February 3rd update

Well, that’s done.  Yesterday, I turned in my application to Bard College for its M.S. in Environmental Policy.  Combined with my application to Tufts, completed and returned in mid-January, that is my grad school application process finished.  I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much, because I did rather shoot myself in the foot by falling into my school-day habits of procrastination.  That said, however, I’m fairly proud of the personal statement that I wrote for Tufts, and at least comfortable with my much-different personal statement for Bard.  We shall see.  As far as I know, I won’t hear back from either of them for a couple of months, so I’m trying not to think about it.

One side benefit to all of this is that my U.S. taxes are finished, a full five months before I would normally do them (living abroad does have its perks).  Since I had to submit my FAFSA with my Bard application, and since it’s easier to do the FAFSA when one’s taxes are completed, I did those on Sunday.  Now that the FAFSA’s in, I just have to send my 1040 off to London.  That’s a relief!

The new job at Vision 21 is slowly gathering steam.  I’ve had to put it somewhat on the back burner while finishing up the grad school applications, but this morning it started again in force.  I met up with the director of one of the programs for whom I am writing a big grant proposal, and we went through it in depth, bringing me up to speed.  I also had the opportunity to discuss another, smaller grant proposal (for the installation of micro-generation technologies at our office) with the relevant Board member, and am going to steam ahead with that proposal.  Now we get to see whether my persuasive writing skills really stand the test!

Looking ahead, there is some travelling to be done.  Nothing like last year’s Africa trip (still need to write that up…), but still taking in one new-to-me country.  At the end of March and beginning of April, A and I will be heading down to Paris to run (in his case) or stagger (in mine) the Paris Marathon; I’ll head down a few days in advance to visit friends and revisit former haunts.  Then, at the end of June, he and I are being included in a get-together for his mom’s partner’s family, which will take place in Switzerland.  If you want to see the place we’ll be staying, check out this link.  Pretty, no?

And then, all going well, I’ll be heading off to grad school late in the summer, possibly heading over earlier to attend D and V’s wedding in Vermont!  If I don’t get into grad school, though, I will continue at Vision 21, hopefully on a more full-time basis, and just reapply to Tufts and Bard next year.