I've been pretty tight-lipped lately about the progress of certain plans for travel, work, grad school - basically all of the parts of my life that make up the blog's title. In January, I explained my reluctance to say too much based on the fact that nothing I've imagined for my life in the next few years is set, none of it is permanent. I didn't want to commit anything to writing in case it didn't work out as I'd hoped. I didn't want grad school plans to be the Teach-in-England prep posts of 2009. There are too many pieces that have to fall into exactly the right places, so I had scared myself out of writing anything at all...
Until now.
In March I received an email one morning at work. It came from a representative of University College London, the most prestigious of the five UK schools to which I applied, and said, "I am pleased to confirm that an unconditional offer of admission to the above programme of study will appear on your applicant portal shortly."
That was it. I was stunned. I'm pretty sure I turned completely white and was shaking in my chair for several minutes before I did anything else. Accepted. At one of the top universities in the world. My dream of traveling abroad for grad school could be realized.
Within a few weeks I subsequently received acceptances from all four of the other universities I had applied to as well: King's College London, Queen Mary, Roehampton, and Kingston. If I wanted to do this, I would have my pick of university programs.
Thus started a series of very serious conversations with Joe. Only a few weeks after I started receiving this good news, Joe got a job he'd very much wanted and started working. This, if anything could, complicated our plans. I didn't want to make Joe leave a job he loved for my dreams; it wasn't fair to ask that of him. So we discussed several options that included all of our priorities for the next several years of our shared life: marriage, careers, education, babies, home ownership - all of it.
The way we saw it, we had 4 options. I don't really remember the particulars of the first three now, but the plan we called Option Four became our favorite for a variety of reasons. This plan included:
- Joe stays at his new job for 1+ year (instead of 4 months)
- I keep working at my job and continue saving $$
- Get married in 2013, instead of waiting until we get back from the UK to get engaged
- Defer enrollment for one year and leave for London in summer 2013
- Joe travels on a spouse visa so that he does not have to spend the $$ to go to post production school, since he's not sure he wants to actually work in post production
This is why I couldn't post. I didn't know how to talk about any of this until I knew that all parts of the plan were really going to happen. I didn't want to post that Joe and I had decided to get married before we'd officially gotten engaged. I didn't want to post that I'd been accepted to 5 universities in London until I was ready to explain the deferment and could deal with the repercussions that would come if my boss found out. And then I'd gotten myself so freaked out that I felt like I couldn't post any of these pieces of news - incredibly positive and exciting decisions in my life that I am thrilled with and truly believe are going to be awesome choices for Joe and I and our goals together - because I didn't want to seem like I was bragging or full of myself or acting like I'd done something incredible when I really hadn't done anything at all yet. For probably the first time in my life, humility took over and I couldn't tell people anything that was going on that might make me sound better than I really deserved. I hadn't (and still haven't) done anything incredible yet.
So I didn't publish anything. I didn't blog. I didn't put anything on facebook.
But I wanted to. I wanted to make a status update every time I received an acceptance letter. I wanted to gush to anyone who would listen that Joe and I had decided to get married. I wanted to write and write and write about it all. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
Since then I have had MANY other blog post-y events that need to be written still. Please stay tuned for:
- A week in Scotland
- A week in Mammoth
- A proposal (oh yes, that kind)
- the new plan as laid out in Option Four
