More on UCSB

So. I just received an email from Patricia Hall, the theory coordinator at UCSB and my roomie at the M&MI conference I went to last May in NYC. (If you don't know that story comment and I'll fill you in.) Anyway, she emailed me to let me know about my being accepted into the program (already knew), about my TAship (uhhh .... didn't know that!) and my fellowship nomination (heard about that). But the TAship? Hell yeah.

*five minutes later*

Okay so I just looked up the TAship info ... apparently it is a partial fee waiver (ehhh) and free health insurance (very nice). So I'd need the fellowship, which Dr. Hall said pays for tuition and fees. So I'd really need both. And the fellowship is for students who are the first in their families to go to college.

This is started to get complicated. I applied to, like, seven PhD programs because I didn't think I had a shot. I applied to the MA because I wanted to see if I had a chance in hell at a top music program in Europe (I mean ... Adam Krims works there!). I've gotten into three of the seven and have been offered money at two of them. I may actually have to make a really tough choice. If I get a big honkin' fellowship at UCSB in addition to a TAship ... hmmm. But I mean, Texas is my #1 ... ugh. I didn't think I'd get in anywhere! Now I have three possibilities, maybe even more after I hear back from other places. I'm way too indecisive for this.

I was talking with some other grad students today, and out of the four "scholar" grads that are graduating this year (all in August because we're too lazy and too much of commitaphobes to write our thesis) I am the oddest one out and the only one to continue on after this year. Morgan is a musicologist that focuses on 20th-century music (she's writing on Berg's Lulu, Kathryn is a musicologist and cellist who is obsessed with Bach and is writing about Vaughn Williams, Jennie is a theorist writing on phrasing in Bach, and I am a theorist that listens to punk and indie rock and is writing about film music. They fit much better into the canon than I do. Yet Morgan and Kathryn are seriously considering changing fields, and Jennie may give up if she doesn't get into FSU.

So. Maybe the canon is changing? Maybe the field of "acceptable dissertation topics" is finally branching out after ... two hundred years. I guess I just have good timing.