'tis a wonderful thing to kick back at the end of a long day of work and class with some cheese, crackers, and a cold Blue Moon with an orange wedge. the day wasn't TOO long considering i had a nice lunch of nachos and frozen margaritas with christina, lol, but 4 hours of work and 3 hours of class were just about all i could handle.

the highlight of my day was a rather unexpected e-mail from professor connolly (in charge of the Linguistics graduate program) telling me that the dept. somehow got ahold of some money and would give me a $4,000 stipend plus 9 free credits (half a year's tuition) in the form of some sort of assistantship. this is obviously wonderful news, considering i a) had never asked my department for money and b) i still haven't secured the means by which to pay for my Master's. it, is, however, a bit complicated if i end up getting the assistantship with media and technology services, however unlikely that may be.

the deal is that the MTS assistantship pays 18 credits (a full year's tuition) and gives an $8000 stipend, double what SELL can give me. while i would love to stay in my department and organize the library or work as a research assistant, the fact is that i need to take whatever gives me the most money, obviously the MTS position. so if i do get the media job, i'm going to need to have a chat with connolly and perhaps try to work out a deal where i could reduce my assistantship to 5 hours (the MTS one is 15 hours and you can only have 20 hours of assistantships as a full-time grad student) and get whatever money that translates to in the form of a stipend.

if i only get the SELL one, i still have two interviews with the Office of International Partnerships and programs, though both of those are pay-by-the-hour positions for 10 hours/week. i'll still need a loan, but at least i'll be getting as much money as possible under the circumstances. i now need to make sure that someone can, indeed, hold more than one position regardless of the hours involved...bleh