Would you like to dance around the world with me?

"Anything can happen in the woods."

Seeing as my favorite musical is Into the Woods, last weekend I recruited a willing bunch to go watch the play with me. First of all, DramaTech did an amazing job. As I was sitting there during the first act, trying not to sing along to the songs, out walks a handsome prince. "Damn," I whisper to Jen, "he's cute." And then the next prince walks out. "Damn," Jen whispers to me, "where do they find these men?" For some reason over the next few days, I decided I wanted to meet Cinderella's prince. I didn't know how, until someone suggested I send him a note and a flower before his next show. Debating the idea and the option of including a flower, I consulted my relationship advisors, Melissa and Brian. With their reassurance that it was a good idea, I was determined just to give it a shot. I thought, "Why not just see what happens? If he's not interested, only a slight loss of ego, but no real harm done." So I sent the note and the flower to him at his show on Thursday, and to my amazement when I got home, he had IMed me. After some, what some might call, playful banter, he invited me to the Into the Woods after party on Saturday.
So we skip ahead to the next day. I was at a rugby party when he called at about midnight to say they were almost ready. At this point, I got a ton of heckling for leaving a ratio of 10:1 (too Tech typical, it seems) to go hang out 1:1. I'd never really been out with someone I wasn't friends with already, so I was a little nervous, but there was nothing to worry about. The party was fun, Sergio was nice, I met a lot of new people, and I saw some DramaTech people do things I never really thought I would see at a party. But everyone thought it was really cool how "courageous" and "forward" I was, even though I thought writing a note was the easy way out. Oh well, I'll take the complement. We left to hang out at DramaTech at about 4 in the morning and then went to City Cafe around 5:30. When we left, the sun was coming up. And there we had my first all-nighter at Tech. Yadda yadda yadda, I finally took a nap at 10 a.m. And whatever happens, happens.

So to make the weekend amazing instead of just great, I heard back from Stanford! Now, to preface the good news, I don't want to sound egotistical, but the Aerospace Department at Stanford gives about 5-7 students a year funding to do their Master's (out of I don't know how many, but a good number). So they offered me a Stanford Graduate Fellowship, which includes waived tuition and a lot of money to just go to school (for 3 years, at which point you then will have taken quals and be ready to work for someone at your thesis). You aren't required to find a research assistantship until your 2nd or 3rd year, and at that point, you can pretty much get whatever position you want because you are funded at that point. So this is amazing. I don't even know if I want to go to Stanford, but I was ecstatic to be honored with this.

So now I'm off to Colorado to visit UC-Boulder for 4 days, then next weekend to MIT, then at the end of the month, I'm off to Stanford. I shouldn't complain about this decision!

posted by Biff @ 4:52 PM