Major Upheaval

by

July 13, 2007

12:59 am

13 Comments on Major Upheaval

Upheaval

Newsflash, everybody:

I’ve been accepted into the University of Glasgow.

It’s a Master’s in Philosophy, with an option to continue on to a PhD if I do well. I expect to do well, and to continue on to pursue a PhD in the Philosophy of Language.

How’s that strike you all? It strikes ME with terror, ‘though fortunately we tend to take turns being terrified, so can calm one another down from panic.

Now begin the lists – what to take, what to sell, what to give away? What we’d miss, how to ship things, where to live? Should we store things back here for 3 or 4 years? Can we survive without a car? Can we stand the idea of selling our beloved Honda Hybrids (#7 in Sonoma County to own a Hybrid Insight, #12 to own a Hybrid Civic)? What to do about money while we’re there, about renting the condo out, how to handle banking, property and income taxes?

Lists. That’s the answer, and deep breaths, and friends who’ve done this before – or who’re on the other end, to tell us where we shouldn’t try to live. And more deep breaths, and faith. Lots of lots of faith.

You see, when I applied, I made a bargain with God ( or the Universe or whomever makes you happy). The bargain was this:

I’ll do the footwork to make this happen – meaning filling out the application, getting the references, getting the transcripts, and getting copies of all the appropriate certificates and passports and whatnot.

You make the decision as to whether it’s right for us, by making it absolutely fail to come through if it’s not right; in other words, have me be accepted or not, period.

I will abide by what comes down.

That was the form of the thing – regard it as a Biblical Fleece, as Gideon set out, if you will.

Well, I’ve been kind of in limbo since I put the application in & got everything lined up, so I’ve been pointedly ignoring the whole thing. I simply made a truly concerted effort to put it out of my head and to get on with other options. We’d discussed taking up an opportunity for work in Juneau, Alaska, for example. I’d been teaching and developing other contacts in the San Francisco area, as well.

This morning I awoke to check email, and was going to ask my Alaska contact for more information & to maybe get the ball rolling in that direction … only to find a terse little note from the Admissions people informing me that I’d been accepted, pending receipt of the physical copy of one of my references (I’d had them email them, as well, and one’s apparently slow in the post).

So. I’m guessing that our lives will be insane for the next … oh, four months. Probably five, actually. But we’re trying to be as relaxed as possible about it, and to take things as they come. Really, we are. We’re just not wired that way, unfortunately. So, to make lists.


Creative Commons License


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

13 Replies to “Major Upheaval”

  4. Don’t be afraid – Glasgow isn’t SO scary….and not that I want to play one-upmanship, but I’ll be only MINUTES away ;0)
    India
    oh, and I meant to say, Glasgow itself is a great place to be without a car. And if our schedules allow, I am sure we can show you a little of the HIghlands – and some of our favourite places to eat.

  5. Y’know, I did the same t hing about going to univeristy full time – I’d just qualified as a nurse and was doing a first year psychology paper. If I passed, I was to be offered a full-time place, so I made a ‘bargain’ – I had to get a good enough mark to get an exemption from the end of year exam, get new accomodation ( I was in a staff cottage) and get funding. Yikes, it all happened. I was terrified and it was the best thing I ever did.
    India

  7. Congratulations! I was in Glasgow two years ago and no car is no problem. One of my sisters teaches at Glasgow University in the Anthro Dept.
    It will be a huge change, but you will love it!

  8. I’ll add my hearty congratulations too. Lists are good. Thankfully you don’t need to make every decision at the same time. Just as in the beginning of any school term the syllabus work looks insurmountable, you will work your way through it just fine with the time you have. And while shifting a household across the Atlantic truly is a major upheaval, there is something fairly liberating about being free from the gravitational pull of ‘stuff’.

    When we moved to Ireland, we brought 11 medium sized boxes with us. Oh sure, we’ve accumulated way too much since then, but it was a very freeing time in our lives to pare everything down to what was important and finding that the pile was fairly small when all was said and done.

  9. Thank you all for your reassurance. It’s such a major thing … but, then again, it’s not, really, is it? In a way. So strange, to think of pulling up roots which’ve been in place for years and years.

    Also kind of nice, to realize that, aside from a few books which we’ve gone through hell to track down, we don’t really have all that much stuff. The computers, my violin, some books. A few clothes. That about does it.

    All of the kitchen machinery, though, will have to stay home. Oh, the Kitchenaid. Sigh.

    Scotland is only 5 ours ahead of us in terms of time, so telephoning will be easy, even.

    Understanding the accent is another story … but that’ll come together, too.

  10. Oh my! Even though we’ve only known each other a short time through our blogs I feel the excitement for you!! I do hope when you get settled you’ll keep us all updated, just think of the new things, sites, and blog posts you can create 🙂 I’ll probably never make it to Scotland so I’m going to be seeing everything through your eyes and I’m sure you’ll keep it interesting LOL! Congratulations!!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.