It's been a little while

So my last post was apparently on April 6, roughly two weeks ago. Dang. I need to get better at keeping this thing.

The biggest news that has come about in the last two weeks: I GOT ACCEPTED TO THE FSU SUMMER LAW PROGRAM!!! I just got the email on Thursday letting me know about it! I am so excited! In case you have forgotten (or I didn't mention it earlier), this program is 4 weeks long at Florida State University - and everything is paid for except for my flight to Tallahassee. How cool is that?! And even cooler, although it is a bit of bragging, only 60 students were selected out of a pool of over 500 applicants. It makes me so happy that I can achieve something like this! :-)

I also emailed the WINS program and the USCIS to inform them of my decision to pull out of my internship for this summer. It took me quite a while to do it, but I eventually (finally) sent them the message yesterday. The WINS Administrative Assistant, Liz Litchfield (an incredibly nice woman), wrote me back within half an hour and graciously wished me the best of luck during the summer and invited me to consider WINS again in the future. My internship sponsor from the USCIS has yet to responded, if ever, to the notification. Hmmm.



I only have a couple more things to do to cement my summer into place: first, I need to formally apply to the Crittenden Opera Studio Workshop and send in my audition recordings by May 4; I need to send in my Notice of Intent to the FSU Summer for Undergraduates by May 2; and I need to buy my plane tickets for both of the programs.

I also wanted to stay behind and work at the library when I won't be in FL or DC, but upon plotting my summer excursions on paper I realized that I will only have 3 weeks or less to work during the months of June and July, and heaven knows what our family might do during the month of August. So now I'm going to have to speak to my boss about letting me work for only a few weeks - maybe 5? - during the whole summer. I don't know how he'll take it, but it's worth a shot.

As for school right now, we are smack-dab in the middle of finals! I have two more left: a take home final for Supervised Teaching (Music 472), and a final in two parts for my last ever Music History/Literature class (Music 304). Then all I'm going to have to worry about is our concert for BYU Singers the night of Commencement and our tour only three days later. This summer is going to be TERRIFIC. :-D

This Weekend

For those who might not know, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gather together twice a year to listen to our General Authorities speak to the entire Church as a whole. The Conference is broadcast in 92 languages to who knows how many different countries. Living in Provo gives us the opportunity to go to Salt Lake and attend a session or two in person. Like my last post stated, the BYU auditioned choirs sang in the Saturday Afternoon Session, one of the five sessions of General Conference. This year I was blessed to be able to attend three of the five sessions in Salt Lake, two of which were in the Conference Center.

I always forget how big the Conference Center is! It's huge!! I got to see it from two different views during this General Conference: once from the choir loft (behind the pulpit), and one from the balcony. Both views make you feel like you're really looking at a picture, or a big IMAX screen, but certainly not a huge open building. This room seats over 21,000 people! Incredible.

I didn't really have a chance to rest this weekend like I wanted to. In order to sing at the Saturday Afternoon Session you have to be inside the Conference Center before the previous session ends (and the sessions are spaced 2 hours apart). We wanted to see as much of the Morning Session as possible - therefore, we left Provo a little after 7 o'clock in the morning to be able to park and watch the Saturday Morning Session in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It worked and we were able to see almost the entire session.

This morning, once again, we were gone a bit after 7 AM in order to park and be at the Conference Center to attend the Sunday Morning Session in the Conference Center. What made today more difficult was the fact that we had to bring our food with us instead of buying it in Salt Lake, since members of the Church do not shop on Sundays (since that requires other people to work on the Sabbath). But it worked out great! The Morning Session was beautiful - although I did have an impromptu singing competition with a guy sitting next to me (don't worry, I won) - and we had a picnic in the car in between sessions. And it was a good picnic, too. We ended up driving back during the Afternoon Session while listening to it on the radio and finishing it at the apartment. Not too shabby.

I also received all of my welcome information from the WINS Internship Program yesterday, the Native American program that arranged my internship for this summer...that I have not yet turned down. Now that my summer is beginning to look more concrete with the grant for Crittenden, I'm going to need to write both the WINS program and my internship sponsor and let them know that I won't be able to attend this summer.


