and Higher!

As if my last post wasn't cheerful enough, i now have some VERY good news to report. first of all, on monday night i got a call from the chair at Northwestern saying i had made it past the first round and she had some follow-up questions. so we had a little interview type thing over the phone, and i think it went v. well, although interviews are always nerve-racking and phone interviews always more so.

two days later i'm vegetating at home after a morning shift at Starbucks when i get a call from Nancy Troy, the Nancy Troy, the fashion/modern art historian i want to work with at USC. she said that she was v. sorry to have to tell me that i had been invited to a prospective student's weekend but had never replied, so she assumed i hadn't gotten the email, which of course i hadn't. and this big event that i was invited to was . . . this weekend. oops. prof. troy was v. apologetic about their mistake and lack of follow-up and said she assumed, and very much regretted, that i wouldn't be able to go out there on such short notice. and i said i couldn't (after all, i was v. excited about my upcoming trip to new york this weekend, and i'm just not the sort of person who jets off to the west coast at the drop of the hat). so she proposed some alternatives. we could do a phone interview with several faculty members via conference call, which to me sounds only slightly less terrifying than being robbed at gunpoint, or maybe i could make the big CAA (college art association) gathering in Boston later in the month, since several faculty members would be there. this sounded better but still not ideal, since the CAA annual meeting is basically a meet market/job fair for anxious grad students. even prof. Troy said it might be overwhelming. but the upcoming weekend at USC did sound ideal. i could finally see LA and the campus, and meet all the faculty, and current grad students, and the other prospectives, and get a tour of the special collections at the Getty from Troy herself, and go to Richard Meier's house, and, oh yeah, get flown out there and put up at a hotel at their expense.

so maybe i wouldn't jet off to the west coast at the drop of a hat, but apparently i will at a phone call from Nancy Troy. USC, here i come!