The Next Big Thing

Time to update the ol’ Facebook Education Info:

Crystal River High School, 1998

New York University, 2002. B.A. in English; B.A. in Physical Anthropology

Trinity College 2010. Master’s of Philosophy in Creative Writing*

*a.k.a, The Next Big Thing

Come this August, I Eat My Pigeon: 私のハトを食べる New York Edition will flap its wings across the Atlantic and become I Eat My Pigeon:私のハトを食べる New York Edition Ithim mo cholúr.

That’s Irish, by the way – impenetrable a tongue as it is an accent. Trinity is in Dublin.

For months, my graduate school plot has taken up my life. I threw myself into coordinating recommendation letters, transcripts, and notarized birth certificates between Japan, New York and Ireland so that I wouldn’t panic about the potentially ego-crushing gamble I was taking. There were countless sessions at the smoke-raunchy internet cafes to print out pages of my portfolio and CVs, only to have to reprint whole pages when I realized I’d spelled “program” and “center” American style. There were a maze of interviews with my students to learn the Japanese word for notary, and then even more to find out where on earth the Japanese hide their notaries in the first place. Then, having my Fantastic Japanese Day euphoria utterly squelched by the 50,000 yen notary bill.

I learned I’d been accepted to Trinity’s Creative Writing Master’s program two days ago; weeks after learning I’d been accepted into the other schools I’d applied to. Trinity is the one I was waiting for. I’ve begun and deleted this post several times in the past two days; I can’t commit to the delight or the honor. Instead I’ll focus on finding an apartment/work in Dublin, as well as on the fact that in just a few months I’ll be eating pigeons in a foreign land yet again.