News

Hey there. Sorry for the radio silence, but things over here have been HAPPENING. Busy, busy, busy.

It seems that after hitting our one-year mark, life has suddenly decided to make like a box of chocolates and never let us know what we're gonna get. You see, at the end of last year I decided that I was going to go back to school full-time to get my Masters in Youth Health and Education Management, a degree that focuses on youth development, specifically in the educational sector. In other words, it merged perfectly with my Summer School job. It's only a year-long program, and I was only working part-time, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity. So I applied and was accepted to the program at the University of Melbourne.

Two weeks ago was my first class, and let me tell you-- it is really hard to sit in a classroom from 9 til 5 for five days straight! (Class schedules are brutal in grad school! They like to get all of the classes out of the way in one big block, which is torture on the attention span... especially for people like me who haven't spent more than a few minutes on the receiving end of a classroom in five years.) The class was Adolescent International Health, which sounded intriguing considering my interest in adolescents and international things. Of course, I hadn't considered that my other classmates would be Ghandi incarnate, fighting on the front lines of HIV, world hunger, and sex work problems in the countries of Fiji, Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa, etc. And then there was me, working with teenagers who are privileged enough to be able to pay $3000 for summer camp. Not to mention my lack of knowledge in all things PC; my comment about "third-world countries" drew a gasp from the entire room, until someone was polite enough to share with me that we're referring to them as "developing countries" now that the Cold War is over and everything. Apparently I missed the memo.

Anyway, one class is out of the way (besides the humongo paper I have looming on the near horizon). But in keeping with the box of chocolate metaphor, another development has arisen that will throw a wrench into the full-time Masters plan.

I GOT A JOB!!!

But didn't you have a job?

THIS IS A FULL-TIME JOB!!! AND AN AWESOME FULL-TIME JOB AT THAT!

Well as long as it's an AWESOME full-time job...

OH, IT IS. [Ahem... no need for caps lock... excitement has been appropriately conveyed] Oh, it is. I have accepted a position as a Student Recruitment Coordinator at the University of Melbourne, a senior recruiting position working specifically with Kwong Lee Dow scholars--the most high achieving students from every high school in Victoria. It will involve a lot of event planning, glad-handing, and the occasional bribe. Just kidding. Sort of. But no mind, because it's very similar to what I'm doing now, except much, much better. And I am very excited. And Will is very excited for me. In fact, the only person who is probably not so excited is Darcy, who is apparently sensing her long afternoons in the park coming to a screeching and terrifying end.

Alas, I suppose my dream to relive college as a grad student extraordinaire is not to be. (I was this close to piercing my nose again, too.) But that's ok, because I will still be a student, just on a part-time basis now.

So anyway, THIS is what has been going on over the last couple of weeks. Anyone else have any news they want to share? By all means, I don't want to hog the limelight here...