Made It Past Round 1 of the Fulbright...

I just got the email saying the National Screening Committee is pleased to inform me they've approved my application, and are sending it along to the Korean government peeps (essentially, the Anne Benjaminson-in-Tajikstan-equivalents). There are 15 grants available, and the NSC generally recommends one and a half to two times the # of candidates to grants. So my odds are 50-75% (I think I did that math right, right? 22.5:15 vs 30:15). If I'm one of the first chosen, I'll know for sure by May 14, and if I'm an alternate or was just flat out rejected, I won't know until the end of June, the same moment when I'll be deciding to renew my lease and trying to figure out what else to do with my life.

I've applied for some teaching jobs at private schools in the area, but have yet to hear back. As it were, English lit teachers are a dime a dozen, and if only I were fluent in Spanish or physics or chemistry--these people would be courting me out the door.

I'm somewhat nonchalant about the whole Fulbright--as well as the larger questions, etc--process. And I can't quite figure out why. Well, not to toot my own horn, but if they reject someone who had 4 recs, 50% of which were from profesors who were previous Fulbright scholars, and one of those profs is in Korea and has promised to affiliate with me and oversee my studies, then... I will be PISSED! Because during the month I was working my ass off for the app, I wrote some pretty lousy stories for class.

Also, if I don't get the grant, then this means my fate was to...stay in Boston? My dad points out the economy in S Korea is horrible, and even though they are dying for me to reconnect with the Mo'land, I think he may have some reservations, too. A compromise might be to spend the summer in Korea--some rich alum of the BU MFA program just gave money to award 5 students with a travel grant to go anywhere and just sit in a cafe and write a novel. I'm afraid the fact that people know I'm applying for a Fulbright will deter them from considering my app, but it's still worth a shot.

The other day, while I was running my 22 laps on the indoor track (7 loops to a mile--dizzying), thinking about this essay/story I just wrote (8.5 pages in 3 days--woo hoo! My last 8.5p story took me 2 weeks, and I'm STILL working on it!) about the time my brother broke his arm when we were in Korea. And how my mother blames The Broken Arm for everything--the fact that my brother's only five foot eight-and-a-half (the BA stunted his growth, of course), the fact that he hasn't found a nice five foot one inch Korean wife to kowtow to him, etc etc. Then I started daydreaming about the possibility of getting it published, like in the New Yorker or something, and this distracted me from my running, as I noticed I was now slowed to like a nine minute, 45sec mile (I've been averaging 8 and a half min miles now). Then I read more depressing news about the Washington Post Book World being dissolved, and how some of my colleagues at RH are starting to get laid off, and I thought to myself, "What's the point?"

Anyway, I just wasted an hour in the library looking up Fulbright stats when I could have been attending a tutorial on intalling Linux instead.

Signing off--
P