Excitement!!!

Look who likes cantaloupe! There are more pictures, really.


First, the backstory:
As many of you know, we've been trying to move out of the Washington/Baltimore/allergen corridor since we married and chose to live here. It hasn't worked out, obviously, as we're still here. I (J.) applied to Cornell in 2006, certain that they'd accept me. I didn't get in, so I applied to CUA as a library science student, hoping that it would bolster my applications the next time around.

CUA was all good and fun (some classes, anyway), and I spent Fall 2008 applying to five different schools: Cornell (again), Harvard, University of Pittsburgh, University of Pennsylvania, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. After visiting three of five (the Ivies), the rejection letters came in, all on Fridays: Cornell, Penn, Pitt, then, after a suspenseful, hoping-for-irony wait, Harvard.

Several weeks later, Virginia Tech accepted me (on a Wednesday). At this point, it was early May 2009. M. was coming in two months, and I had already signed my contract for work the following year. So I deferred, hoping that VT would be able to offer me money or an assistantship (which waives tuition and pays a small stipend).

So, in the first week of April 2010, I got a letter from Virginia Tech, the same letter I had received a year earlier, informing me of my acceptance into the program (which I already knew about), and that they could not offer me any funding.

This time, I knew better than to let that slide. I started asking questions. VT informed me that the STS department (I'll explain in a bit) couldn't offer an assistantship, but I might find one in another department. So I looked, and looked, and couldn't find anything. Meanwhile, I was applying to every job opportunity I could find--I think I sent my resume to 40 different places. I finally found two assistanships--one doing research on gendered knowledge of sustainable agriculture (which sounds awesome), and one at the library's Science and Technology Reference Desk. I applied to both, and within 24 hours of applying I received an email telling me that the research assistantship had just been filled. So my options are down to one lonely possibility.
To make this tale shorter, I was invited for an interview, and I was offered the assistantship. This was the only thing holding us back from VT; now we can afford to send me to graduate school. In the fall, I'll be working at Virginia Tech's library while taking classes toward earning a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies. We're moving to Blacksburg, Virginia, in August.

This has been a tremendous hurdle, one that's taken us four years to jump. We've been praying for a way to move out of this area, both for health and finances, and we'd just started changing our attitudes about living in Maryland for a long, long time. Now, we have the reason to move, and we're waiting patiently on finding a job for L., childcare for M., and a place for us all to live.


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