And the waiting persists...

Teaching about American Folk Music has been wonderful. It's been, by far, my most successful lesson spread out over two weeks. The students have appreciated my fiddle-playing and have been very vocal about it, too. At the moment, I'm trying to decide what may be best to do next with the high schoolers. I had proposed to the 1eres on Monday morning (the ones that are hard to get attentive) a rap activity. As of yet, I haven't thought too much about what that will involve. However, it may be worth looking into. The terminale students may need something more difficult and challenging. I almost think that doing cartoons with them and helping them practice for the BAC test at the end may be good to do. Of course, they would object to doing this right after having an interesting two weeks of American folk/country music. I'll keep thinking this over...

The 5eme (7th graders) are great. They're a little more mature than the sixth graders but talk a lot. They do, however, listen rather than blurting out random things. That's reassuring. These past two weeks have been introductory and as such, I haven't prepared much. However, I will have to start thinking about their lessons this evening.

Now to the waiting part of this. I received an email from Brown shortly after asking them about their program, which hinted something about my application for their French Studies PhD program. ?The Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) said in one line, "I hope to have some good news for you soon." Yes! The DGS at Brown always has had such a positive, upbeat response to my inquiries and seems to show interest in me as a candidate. That is incredibly reassuring in a process that is often cut-throat as I can tell at other schools (namely, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton). This DGS has encouraged me through the process, seeming to indicate that Brown is a good fit. It is, in fact, my school of choice. So, here I am, hoping that I get in to Brown. Somehow, I feel confident about it. One of my friends on facebook indicated to me about the email, "it means you're a top candidate and they're trying to narrow down their applicant pool to see if you're one of THE top candidates." Excited, nervous, mixture of the two. I should be finding something out within the next week or so. Anytime, actually.