very dear, very old friend Steph. In other news, Steph has just moved to Boston, so we're going to need to find a new brunch haunt for a new tradition! Somehow whenever I get home from Germany, the focus seems to be on food. Who'd have thought? Anyway, on day four--DAY FOUR--I received an email from the Brown Graduate School. These are total killers, because you get an email that says a decision has been made regarding your application status, and instead of just opening it and ripping off the band-aid, you have to click the link, go to the site, try to log in, forget your password and pin because you have eight different ones from eight different online program applications, search through your email, find the correct one, get to your homepage, find the correct link to see the status decision, and then DOWNLOAD THE DAMN PDF. At this point, I was fidgeting so much I might as well have been running circles around my room. And then bam, there it was. I had been accepted. Just like that. The relief and euphoria felt something like in books when people describe some sort of liquid emotion spreading through your body. I finally got what they were talking about. Gilder was in the shower...I promptly delivered the good news by yelling through the door, and nearly fell down our stairs to greet my father who was just returning home from work. I ran out barefoot into the driveway, decidedly like a five-year-old, because I couldn't contain myself and met him halfway from retrieving the mail to explain that I'd just received confirmation from Brown that they, in fact, agreed with me--we were a perfect fit. Knowing I still had a second visit, however, I decided I needed to keep an open mind and hold off from making the final decision I very badly wanted to make immediately (partly because I loved the institute and partly because it had just been so damn long and I wanted to end things). We enjoyed a couple of more days in Hanover, and then Gilder and I headed down to Boston for the Harvard visit, to be followed by a surprise visit to Wesleyan for the crew team's first regatta of the regular season, and first home spring race since before our time.
Arriving in Boston-Cambridge a day early, we spent a wonderful evening with my other very dear friend, Aka, and spent the next day taking in some sights around Harvard Square and dining at The Friendly Toast before I checked into my hotel and Gilder took the car and went off to visit with friends. Things began early the next morning with the Harvard visit, and I was again blown away by how friendly and interested everyone was. Should I have been shocked? No, not at all. Maybe it's just that after spending so much time in a culture that's a little more reserved on the surface, I had some mini-culture shock. I again, had a busy, full visit schedule, though it was much more free-form than the Brown weekend, and I spent several minutes each morning poring over the schedule to pick out which I would attend of the many overlapping events, classes, and office hours. There was something to be said for sitting in on a class and touring all of the facilities--particularly the library. Firstly, after being in my German university classes, sitting in on something in English was wonderful. I felt like I was back in a seminar at Wesleyan and enjoyed hearing students contribute to an intelligent discussion in my native language. Then there's also the fact that it's Harvard. All of my international friends had been exhibiting some brand shock when the subject of grad schools came up (because let's face it, of all of our colleges and universities, it's probably the most internationally-recognized). Seeing the facilities, hearing about all of the resources, and getting lots of compliments on my thesis (plus, you know, that full funding) was a real ego boost. I'm the kind of person who likes to please as many people as possible, and I felt very 'wanted' during the course of the visit. By the end, I was just really wishing that I could attend both programs and have that be the end of it. It wasn't all running around attending classes, though! I did get the chance to have a delicious brunch with several wescrew teammates and our former coach, all of whom are living in the Boston area. The upside of my dilemma, I knew, was that no matter where I wound up I was going to be in close proximity to a number of very good friends. Not to mention some excellent rowing.
Deciding to sleep on a final decision, we headed down to Middletown to a hotel and tried to get some decent sleep before the early regatta morning. It was a little odd to show up and have nothing to do but stand around--the worst thing you can possibly do when you're a member of the team--but we said a joyful hello to a bunch of extremely surprised teammates and offered some help with food tent in the place of my parents, who were the planning and hauling backbone of the operation for the last three years. The racing went well, and we also had a chance to visit with my Aunt Jane and some taiko friends, busy running around and executing the plans for a big collegiate taiko conference that weekend. I got to see a fantastic taiko performance, put on by some true legends in the North American--and international--taiko community, and we headed back to Hanover the following morning, only to be delayed for a couple of hours by a sheared brake line. Relatively uneventful, and only somewhat terrifying. The joys of travel and vehicles!
I think everyone is aware of my decision at this point, but the result of all of this visiting and free time at home is that I'll be starting the PhD program at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World in the fall! It was a tough decision for me to make, given how much I enjoyed everyone I met, but ultimately the substantial differences between the two curricula made the choice for me. The program at Harvard is through the Classics Department, and provides a course of training that is more firmly Greek and Roman, and split about 50/50 between philology and archaeology. The Joukowsky Institute, on the other hand, is fully archaeological, and provides education in things like philology, ancient languages, etc, as a supporting framework for more overall archaeologically-based research and alter teaching. I had to decided which was more for me in order to make my decision, but the latter was really what I had been looking for all along, and I just had to be okay with saying no to something that else that I would have also loved to have--never really easy, no matter how old we are, is it?
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