in Life's name and for Life's sake

Argh I seriously need to stop thinking about this but the internet is evil and provides me with all sorts of tools, which have allowed me to discern the following facts:

1. There are exactly 14 Fulbright grants to the UK available this year, which means that I am actually one of 21-28 students forwarded into the final round, which is a MUCH SMALLER NUMBER than I had previously assumed.

2. Fulbright UK has notified all students of their decisions on March 15 for the past few years.

3. All of the PhD programs I have applied to will notify on or before March 15, which means that when I go to New York and Cambridge this spring break, I'll already know which programs I've been accepted to.

4. UC Berkeley's English department has already started sending out PhD acceptances and I haven't received one yet.

Is there a way that I could just forget everything about grad school and Fulbright applications, only to remember it suddenly on March 15, by which point I will have received all of my notifications?

THIS MAY BE MORE STRESSFUL THAN UNDERGRAD.

I think I need some tea. Stat.

My life has improved greatly since my last post, and mostly for completely superficial reasons, such as:

--it has been sunny for the past two days
--I have sat and written in multiple cafes
--school begins on Thursday! and I get to see people again!
--Berkeley is beginning to feel alive again and reminding me why I'm in love

There are some non-superficial reasons for my life being better, such as the fact that Peggy Reynolds, who is officially the most awesome woman in the world (as if I didn't know this already) took time out of her vacation in Australia with her family to effectively re-write the salient portions of the letter of recommendation that wasn't submitted properly to the Marshall Scholarship application. As a result of this, I now basically have all my letters of rec and am feeling a lot better about this application. It's beginning to feel like a good thing that it's out of my hands, rather than a terrifying thing (though of course it's still terrifying).

Also, I had a realization the other day that, even if I don't make it back to London in the way I want to, I'm fundamentally not worried at all about making it back to Berkeley. I'm sure it's a dangerous belief to indulge in, because it's no more or less certain than my return to London, but nonetheless I've somehow stumbled upon a belief that if I want to spend a significant portion of my life as a Berkeley professor, well, that's probably what I'll do!

I'm also feeling lots better about my SURF presentation, which is tomorrow. As a culmination of my summer research I have to give a 15-minute presentation about what I've learned so far, and somehow I've managed to come up with a viable presentation that doesn't go too far over time and seems to elaborate the main argument I realized this summer. About a week ago, I didn't think that either of those things was even possible.

I'm typing this as I sit sipping iced coffee from Cafe Milano, looking out down Bancroft toward Telegraph and the heart of the Berkeley campus community, remembering why I love this school and the life I live here, and totally ready for my next year as a Berkeley student to begin -- because I'm also pretty sure that it won't be my last.

Oh god, just got hit with the travel bug, and BAD. May have to forbid myself from looking at the photos jayintheclouds is posting of his round-the-world trip, at least for a while -- just looking at some shots of Marseilles and knowing that someone I know is there and that I'm not only not there but also not even close to there is really depressing. I want to have a trip to plan for but the next place I'm going (aside from hopefully hopefully hopefully London to do my MA) will be Ireland with my family and we don't actually have a set YEAR for that, yet. Probably it will be after my sister graduates from college, at this rate. But that means that it's three years I have to wait through.

Of course, if I manage to get the scholarship funding I need to study in London, I could conceivably do more traveling, but both of the scholarships I'm applying for stress the fact that these scholarship programs are meant to foster US-UK communication and are not just a chance for awardees to run around Europe. At least one of them (probably both of them) restricts travel for participants, but even if it weren't in the rules that I can't spend more than a weekend out of country per month, I feel like the level of academic work I'll be engaging in will be enough to keep me primarily London-bound.

And of course this isn't a bad thing, because I have so many friends there and there are so many things to see and to do there that I haven't yet; and of course there are so many things I want to see in the United Kingdom and there are no travel restrictions on that and I would definitely be doing some serious exploring (Wales! Scotland! the west Yorkshire moors!).

But dammit if I don't just want to be on some far-off seashore, with my feet in the sand and the wind in my hair and my gaze turned to the horizon and the setting sun, listening to the way that the passersby talk in foreign tongues and the sounds slip away beneath the pulsing of the waves.