Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

So, Ben's brother gave me a copy of Soccernomics for Christmas, and I've finally cleared my reading slate enough to read it. I'm enjoying it a fair amount. There's a lot of statistical talk (in layman's terms, mostly) and asides like, regarding Manchester in 1876, "the city so miserable it inspired communism" or "Many people believe that Manchester United is evil. No one thinks they're boring." (paraphrased from memory)

There's this one problem. When I was thinking of applying to grad school, I wanted to write a thesis on integration and German football. This is making me want to write it again.

I REALLY REALLY don't want to do a PhD. Really really. Some places won't even accept terminal MA applicants, and the places that do don't necessarily offer funding. And there's no way in god's green hell that I'll be taking out loans for this.

So I'm back to square one and confused again.

Middlebury has a program that fits me (4 6-week summer sessions of 3 courses each), but their big papers aren't independent research projects; they're related to a course. (As far as I can tell. There's a course listing for Thesis, but I can't find anything about such a requirement on the site.) They don't require the GRE.

Georgetown and Maryland both have thesis options. Georgetown says they're "committed" to funding all graduate students; Maryland's funding is "highly competitive." Both require the GRE.

I DON'T KNOW, Y'ALL. Blargh. Stupid brain.

Not that I couldn't, like, do some research, outline a nonfiction book proposal, and shop it around... Come to think of it, I know enough people (via twitter) who are involved in real football journalism that I might be able to get a tip or two.

1. I'm on pins and needles waiting to hear back from VP. It's only been a week since the submission period closed, and I got my rejection letter June 30 two years ago. So it could literally be *any time*, and the longer it goes, the more convinced I am the answer is, once again, no. Seriously, every new email ding makes me anxious.

2. This is the exam that never ends. I have 10 of the 12 questions answered, hopefully to a fuller extent than the first exam, so I get a better score than last time. The last two questions I hope I can get finished today or tomorrow. I need to read a few chapters again (or a dozen more times) and see what I can tease out.

3. The con starts Friday. (Thursday night, but that's only the GOH dinner, and we're not going; besides, I have the last sword class until September.)

4. My exam is due at 5:59 pm Saturday (11:59 pm German time). I need to get this exam completed by Thursday afternoon, because I'm going to be too busy after then to work on it, and I won't have a steady net connection, either. (I did, actually, plan it this way. I purposefully timed it so I'd have to have it in before the con, rather than having the con be in the middle of the test period, and I didn't want to postpone starting it until after the con.)

5. I need to organize all my notes for next year's con and the one after into an obviously titled google doc.

6. I haven't written a word on my novel in close to 2 weeks. I miss it. But this exam is eating all my usable brain cycles.

I made a to-do list last night because I feel like my ability to mentally organize things is gone. I keep meaning to do things and then either forgetting them or falling into the hole of facebook flash games.

I was feeling consistently awful and low-level migrainey for a few days a couple weeks ago, so I went into my doctor's office, and they took thyroid levels. They said I needed to go down on my T3 because my TSH is too low. So I've been taking 10 mcg instead of 15 for about 2 weeks now, and I don't feel all that great. No migraines or anything, just lack of motivation, dry eyes, mouth, and skin, and low energy. I can't focus worth a damn, either. (And because of my neurologist's verbot on caffeine, I can't just make some black tea and make some focus, either.)

It could be that 15 mcg is too much, but 10 isn't enough. Unfortunately, the medication comes in 5 mcg unscored tablets. Though it also comes in 25s, and 12.5 might work out. Except for reasons completely unknown to me, because I've never had 90-day supplies called in before, the nurse authorized 90 days with 3 refills on my last T3 rx, while doing 30 days with 3 refills on the Synthroid, because I don't even fucking know. Maybe she goofed and read the #90 as 90 days, but #90 and #270 are a lot different.

