Looking toward the future: graduate school decisions
Finally the Vagina Monologues is over and I can get on with the rest of my life! The event was a huge success; we only had 9 tickets left on Thursday night and outsold the the tickets on Friday night. Looking at the numbers, it looks like S.H.E.-- the gender equality group I co-direct-- made $4,000+ for a local charity that is working to end violence against women!
Now that all of that is over I need to focus on several key pieces of my future. First, graduating. I have to finish my thesis in International Studies. I'm doing mine on diabetes prevalence in Pima Indian populations within the United States and Mexico. When I'm fully entrenched in that work I'll be writing more about it. More exciting than that (and more pressing) is choosing what graduate school I want to go to next year!
I received acceptance letters from U Penn and Yale University, both of which have outstanding programs in what I'm interested in studying-- master's level nursing with an emphasis on public policy and clinical research. When I went to the interviews for these schools (each one took a total of three interviews and various extra essays-- it was an extremely tedious process) I met the other candidates and thought I was WAY out of my league. I thought, "no one has ever heard of Willamette. There is no way I'm competition to these students." During one of my interviews I asked about that issue and my interviewer said (verbatim) "Willamette is on our radar. It's a rising star." At my Yale interview the interviewer was an internationally respected scholar on Women's Health Public Policy and she said, "I see one of your professor recommendations is from Joyce Millen (an anthropology professor at Willamette). That's a great recommendation to have on file. Tell her I say hello." I was shocked.
In the end, I got into BOTH schools. Now I get to choose between the two, something that is EXTREMELY hard to do, given the fact that they are both so well-regarded. I think I got accepted into these schools for a lot of reasons, most of which relate to Willamette. Monique Bourque who works in the career service center helped me with the interview process, the Writing Center tirelessly worked with me on my entrance essays, my professors took the time to write good letters of recommendation AND the academics at this school are very well regarded. Within a month I will be sending my responses back to the schools; we'll see where I end up next year!