Monday, April 07, 2008

Houses and headaches

Well, I sure wish I hadn't been counting so much on getting re-hired, because looking for a house this late is excruciating. I have gotten an astonishing amount of information on what other people are already doing, but very little in the way of options for me. I've been in conversation with Russell about some house hunting, but I also have to tell Steve by tomorrow whether I want to room with him in East Street. I mean, I do, but East Street is so insanely expensive it makes me cringe. Plus I would still be giving lots of money to the exact office that declined to employ me, which those of you who know me well will understand is a very difficult prospect for me. I'm like Rudy Giuliani lite.

Other than that, however, things seem to be falling into place as far as the future goes. Not getting hired means I have extra time at the end of my summer to do an internship, which in turn means I qualify for more grant money. If any of you haven't yet been leaked the information, I did get the Scout Fuller Summer Service Award for 2008, which will (assuming I get accepted) pay for me to do an internship through the Indianapolis Peace Institute. In some senses I can do a pretty lousy job at keeping people up-to-date on my experiences (this blog is a totally random glimpse of my actual life), but I will strive to tell you all about my summer work, as I believe publicizing it will do more justice to the honor I've been given.

In the frustrations department, I continue to wait for college personnel to reply to my e-mails. Residential Life has been particularly bad about this over the past two months, and this last week is no different. I know Lemisia commented a while back on similar experiences, so I'm not just imagining this. I admit that I sometimes lag behind in responding to friends' e-mails, but I have had a desk job on more than one occasion and I did manage to at least acknowledge when people were trying to communicate with me. I did manage to find out that dropping out for a bit won't hurt my merit-based financial aid, which is good news, but once the details of this internship are ironed out that won't really be a possibility, since I got funding based on an application saying I'd use it for school costs.

And there's concern over the future of the peace studies program at Manchester, but that's a completely different can of worms. They're already losing one of their two peace studies professors (not to be replaced), and now they're telling us that eliminating the peace intern "won't mean the college is not still committed to the program."

My understanding is that a good part of peace studies is all the stuff we do outside of the classroom, all of which is organized by said peace intern.

/rant

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