Shocked, enraged, lost.... those are just some adjectives that describe how I felt when reading an e-mail from my Grad School advisor informing me that the funding for the project I was supposed to work on did not go through. Now if I want to go to CU Boulder I need to cough up $30,000 and that's just for tuition. And I'm supposed to sign a lease next week!
Taking out a loan for that much money is silly. Not for a Master's degree, not when I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with it.
The only hope would be finding a TA position with a different department. I've been on the waitlist for that since May. I probably won't find out for sure until next month.
What to do now? Try and find a shitty job in Boulder, or Bozeman, or elsewhere?
And yesterday started out pretty well! We went to the Horsetooth Reservoir, just 10 minutes outside of Ft.Collins to go for a swim. And swim I did. Alone. My friend stayed behind, sitting in the shade by the car, reading. So I called my best friend, thousands of miles away, so that I wouldn't feel so lonely.
After saying goodbye to Brian I headed West out of town, to Rocky Mountain National Park! I will be hiking here for the next few days before heading to Boulder. The drive here was incredible. This area of Colorado is just stupid pretty. Steep, rugged mountains everywhere! And I may possibly live just an hour drive from here.
I found a sweet Forest Service campsite just 10 miles outside the park, set up my tent and headed over to the nearest Visitor's Center to get some info on the hikes I wanted to do. That's when I checked my e-mail and got the bad news.
Oh, and I started out yesterday morning by giving a reference for one of my crew members from Texas. I felt like such an adult! And by the end of the day I was reduced to sobbing in my tent like a little kid. Damnit!
This morning I went for a 14-mile roundtrip hike to Lawn Lake. Luckily, I started pretty early in the morning and missed the thunderstorm that rolled in less than an hour after I hiked back to my car. It was a beautiful hike along Roaring River. Saw about seven marmots. This place should be called Rocky Marmot National Park!
The lake was beautiful and made all of my worries melt away, even if for some time.
This park is super busy. The hike that I did is not one of the most popular, yet I saw a ton of people, especially on the way back. Tons of Colorado cars in the parking lot. People trail-running. Which makes me think that since its the weekend people from the Front Range area just come here to hike and trail-run. Unlike say Yellowstone or the Tetons, which are big "destination" parks.
I took a drive on the main road that gets up to around 12,000 ft, but it was so cloudy and stormy that I didn't get to see much. Except gorgeous elk with big racks! Yes!
I realize I haven't written about the few days leading up to this. Stay tuned, I will write more.
So sorry to hear about the stick CU has stuck in your spokes. There is no doubt about it that that is a rotten thing to do to someone. But it sounds like you're still doing well and not letting it take over the rest of your summer. You'll figure it out!
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