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March 13, 2005
. . . I gotta wear shades
Yesterday I promised some exciting news and then like the teasing skank I am, almost forgot to follow through. I've been accepted to the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia for a printmaking MFA. Since it's all about me here, I'll risk pissing off my harassing stalker commenter (who hates the blog but for some inexplicable reason still continues to read it) to tell you that they are only accepting three people. Somebody get a pin! and pop my swollen head.
I pretty much had my heart set on Georgia the whole time I was putting together my applications, partly because I had been to visit the campus in October of 2003, and it's a strong, well-respected art department on a beautiful campus in a very cool town, and the printmaking area has great facilities and talented, friendly people. Then I got accepted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and visited there and guess what? --it's a strong, well-respected art department on a beautiful campus in a very cool town, and the printmaking area has great facilities and talented, friendly people. Aaack. It's nice to have Options, but I want this decision to be easy and it's not going to be.
It's been a year and a half since my visit to UGA, so I think I'll need to go back again to refresh my memory and hopefully meet some more people; then I can be sure the decision I make is the right one for me. I'm not sure that Peter will be able to take any more time off work to drive me down though, so it might be difficult, since I don't drive. I've taken the Greyhound from Detroit to Atlanta once before and it is a long and painful trip. I may need to appeal to the knitblogging community in Athens to give me a place to shower in between the bus trip and visiting the school!
Of course, money is going to have to be a big factor in my decision. I don't have the money to pay my own way, and won't be able to work legally in the States except for within the school I'm attending. So I pretty much need to have an assistantship or I'm not going anywhere. I have a (Canadian) friend who was accepted to UWM for a printmaking MFA and they were not forthcoming with an offer of money, so she ended up going to another (American) school and it was a crappy experience for her there. Peter thinks that I may have to take a chance and accept, hoping the money will come, but I don't want to make a commitment and end up being screwed. Ah well. I'm applying for assistantships, so we'll see. So far it looks like the procedure is a lot easier at UGA; I've submitted an assistantship application but wasn't asked to apply for any specific job, so I guess you must get approved first and then apply for the available positions. At UWM it seems that I'm required to apply separately for every assistantship position I want to be considered for and hope for the best, and I can't figure out where I'm supposed to find the information I need to do this. The university's website is hard to navigate, and all roads seem to end up in the same useless places.
In knitty news, only three more to go! I've finished this, although ends still need to be woven in:
And for your viewing pleasure, you also get a nice look at my ueber-sexy underarm hair. I think hairy armpits are hot hott hottt on girls, and haven't shaved since I was about twenty. In fact, all through my twenties I had hairy legs too, but last year I decided that as feminist statements go, it wasn't that meaningful to me anymore and besides, it pokes out of the fishnets and that looks stupid. Hairy legs feel a lot softer and silkier that waxed legs though, and sometimes I regret getting rid of it.
Okay, project specs on the top: it's the Girl from Auntie funnel top, super easy and quick to make provided you don't knit 8 inches and then throw it in a drawer for six months like I did. It's worked on 5.5 mm needles in Stahl Portofino, a super soft cotton blend that I like so much I bought a tonne more in blue at the same time. It's the kind of cotton that you can wear without a bra and not chafe your nipples off. I did mine in two colours because while I love the lime green, the lime green is not so fond of me; I keep relative peace in my relationship with the lime green by following a few rules, like not forcing it to hang out too close to my face.
I also did a little more Kool Aid dyeing this weekend, with less than stellar results.
The top skein is Icelandic Lopi and the other two are more of the "Emerald Irish Knit" stuff. The only one I like is the green/purple one; I'm not sure why I even use purple so much since it's about my least favourite colour, but what I'm hating here even more than the purple is the turquoise. Blue Moon Berry, never never again. In the green and purple one, there is one tiny spot of the most gorgeous, cobalt-y blue. I'm going to do some mixing with the colours I used and see if I can find it again. Actually these skeins all look a lot prettier wound up into balls, but I'm not going to swatch any of them until after my WIP deadline. So expect to see an extremely swatch-heavy post coming in the first week of April. Admit it, you want to see it as much as I do, we're all geeks here.
Posted by jodi at March 13, 2005 10:38 PM | categories: projects : school : self-absorbtion : sticks and string
Comments
CONGRATULATIONS on being accepted, well done you!
I have a love hate relationship with purple, I seem to always buy it but I'm not sure that it actually looks very good on me, bad habits are hard to break!
Hope you sort out the visit and get the money you need to go wherever you decide you want to be!