So I have a metric shit ton of 5 mcg liothyronine tablets (at 2 a day, they will last me 135 days, or approximately 4.5 months), and I refuse to pay for a new prescription when I already paid 3 months' copays for the bottle I have. So if my doctor agrees at my physical next Thursday, I'll see about either taking 2.5 every day or adding a third in the afternoon. Or going to an endocrinologist, maybe.

I have this writing idea that I've been letting float around in my mind for a while, and I finally had some insight into it last night. So I made some rough notes around which the idea can coalesce while I work on other things.

I'm going up to DC next weekend (via Amtrak) to see the US and German men's soccer teams play at RFK stadium. I am excite. I'm staying with my sister Fri & Sat, then going to the game and staying with Ben's brother Sunday, then coming home Monday.

I need to write a letter (in German) to a language school and ask if I can do a practicum there and if they meet the criteria set forth in my course description. I don't really want to do it, but I need to. Ideally, I'd do the practicum in winter when airfare is cheapest, but I don't know ... well, there are a lot of things I don't know, like whether they'll even accept non-native speakers as praktikanten or whether they'll have openings in winter or how far in advance I even need to make arrangements. Argh. (I am fairly certain that there are no practica that meet the course criteria in the US unless you are majoring in education and doing your student teaching. There is an alternative to the practicum, which is 120 hours of teaching experience, which would take me far too long to acquire, if I could even get a job without a certificate and experience.)

Anyway. Stuff. I need to get started on my to-do list before I lost the entire morning to faffing about. This has already taken over half an hour to write, in part because I got distracted and wandered away for a few minutes several times.

Slow Travel Berlin (run by English-speaking expats) posted today about language schools in Berlin. So I'm going to collect the links here.

http://www.die-deutschule.de/

http://www.speakeasy-sprachzeug.com/en/ (rather twee, holy god)

http://www.sprachsalon-berlin.de/en/ (I should contact them about the practicum I need to do for this course I'm taking)

http://www.hartnackschule-berlin.de/ (I can't tell if they have job opening things)

I got a response to yesterday's query, and I can register for the course. Woo!

I'm gonna eat lunch first and then spend some time figuring out how to do an international wire transfer from my current financial institution. When I was at BofA, I could do it online, but I don't remember if the SECU has that option. (I looked into it before.)

Now I'm all worried about my qualifications for the Goethe Institute program, because they want you to have "Germanistik or another neophilological course of study" as either major or minor/second major (I think Nebenfach translates closest to double major).

I have German as a double major, but I'm worried my coursework doesn't adequately reflect the philology part.

Ack.

Though I've installed an app on my phone that lets me use the camera as a scanner, and I've scanned my college transcript and the 3 Bescheinigungen from the non-chemistry courses I took in Marburg. One of the courses is "Das heutige Deutsch (Standardsprache; regionale, soziale und funktionale Varietäten)" from FB 08 "Allgemeine und Germanistische Linguistik und Philologie" of Uni-Marburg, and I got a 2,3 (gut) and 4 ECTS-Punkte. Which really ought to count, you know?

*flail*

I could take a couple classes at UNC (though not this semester, since it's too late for that).

I could get a second bachelor's and transfer all my general education stuff. I don't know how my existing courses would transfer, or how I'd fit into the requirements. (I think option 2 is the one I prefer? Since I'm interested less in the literary stuff than in history and non-lit culture?)

I could apply to a different program entirely? Various people have suggested Comp Lit, which, well, I don't really want to compare two literatures. Though I like the idea of queer/feminist studies.

But what would I *do* with that? I think I want to teach German as a foreign language. I've taught before, but not full time on my own. I did a rotation on my residency where I taught pharmacokinetics (I was pissed about that; it's my worst subject). I made lesson plans, gave homework, lectured, and gave tests. Yay. I've also done patient and peer education, which is a bit different, since you just give a seminar on a topic.

I need advice. From someone involved in the field. Who can tell me whether a research-oriented PhD is overqualifying. Who can tell me what types of jobs I can get (other than academia) with a PhD.

