So I did something this year I once thought I’d never do: I applied to grad school.

It was annoying and arduous and complicated and I kept second-guessing my decision, but on January 13 I sent in my last applications and sat back to play the passive-aggressive waiting game.

UW – Seattle will get back to me in March.

University of Denver, after misplacing my application until the last week it was due (in Feb! It’s not like I sent it last-minute!), informed me via e-mail that they have received my application and sent it on to the right department. Oboy! A less-than competent graduate program! Let me sit back and eagerly await YOUR response!

Lesley University got back to me less than two weeks later to offer me an interview.

So this last weekend I headed out to Boston to visit!

So…yeah, it was my first trip to Boston. It’s a BIG city, though no bigger than Chicago or New York. It’s cold, though no colder than Minneapolis or Chicago. I felt anonymous, but no more so than in any of the previously mentioned cities. Good public transportation, excellent bagels, even a freaking “Freedom Trail” that’s a red brick path leading you to the tourist sites.

The interview went well, I think! It lasted almost two hours, and took the form of a conversation mostly. The advisor told me about Boston, its history, its immigrant and refugee populations, and all the meanwhile I snuck in questions about the university and the program. Only when the conversation naturally came to a pause did she look down at her page of questions and ask something interview-like. The verdict: I’ll hear within a couple weeks.

And the interview served to make me even more excited about the program. Lesley (pronounced “Lezz-lee”) is, as far as I can find, the only school that offers an Intercultural Relations program – not International relations, not International Studies, but one that offers a psychological, *human* approach to those latter two fields. This program requires both proficiency in a non-English language by its completion, and an internship, domestic or international. Awesome!

So Boston’s pretty cool, the program is amazing, why am I so hesitant to want to go out there for two years? I think it’s an east-coast thing.

While wandering the streets of Cambridge, past Lesley, Harvard and MIT, I passed hundreds, if not thousands of people. Most of them were my age. Not a single one made eye contact, or smiled, or in any manner went out of their way to acknowledge my or anyone else’s existence. Being on the train was awkward at times – it became hard to sit for so long and NOT make eye contact with anyone. Lots of pretentious people. I got asked if I want “cwoffee” with my “baah-gel.” Perhaps it’s just the striking difference between the largeness of that anonymous city and the smallness of the mid-sized city I currently inhabit, the one in which you’re bound to see someone you recognize at the grocery store and the people at the “cah-fee” shop down the street know your name and your rainbow jacket. Perhaps it was an east-coast thing.

On my way back, my connecting flight from NYC to Louisville was...cancelled! Haha! SURPRISE! No explanation or warning, but thanks to friends and family, it turned into a most excellent night.

But Boston was pretty amazing to be in for the weekend. Got to stay with an old friend I studied abroad with, and met up with a former co-oper who now GOES to Lesley. I walked a bazillion miles through and around the city, relishing a wee bit in the crisp cold and the anonymity, come to think of it. In small towns, you feel almost as though you’ve got to justify your travels, you’ve got to walk down the street as though you’re going somewhere, so that if someone you know passes by, you come off as busy. Whereas in Boston, people were just…going. No one cared where. No one cared who they were. I can see why famous people slip away to big cities, and disappear in the masses. (Wow, did I really just compare myself to famous people? There’s a bit of pretentiousness!)

So now the big question: if they accept me, will I go?