radish times

So, this one is about a strange (and possibly stupid) thing. As you know from the e-mail I sent recently, I was accepted to Columbia’s School for International and Public Affairs (do you think they made the name like that so that it would have such a nice abbreviation, SIPA? It could have been SPIA, which is not so bad… or SPAIR if you add Relations at the end…). and that I was really excited, great school, blah, blah, blah…

Well I also applied to another school - The New School (in full the New School Graduate Faculty in Political Science). The New School is not quite as prestigious and well known and it is more research focused as opposed to practice focused. But there are some good things about it - they work a lot on refugee and immigration issues, which is what I am really interested in.

So, on the day that I got the acceptance to Columbia, I got a letter from the New School saying that they were missing my application fee of $40. Something of a let down, yes? So I figured it was a message from the gods that I should go to Columbia. I thought that if they didn’t have my application fee they didn’t do anything with my application yet… and hence I wasn’t considered for scholarships and they would never make a decision in time for me to let Columbia know whether I was going there or not (sometime in mid-April).

All this to say that I was happily certain that I was going to Columbia - and I really didn’t have to think too hard, because that was my only option. So yesterday I got an e-mail. It went something like this:

Dear Judith,
I am so pleased to be able to welcome you to our school. You should have received your acceptance letter and financial aid offer. We were very impressed with your application and if there is anything I can do to aid you in your decision to attend our school, please let me know.
More, more, more,
Sincerely,
Name CHAIR, POLITICAL SCIENCE THE NEW SCHOOL GRADUATE FACULTY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

After I realized that it was not from Columbia - which took some time even after I read the guy’s name and title- I was more than half minded to return a sarcastic e-mail saying “yes, there is something you could do to help me attend your school - find the check I sent you for my application fee and send me a notification I was accepted!!!!!”

Needless to say, I did not follow that course of action and actually as of yet have not followed any course of action. I cannot tell whether they deposited my check because my bank only shows on-line account information for 2 months and the bank statement which it should appear on was probably sent to Prague…. I will check with my bank on Monday and send an e-mail back to the welcoming man.

Welcome to update short and sweet. Here is what has been going on world lately:

- Grandpa Lorimer passed away a little over two weeks ago. We had a small memorial for him here in New York. Paul and Amy came. Grandpa’s sisters held a larger service in Minnesota.

- Peter also just lost a loved one. His grandmother passed away recently in Moscow. We were not able to go but we hope to get to Moscow sometime this Spring.

- Mom fell and broke a bone in her foot. She will have an out-patient surgery on Monday to insert a pin to keep the bone together. She is not allowed to walk and she can’t drive. She is dealing well with it though and is only worrying about how she will plant everything in her garden in the next several weeks.

- Peter and I completed our INS petition to remove the condition from Peter’s permanent residency. Now we are waiting (a very familiar activity). We don’t know how long it will take for the INS to review the whole application, possibly a year or more. What we are waiting for is a letter saying they have accepted the application for review. With this letter, we can go down to the INS office (you know we can’t keep ourselves away from there, ) and Peter can get a new stamp in his passport which will be good for a year and allow him to travel. That is what we are waiting for. It is possible that it might happen within a month or so - at least we fervently hope it can and will.

- I was accepted to Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs (commonly called SIPA) with a $10,000 fellowship for the first year and full-ride for the second year (if I understand everything I think I do) if I keep my grades up. The New School, where I also applied, seems to have misplaced my application fee and not even begun processing the application. This makes the choice pretty easy….

- We are testing a new cat litter. It has passed the ease of use test, and the aesthetically pleasing test. We now only need to learn if it will pass the two weeks without smelling test. More to come as we find out….