Uncertainty is very stressful for me. I do not like this.

1. Had my dental cleaning. No crowns or fillings needed!

2. Revised Friday's scene in the new short story.

3. Written another scene in the new short story.

4. Read forums at thegradcafe.com

5. Poked some of the links from the collection.

Need to:

1. Organize the massive flood of information into some semblance of order so I can
2. Make sense of it and figure out which schools I even want to consider applying to.

1. Called Duke Health to get them to straighten out this bloody stupid billing issue, because I paid this thing last March, and it's not my fault they moved that money to a different (wrong) account.

2. Edited and posted my review of Interfictions.

3. Played stupid facebook games.

4. Read my RSS aggregate thing.

5. Looked up more German Studies graduate programs, including one in England and a 2-year MA program that starts with a year in Salzburg.

6. Turned the synopsis of the currently untitled short story into an outline.

7. Waited for Duke Health to call me back.

Yesterday I met L on campus, and we went to the library together. She let me use her login, since mine expired, and I downloaded a bunch of academic papers on Fatih Akin's movies, Turkish Germans, and identity. And a couple on queer (Turkish) German topics. And used the fancy new book scanner to scan 2 essays in a book compiling conference papers.

Now I just have to read them all and figure out what I want to write this paper about. This would be much easier if I actually had 10-20-page papers with academic sources from college, but we never wrote papers in German class, and my other classes were all 3-5-pagers and using primary sources (ie the books we read in class).

Mainly this paper needs to show the graduate school that I know how write a coherent paper.

I had a chat with the friend in grad school at UNC, and it was awesome. We talked about racism, sexism, the election, grad school, and suddenly it was 2:30. I'm going to apply, and she said she'd help me use the library so I can access journals. (I have no idea how to search journals in the humanities! I don't know what databases to use... Medicine is easy; go to pubmed.)

She said I could contact the department and ask if I can talk to professors and grad students, to find out a little more about the department. I haven't done that yet, but I don't know if now (being the end of the current application cycle) is the best time. Meh, the worst he can do is say "email again in January," or something. I just need to figure out how to word the email. I can include that I'm a non-traditional student, I guess.

I definitely think I've been stagnating because I have this hesitancy about having wasted time getting to where I am, so I should use it. But I don't want to be ruled by 17-year-old me, because she wasn't very smart.

And the options for what you can do with a PhD besides academia (which could be fun, except for the wandering life of an assistant faculty member until you find a place to offer you tenure track) are terrifyingly infinite. Translation work could be interesting.

I liked talking with L about feminist theory (or, rather, having a conversation with someone for whom it isn't a foreign language) and dissecting popular culture with it. It's really fun. Like, when I complained that there was no reason for Uhura and her roommate to walk around in their underwear in ST:reboot, one male friend said, "You're bisexual, why are you complaining?" Uh, because I don't really like gratuitous objectification of women in my entertainment? If it's a scene where being in underwear makes sense--like a sex scene, say, or getting out of the shower (of which, one could ask, is it a necessary scene or for titillation? Is there character or plot development, or is it there for the pleasure of the audience (read: straight men)?)--it's less gratuitous.

See? Fun. I like that kind of thing (I miss metafandom).

Aaaanyway.

I signed up for Glitch. My username there is Feuervogel. Friend me :D

So, the last time I posted about anything life-ish, I mentioned wanting to take a class in project management at the community college. About 2 days later, a friend of a friend who was also at the brewery's taproom eating pizza & ice cream ... is a project manager.

While I don't believe in supernatural powers and Signs From God, or whatever, I tend to think that serendipity is pretty helpful.

So I emailed her, picked her brain a bit, and since I've got this health care background, that could help me get into some other aspects of project management than hers, which is something to do with coding.

The class starts after Labor Day and goes into December. It's 2.5 hours. I have no idea if there's homework. (Er, I should buy the textbook... Amazon tends to have slow shipping around this time of year.)

Yay?