Lifestyles of the Young and Renting

I don’t have much direction for this post, I just felt I should say hello to all of our friends and family. I will let Matt post about the race, but let me just say that I am incredibly proud of him and was so glad to have been able to be there. I would also like to say that his father and I deserve small medals of our own: we figured we completed a quarter-marathon with all the walking back and forth that we did. At one point during our trek to meet Matt at the finish line, we had to rest at a park bench. Within minutes, we stopped talking and fell into a 30-minute nap in the heart of Honolulu.

Now I am back, and have one week here before heading to Minnesota. During this week, I will have my last sessions with three of my clients, two of whom I have known for over two years and will miss deeply, and my last full week with my friend Michael, who has become like family to me. When I get on the plane Tuesday morning, I will not only have to have all of my Christmas shopping done, but I will also have to be prepared for my first internship interview on that Thursday. 

This is just an odd time…a slow-motion kaleidoscope where things aren’t moving too fast, but there is a lot of change - and who knows what the next frame is going to look like (anyone?). The only reason I am not anxious is that I am surrounded by amazing friends, deeply supportive family, and my most incredible husband. You can do anything if people go with you.

I send my love to you all.

-l 

That’s right, I am now a legitimate contributor to the field of psychology: my poster presentation titled "Marital and Parenting Satisfaction: Comparison Between Community Sample and Families of Children with Special Needs" just got accepted to the biennial conference of the Society for Research in Child Development in Boston. This baby was born out of my own paper cuts and eye strain, so it’s good to know it wasn’t all for naught. If you remember my lament on our previous blog over creating "Table 1" and the ensuing drama when Matt tapped me on the shoulder with a bag of raw chicken when I was trying to finish the formatting, "Table 1" held the data for this very presentation that has now been accepted.

 Luckily, for all the flying I will do over Christmas and hopefully for interviews in January, I should have enough frequent flyer miles to take a layover in Moscow on my way to Boston in March…

-l

It is officially out of my hands. Today, I mailed off the last of my internship applications. Statistics say that, with my nine applications, I have only a 64% chance of matching with a site. Such drama.

And yet, I am strangely unemotional about the whole thing. Last year, I had a girlfriend that went through this process and she made quite the event of celebrating each ‘milestone’ as she went along, which had much to do with local happy hours. I, on the other hand, couldn’t quite put my finger on one particular moment that was worthy of a glass of wine…was it the time I figured out which internships to apply to? The moment I finalized my vita? The day I wrote my last essay? Granted, I did feel that getting these beasts in the mail warranted opening a bottle of cabernet (manilla envelopes needing $4 in postage each)…but it was Saturday night dinner with friends, and that probably would have happened anyway.

The next ‘milestone’ will be in mid-December, when hopefully most of those nine sites decide they would like to interview me, and call me to let me know. Now, do I celebrate with every phone call I get? Only if I get called by all of them? I suppose I would certainly need a happy hour if I didn’t called by any, but I already have an interview arranged with a site in Duluth, MN as part of my travels home for Christmas, so at least that won’t happen.

So there’s the calling for interviews. And then there’s the actual interviews, mostly in January. And then I send in my list of top choices on February 7th. On Februrary 23rd, ‘they’ tell me whether anyone I picked, picked me as well. There is a 36% chance that no one will pick me, but unfortunately there are rarely ‘happy hours’ on the weekends. On February 26th, I find out who actually did pick me, and at that point, I will be going to happy hour no matter what.

And from that point, Matt and I will attempt to put our life in order for the next year…are we moving states or moving streets? Do we stay in this apartment for a position starting in July, or move to Portland for one starting in September? And who gets to fly back for their 10-year reunion? If we’re moving to Minnesota, we’ll already be there.

So yes…lots of potential drama, and yet I, a characteristically anxious "need to know" type, is unmoved by the whole deal. Maybe it is the sense that everything will work out fine…and if not fine, at least mediocre. All I really need to do is graduate. But in the next two months, I need to write five large papers, and I just now received my dissertation draft back from my advisor with more revisions than I was expecting…happy hour will just have to wait, there are more pressing matters at hand.

 This whole l’aissez faire thing isn’t too bad…now if only my advisor would see the light…

-l