Moving On

It hit me last week, quite suddenly. I am going to be leaving my job in just over two weeks. I'll be leaving the boys, and this house, and embarking on an entirely new adventure. Actually, I'll be leaving the boys in only a week because they're going on vacation and I'm on cat-sitting-duty again. I don't quite know how I feel about this. Despite my initial problems with the boys I have grown really very fond of them. The Baby is...well, MY Baby. He's grown so much in the past few months. He's walking, his talking is improving day by day and he knows ME. He is happy to see me on Mondays and we spend an awful lot of the week laughing and having fun together. He also said my name for the first time on Monday, which made me feel fuzzy :) The Toddler is a delight as well...affectionate and smiling and nowhere near as grumpy as he was when I started. And in just over a week, I won't see them. I'll visit in August, but that'll be it for a year or more. I'm not entirely sure how to explain to the Toddle that I won't be able to come to his 4th birthday party...which he reliably informs me will be a Batman party. I've tried telling him that I'll be far away, but he said I can just come to England for the night and then go home again. It's very sweet, really.

I will miss them. But at the same time, I am so excited about what comes next! The house is almost ready for us to move into, I'm feeling good about my PhD and I get to go home for a couple of weeks too. I've been feeling pretty homesick recently and a couple of weeks in rainy England will be just what I need. Everything is going to change again though. It will be good change, but it is more change nonetheless.

I'm also somewhat apprehensive about going home.  I'm very excited about it, but things are strained between my Mum and one of my sisters. The sister is...not happy, to say the least, and is taking a lot of that unhappiness out on my mum. Unfairly, might I add. She won't admit she's not happy either which makes the whole thing ten times worse because she won't see how cruel she's being, because that would be an admission. Apart from anything else, she needs some home truths and someone is going to tell her soon...which will make things either significantly better or significantly worse, and no-one quite knows which way it's going to go. I'll go into more detail on that at a later date.

So for now, I am enjoying the time I have left with the boys and trying to remind myself of as much Akkadian as possible before classes start in August and I start feeling like I'm totally faking my intelligence again :/

Failing to Fall in Love

I tried SO hard. Honestly, I really did. I wanted to love Baltimore. It didn't have to be in the same way that I loved Providence, but even a little spark of interest would have been welcome. For me, this is proof that you can't force affection. Currently, I just can't find anything about the city that excites me. It's just...ugly. And scary in places - there are whole blocks of abandoned houses with broken or boarded up windows and in some cases you can see that the roof has fallen in. It is depressing to say the least. Hermit and I drove up with the child on Saturday so I could get a better feel for the city. I did not behave well. There was crying and a fairly childlike attitude for a whole lot of the day because I couldn't manufacture excitement about the city. He was trying so hard to point out the good parts and to make me feel more positive about the possibility of living there, and I was just not co-operating at all. Now I look at it objectively, there's really nothing to cry about. No, it's not somewhere I am excited about living. But there are worse places to live. Perhaps most crucially, if we move to Baltimore we can afford a really lovely house in a reasonable part of the city. Well, more in the suburbs (and suburbs are rarely exciting) but we can have somewhere that is ours, that we can make into our home. Now, that IS exciting.

I had my interview on Sunday/Monday as well. Sunday was really just for arriving and going to dinner with two of the professors. They were both very friendly :) Conversation wasn't particularly stilted (always a bonus) and I genuinely enjoyed it. On Monday I had interviews with some of the other professors and met a whole load of the current graduate students. It was one of the most academically challenging days I have ever had - and I've been in higher education for 5 years! Everyone there was obviously good at what they did and clearly thought that I was the same. Now, I've not done any academic work for several months and no language for almost a year. I am rusty to say the least and felt totally out of my depth. The quality of the program did amaze me though and I came to the conclusion that if I am offered a place at Hopkins, the only way I could turn it down is if everyone does a total U-turn and decides that Providence would be the better place for the family.
That realisation made me sad :( I loved Providence and Brown (see previous post...) and think that I would be very happy there, but it just wouldn't be as beneficial for my career. The course there is missing some crucial elements that Hopkins has and as I want a career in this field upon graduation, choosing the lower quality program would be a pretty dumb move. Still, I am upset :( I just continue to hope that I get offers and that I am academically up to whatever program I end up with!

Falling in Love (It's not what you think)

I had an interview (well, 6 interviews) at Brown University on Friday. I tried so hard to see the bad bits about Providence and the course, I tried to dislike the professors and be sceptical about the enthusiasm of the current grad students. In the end, I failed pretty miserably.

After 3 hours of walking around Providence on Thursday I concluded that it is a wonderful city. The size feels so much like England and the narrow streets with quirky shops and independent coffee shops make it feel like some areas of York or London. Even on a grey and rainy day like Friday I still loved it. Maybe because of the greyness - being a Brit, I feel unnerved by whole months without an overcast day :) But Thursday was glorious sunshine, and I loved it then too. They professors were friendly and interesting, and had an obvious interest in my work. Even the Egyptology professors wanted to know what I do and why I like it. The obvious inter-departmental links really appealed to me and I felt very encouraged when I was told by one of the Assyriology professors that if I came to Brown I should maybe consider taking classes in the Gender and Sexuality department as it would clearly benefit my research. Why yes, yes it would. And I would very much enjoy doing that. I loved the freedom of the program and am excited by the fact that I would have maybe 6 mandatory courses in 3 years. The rest I can choose for myself. This may not seem like a big thing for you American types, but coming from 6 years in the British university system it's like being taken to a sweet shop, being given a bag and being told that you can have anything you want, as long as you have enough time to sample everything properly. The current graduate students were sincere and clearly loved their department. They didn't stop being enthusiastic when we were in the bar without the professors, which for me is a big tell that they weren't just putting on a show.

I loved them two days I spent there, and if I go to Brown I am certain that I will enjoy the vast majority of my work. The problem is that going to Brown involves Minx leaving her job, the child being totally uprooted for the 3rd time in her (almost) 5 years of life and us all moving to a state we have no experience of, to a city with pretty high unemployment. Moving to Baltimore is, by all counts, a safe move. Minx can commute to work until she finds somewhere else and whilst the child wll move schools we will still be close to her extended family, whom she loves dearly. When I first got back to DC from Providence I was very upset. I felt like I was an awful person for even considering moving everyone halfway up the country, but that I would be missing out on something huge if I turned down an offer from Brown. (All of this is currently purely hypothetical - I currently have no actual offers and am desperately hoping that I get at least one). Having now had a good cry and a decent amount of time to think, my thoughts are now a lot clearer. Yes, I will be upset if, in the end, I turn down an offer from them. I still think it's an excellent school and that I would do well there. BUT. I have an interview at Johns Hopkins next week. The course was started in the 1800s and was the first of it's kind in the USA. The program is KNOWN for turning out exceptional scholars and whilst it may be slightly more constrictive it has distinct academc advantages over Brown. If I am put in the amazing position of having to choose between Brown and Hopkins, then I will have a place at a fantastic university no matter what the decision is. The one nagging feeling I have left is how at home I felt at Brown. Well, I'll just have to see how I feel when I get to Hopkins on Monday.
Yes, I'm one of those annoying people who often bases huge decisions on a 'feeling'. It's never let me down yet.

After all that...well, all I have to do is get an offer or two. That's not so hard now, is it?

(p.s. new post up on polytical.org)