Postcards from the Imagination

Out of the blue my thesis advisor wrote this morning to offer me a paid summer research assistantship. How cool is that!? The only wrinkle is that the application deadline for funding has passed, but she thinks there may still be some money left. If so, I'll get to spend my summer doing research for her next novel (!) I'm trying to be reservedly optimistic, but I'm having a hard time with reserved part. Since paid internships for English majors are virtually non-existent, and I can't afford to work for free this summer, I've been dreading the prospect of having to temp in some corporate hell hole à la my last paying job.

The salary is meager, of course, but being able to make ends meet doing work I enjoy—at home, and on my own schedule no less!—will be quite a luxury if it works out.

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Busy weekend ahead. Seth's family is coming over for dinner tonight. I have tons of coursework and writing to do. I'm wrestling with an inverted sestina for my poetry workshop—i.e. one in which the initial rather than end words of each line repeat. My words are subject, object, inside, skin, beauty and the root uni-. On Sunday I'll be drinking tea and stuffing envelopes with my local chapter of NARAL (read: trying to stay sane in an insane political climate). And hopefully I'll find time squeeze in a few more chapters of Lerner's book, plus Mark Bibbins's Sky Lounge, which I've just started reading.