Anna
Posted by: Anna at March 14, 2005 06:25 AM
Congrats on Georgia! :) Options are always nice...and if one school won't cough up the cash you might be able to leverage the other one...either that or it can make the decision real easy for you. That's what happened to me on my first master's. Good luck with your decision. :)
Posted by: Jessica at March 14, 2005 07:59 AM
learn how to drive. i didn't learn until i was 38. what forced me to learn was that i hated my job and i wanted to look for a new one without being limited. it was hard but in the end it was well worth the effort.
congratulations on your acceptance. how very cool. and nice pit. ;)
Posted by: maryse at March 14, 2005 10:54 AM
Yay for you! Good luck with the wrangling of funding, where-ever you choose to go. Maybe you can play the two schools off each other: "well THEY said they could give me $XX, but if you think you might be able to get me a bit more..." Who knows?
Also, could you point me in the direction of any websites that talk about Kool-Aid dying? It seems fun, and I'm getting into the knit-thing seriously now, so it'd be neat to try! Thanx
Posted by: Emer at March 14, 2005 11:11 AM
Happy happy happy. Congrats!
In my experience, departments tend (to some degree) to give funding priority to students who are in the US on a student visa, because they're very aware that these students don't have many other options. I'm sure you've thought of this, but talk to them about it!
Posted by: sarah irene at March 14, 2005 11:27 AM
Okay... I so rarely meet other hairy-pit girls, I feel all swoony over it. (oh, the things that will make me excited... obviously I need a life.)
But anyways! Way to go on getting accepted to your original school of choice! I hope you can get the information you need when you need it, and that everything will work out the way you need it to. :)
Posted by: Mandy at March 14, 2005 02:21 PM
Man, one of these days I'm gonna get off my lazy butt and do some dyeing. BTW, the itnerview questions are up at JenLa
Posted by: La at March 14, 2005 02:59 PM
A hearty Woo Hoo and welcome to the States. It's always great to get a fat envelope (my small envelopes from Yale and Northwestern when I was 18 put me in a funk for weeks, it wasn't my fault, it was my counsellor! but I digress)
Congratulations!!! Choice may be difficult, but it's better than not having one.
Posted by: Rachel T at March 14, 2005 04:32 PM
Thanks for the comment, and I'll definitely send you a pic when I stick the zipper in my finished Mariah. I just have to get around to it (ooooh I hate finishing!) And I'm positive I'll love it and wear it to death, also...I left it for a while, and already I feel a lot better about it! I think I was just Mariah'd out after working on it obsessively for weeks ^_^
Also, I think that my problems with the collar not working out on me will be fixed because, well, I also knit it too big, I think. So I think I'll seam in the fronts a bit. Nonetheless, Mariah's the most involved project I've ever finished. I love it ^_^
Oh! And congratulations on getting in to grad school!
Posted by: Erin at March 15, 2005 12:55 AM
That funnel top has been on the edge of my radar for awhile now, and I love your two-tone version. Must keep an eye open for some apprpriate sale yarn. :) And congrats on getting accepted into a second program. I think P is right. Accept, apply, and keep fingers crossed the work will happen for you. Try to talk to other grad students and see which school takes care of their grad students and has mroe support for them. Good luck!
Posted by: Sharlene at March 15, 2005 10:10 AM
The UGA sounds very hopeful, and it is better to have a few options on the table, although it will be difficult to make the final decision later. Good luck to you!
Posted by: Lolly at March 15, 2005 03:00 PM
congratulations - sounds like two great options!
I'm with the "don't let money limit you" camp. Pick the best school for you, and the rest will work out.
Posted by: Lori-Ann at March 15, 2005 11:09 PM
I'm with you on the body hair. I had hairy leggies for eons, then I started working out and realized you can't see muscle definition (what very little there is) through the fuzz, and also hated looking like a pin cushion when I wore hosiery. Oh well, someday I'll be old and crusty and I'll get to be all hairy again.
Good luck with your school decision!!!
heide
Posted by: Heide at March 17, 2005 03:32 PM
Congrats on grad school! I live in Athens and work at UGA, so if you have any questions about locations, places, or anything, you can totally email me. We knitbloggers gotta stick together!
Posted by: Carrie at March 18, 2005 03:41 PM
Fantastic! Athens and UGA are, indeed great places. I grew up in Atlanta, and while I don't miss the searing heat, oppressive humidity, and plethora of rednecks, I miss a lot about both Athens and my home town...like, springtime in February. *SIGH* Congratulations!
Posted by: Kellee at March 24, 2005 10:20 AM