London Calling

Reading back over this blog I realized a couple of things. First and foremost is that I am a true Libra through and through. Decision making can be very hard for me because of my natural inclination to waver between two or more outcomes. I can see the positives and negatives quite clearly and struggle with deciding on the best course of action. Libras also look for justice in all of their interactions and this too is making the decision making process more difficult. My only saving grace is that I rarely am impulsive when it comes to my career. It has been too important in my life, and I take great pride in it. This has led me to make a pretty firm decision in my desire to live abroad. I have had some negative events happen in my life recently that have helped me come to the decision that it is time to move on to the next phase in my career. This revelation came to me just last week, and the conclusion is that it is time to focus on my future life as a full time student. I am ready to ...

  I have been going back and forth trying to decide whether to focus on going back to school for another Masters (and eventual Doctorate) or to apply for teaching positions in London. There is one school in Ireland (Trinity College) where there are two possible programs I'm very interested in and one school in London (University of London) with an interesting program. I have decided that there is no need to limit my choices just yet. So I'm going to apply to these schools once the applications are open (November) and continue to look for teaching positions in London. As far as teaching goes, I'm having kind of a renaissance in my career this year. I have tried new things with this class and have refined other activities. It's no secret that last year was, as good Queen Elizabeth II said once, my Annus horribilis" (horrible year) as far as my motivation and love for teaching went. So no matter what, this year was going to be an improvement, and it really has been so...

  Now that I'm feeling rested and recovered from the Covid disaster and also am caught up with planning for my class, I finally feel like I can turn my attention back to London. I have really been focused on perhaps going the University route and getting a student visa. What is holding me back is money. The programs I was interested in at Trinity College in Dublin (MA in Childrens' Literature or Irish Literature) cost more than I had previously thought. So, I'm trying to think about how else I could go back to school with an eye towards moving to Ireland or London.  I decided on a whim to look up universities in the SUNY system that offer one year Masters in Irish Literature and didn't find any. I did find Notre Dame and Boston College offered interesting programs but again the cost wasn't working out. So I tried online programs in Irish Literature and Language and found a really interesting option. University College Cork offers a very reasonably priced online opti...