academic to the corps

Last night I realized that I was feeling unusually cheerful (stimulated?), and I attributed it to the fact that the night before I'd read a good book cover to cover (Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane, which I'd just received in a Christmas package from my mom and sister) and that morning, I'd crafted a brief essay for an environmental fellowship I'm applying for. I think I miss essay-writing. I know I miss being a student. Then I realized I've been out of school for over 6 months. That's the longest I've ever been out of school in the past sixteen years. That sort of struck me.

I just submitted the application for the said fellowship. I doubt I'll get it, since several hundred people compete for 25 slots (that's almost definitely more competition than I faced for my Fulbright grant), and I probably don't have as much experience with environmental non-profits as most of the applicants. It's a pretty cool fellowship though--you take classes in August in Boston and then get placed at a number of different environmental NGOs around the country. You get paid a salary of something like 26,000 dollars for the year. It would start in August, which would mean if I got it I might have less than a month between leaving Korea and starting there, but hey, it's good to keep moving, right? There are two rounds of interviews, one of which might require me to fly to the States next month--but maybe they'd let me do the interview over the phone, because a last-minute ticket to the U.S. would cost me a pretty penny. But I guess on one hand, I'd maybe have to cancel my trip to Japan, and 9 days in Japan can get pretty expensive, too. Anyway, if you are curious, you can learn more about the fellowship at greencorps.org (just don't compete with me).

So I'm heading to Seoul tomorrow, going to catch up with Rachel who just got back from her holiday visit to the States, and then I'm flying to Singapore on Monday. Singapore! I'm working my way across Malaysia over the course of a week and then flying from Penang to Saigon, to meet Matthias, and then back here on the 21st, and my winter break complementary classes start on Jan 24th. I'll be teaching first years, so students I've never met before. I'm also getting paid an extra hourly wage (20,000 won) which is pretty sweet, considering I'm also currently getting paid to be on vacation. Maybe I'm not raking in the cash that the hagwon teachers are, but I have to admit, Fulbright has a pretty sweet set-up (and I get student loan deferment).