Who needs a prestigious scholarship anyways?

As you may remember, I spent a good chunk of my last semester putting together my application for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant program. If selected, it would send me to Argentina for a year to teach English. Anyways, I got word today that I was not selected. I am not going to lie, this is pretty discouraging, especially after all the work I put into my application and all. So, any ideas for what to do once I finish the Appalachian Trail? Maybe I should just turn around and walk back to Maine. Yeah, that seems like a good idea. I’ll just keep walking, walking, walking.

Tunes

Over the break, my friend CW and I got together and did some recording. I can’t figure out how to get the upload thinger to work, so you’ll have to head over to our beautiful flashy and very much advertisement-filled myspace page. We actually have a couple of songs up there, the most recent is “Make of Us.” Take a listen, tell me what you think. It’s still a work in progress.

But Before That Can Happen…

I must actually graduate. And that is looking kind of dicey at the moment. As you may or may not know, I have to write a thesis this semester, and well, things are going pretty slowly right now. I’ve been researching alot over the break, reading lots of papers, and it just seems like each time I look I find more and more information, but none of it is really want I need to find, and honestly it’s soo much that I just don’t know where to begin anymore.

It’s kind of like cleaning your room, but each time you put something up you find a hundred other things that need your attention as well. The deeper down I go, the deeper it seems to get. And so I lie awake at night, thinking “Robert…you need to be researching…” and it’s just really discouraging, not to mention tiring what with the not sleeping and all. Hence this 3AM post.

So this is really going to happen?

Well, the winter break is coming to a close, and I have told pretty much everyone that I am going to hike the AT next fall. So that makes it real, right? I feel like telling people my plans is the first step. I have also sent my first email to a magazine about writing an article about my trip, and that feels like a pretty important step in terms of my commitment to the plan. I need to start sending more letters to different publications as well—any suggestions? I’ll probably be setting a new blog for just AT stuff in the near future, which will be another important commitment step I think.

The more I think about it, the less this seems like a crazy idea to me. With the economy being the way it is, perhaps taking six months off wouldn’t really be hurting my shot at getting a job.

Onward.