Allison Goes To Germany

About Allison.

By hook or by crook.

Posted on 02.03.10 11:52AM under Uncategorized

On Friday I found out I did not get the Fulbright grant. I had a good full day of moping around the house because damn, that REALLY sucked. I knew there was a chance I might not get it, but when the odds are 50% in your favor, you tend to think you will get it. Someone simply had a better essay than I did, or maybe it was the 7 weeks I spent in Germany before that did me in? No matter. It’s not the worst part of the denial process, but telling the kind professors who wrote letters of recommendation for you that you did not get the grant is also pretty gnarly. But by Sunday I had another plan and was able to tell my professors I was going back, darn it!

On Monday I told my German adviser. He expressed his sympathies, we discussed other options and some grad programs.

On Tuesday, I told my Chaucer professor. I also had Anglo-Saxon with him. He is hilarious and a pretty damn solid professor. I used to feel like I was being robbed of a great education by the fact that I was going to UNR. I just hadn’t been looking in the right places. When I told him I was going back, he said “by hook or by crook” which is an interesting phrase I had never heard before, so I came home and googled it. So yes, by hook or by crook. I’m going the same way I did two years ago.

While the program I went to Germany with two years ago is not ideal, budget cuts at UNR since then make it a little more worthwhile. There are 4 upper division classes taught in German. So I am going back after I graduate this May to take Advanced German I and II over the summer, and greatly improve my German before I apply for graduate programs. I am hoping that having taken the classes will help me land a TA position wherever I end up. I am worried that I will encounter the same problems as before, that the program will be mediocre and I will not make any other friends/like anyone else, but I am 2 years older. The lovely people I lived with before in Campus 4 are probably gone, and I am going to get something new out of this experience. I just hope it’s near-fluency in German.