my future is set until at least May of 2013

Apart from my lovely life lounging around on beaches and eating far too many rubiols (which we made today in school), I do have a few worries, namely, THE FUTURE.  To put things in a timeline, here is a silly-ish poem I wrote a year ago:

***

Beethoven, Emma, and The Future

by Jen Sacklin

(Fall 2009)

Classical music, they say, beats as the heart—

THUMP-tap…THUMP-tap…

A masterpiece will subtly gather each of attention’s strands

and start to pluck them as it wills.

                THUMP-tap… THUMP-tap…

I am curled in my chair reading Jane Austen, my thoughts pleasantly

engaged with Mr. Knightly in Hartfield.

                THUMP-tap… THUMP-tap…

My music, Beethoven for Book Lovers (rather apt for the occasion), insidiously

works into my brain.

POUND-pat-pat-pat—POUND-pat-pat-pat

It speeds up!  My anxieties for Emma, smoothed over many re-reads,

assault my sub-conscious.

                bah-BUMM, bah-BUMM, bah-BUMM

What if, this time around, they don’t fall in love? What if good sense

doesn’t prevail?  Will she be doomed

                DUUUN-DUUUN-DUUUN

To a boring life, stuck in a phone-answering desk job because she

isn’t utilizing this precious evening to study for her GREs, until

                deedle-dah-DEE-DEE

We’re back to the String Quartet No. 6 in B-Flat, (adagio, thank heavens) and life

goes back to its proper, Surrey-sized proportions.

***

I recently discovered Santanyí’s municipal library (which is attached to the high school—I walk by it every single day and STILL never managed to make my way inside for five months), and one of the first books I checked out was Emma, in Spanish. I loved it just as much as ever, right up until the point that I remembered this poem—and then I started fretting about how I STILL hadn’t figured out my future.

Well, after a long couple of months of nailbiting and dithers, I can now proudly announce that I will be attending Portland State University, to pursue a Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.  Woot, woot!  Georgetown accepted me way back in early March, but was still holding out for Portland State University, because it 1) is quite a lot cheaper than Georgetown, 2) has a program that is more focused on the things I’m interested in, 3) is closer to my grandparents’ house (my grandparents are getting older a lot faster than any of us expected, and I need to spend more time with them NOW instead of gallivanting around in Europe and on the East Coast), 4) is in Portland, a city where lots of friends live and where I think I could live without going crazy from being surrounded by concrete and thousands of unfamiliar souls, and the icing on the cake: 5) going to PSU would come with the added benefit of having a schedule compatible with my amazing summer job working in Grand Teton National Park. Win-win-win-win-win.

EXCEPT, Georgetown needed an answer from me before April 15th. PSU said they weren’t going to let me know until AFTER April 15th. I couldn’t simply turn down Georgetown on the blind hope that PSU was going to let me in later, so there was a bit of panicking and nail-biting and the like. One friendly chat with PSU, though, got the ball rolling a little more quickly, and I got my scanned copy of my acceptance letter yesterday.

***

Relief?  Have I made the right decision?  Did I turn down one of the best MA TESL programs in the country for the right reasons?  I think so.  Lots of congratulatory Skype calls with my family reminded me of the best benefit of all: I’ll only be 2 hours away from my grandparents.  Being in Spain this year has been what one friend called a “personal sabbatical”: it’s a whole lot of me-me-me time.  No matter how much fun it is to have a self-indulgent, epicurean life for 8 months, it’s nothing compared to having true relationships with family and friends.  The highlights of this year have definitely been the amazing times I’ve spent getting to know people: other Linfielders, my family, my roommate Sofia, and my coworkers and friends here.  I know I would make lasting relationships in Washington, D.C., and that my brain would be punch-drunk happy with all of the intellectual stimulation, but PSU isn’t a pushover school, either.  I want to cultivate the relationships I already have—as well as meeting new people in the Portland area—and I want to be able to zip up to my grandparents’ house for a weekend while I still can.  I would have been going to Georgetown only to satisfy my ego, and I think I’m spending PLENTY of time right now on satisfying my own pleasures.  (To celebrate my going to PSU, I’m having a mini-party with my roommate by drinking lots of action-packed Mallorcan wine paired with aged cheese and sharp fig mustard.  A hedonistic heaven.)