...However, this is one of those things that you know you have to do but do not want to have to do it. You know? I made a commitment before, but now things have changed enough that this internship will not do much good for me either for music or for law. Grrr. I'm just going to have to put my nose to the grindstone and get it done.

Anyway, that's about it. Nothing too exciting, but it's still an update with my life. Well, at least my weekend.

Oscarson Discovery Grant!

I got the grant! This is the grant that I applied for to help pay for the Crittenden Opera Workshop, and I was informed yesterday by email that I received it! Woo-hoo! This means that all I'll have to come up with is a measly $300 and the rest should be set.

I would certainly write more (and expound upon the joy that fills my breast), but I have to get ready to leave momentarily for the Conference Center. The BYU auditioned choirs are singing in the Saturday Afternoon Session of General Conference. That means that we have to be up there and ready to practice by the time the Morning Session is finished.

I got money!!! :-D

Self-Indulgence

As part of my application for the Summer for Undergraduates Program at FSU I had to send in a Personal Statement. After some thinking, I decided to post that Personal Statement here.

If I can ever get it uploaded.

Ah, here it is: Personal Statement. The link will open another window where you will have to click the Download File box and then wait for the actual link to the file to load. Free file hosting. Yeah.

My Summer Plans?

This being the first post in a while, I figured I'd try to bring y'all up to speed with the main enigma that I'm facing right now: what am I going to do with my summer?

Many of you probably remember my excitement in January of being accepted into an internship with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service for the entire summer. Even cooler than the acceptance was the fact that they would be sponsoring me - paying for my room and board, my textbooks and other school stuff, my transportation to the internship site from my housing, my transportation to Washington, DC, and a weekly stipend for miscellaneous stuff. You bet I was excited!! That internship was my entire plan for the summer, nicely packaged and conveniently affordable.

Unfortunately, the internship really will not do very much to enhance my opportunities with law. I would be working within the Training and Development Department of USCIS, hardly a position meant to enhance law school-ish opportunities. After a long talk with my dad (aka Wise Man) I decided that I should seek out other options for the summer that would lead me closer to law school or music.

Yes, music. I have realized that my odd ability to sing very high (like a woman) can actually earn me some major bucks down the road if I choose to capitalize on it. Countertenors are paid very highly to perform in early operas. Who knew? So I've been looking for programs this summer that can emphasize either of those two career paths.

And this is what I have so far.


I've been "accepted" into the Crittenden Opera Studio for this summer, a 2-week long workshop for opera performance held in Washington, DC. One of the voice faculty at BYU swears by this program, and I figured if I ever was serious about countertenor I would probably need to know a bit about opera performance. Accepted is a bit of a stretch...the same voice professor managed to get an acceptance email from Mr. Crittenden so that I could apply for a grant to help pay for the workshop, even though applications aren't even accepted until May (hehe). The workshop will take place during the middle of July.

I've also applied for an undergraduate law program at Florida State University, called the Summer for Undergraduates Program. This is a 4-week long program that teaches about the American legal system, teaches writing courses, explores careers in law, etc. Only 60 students are accepted each summer, and I have applied with great faith and hope (charity and love can enter the picture when I get accepted). This is the kind of program that, if you get accepted, pays for everything except your travel to and from Tallahassee, FL! You can imagine how much I want to go and enjoy FSU for 4 weeks for free!!!



I also have the goal of staying here at BYU during my "not-traveling-times" and working at the Library. My supervisor at the library right now wants me to be trained in an archival database project along with a few other employees, and I certainly want to take advantage of that. BUT - I cannot make a commitment for this summer with the library until I know what else I'll be doing and when.

And then, on top of all of these things, I still have not written my internship sponsor (USCIS) to tell them that I will have to withdraw my internship. I'm not really looking forward to it to be quite honest. I hate having to back out of any kind of commitment that I've made, especially in this type of situation where I was chosen after an interview process. However, the truth of the whole matter is that USCIS will not help me that much in either of my career aspirations.

So the question is: can I do everything I want this summer and not be overwhelmed, emotionally or financially? First I will need to know whether I'm accepted into the law program, if I get the grant to help pay for Crittenden, and when I'll be here to work at the library. And those three things are out of my hands right now.

I hate having to wait on people. ;-)