Puerto Rico

As of this past weekend, we've decided to begin working under the assumption that Mike will not be accepted into any Scotland schools for fall 2010.  He's planning on requesting post-mortems from the schools to determine what he needs to do to strengthen his application for next time but, in order to stay sane, we're moving on.

Mike's plan is to gain another 10-15 college credits during summer quarter, which should satisfy the entry requirements for the MFA program at the University of Edinburgh.  Afterwards, and instead of waiting around for another year here in Seattle, we've decided to move to Puerto Rico where we hope to enjoy some Caribbean weather for a few months before Mike starts school in fall 2011.

Mike plans to apply to the same schools in Scotland for fall 2011.  He's also going to apply at other schools in the UK and Europe and, as a last resort, he'll apply at any schools in the States that have programs that interest him (this will probably include Providence, NYC, Chicago, and Washington DC).

We plan on living in Puerto Rico for less than a year (September 2010 through July/August 2011) but expect it to provide us with some much needed heat and sun.  We also hope to become skilled in Spanish and Mike hopes to learn to surf.

There is still some hope of being accepted into a program in Scotland for fall 2010 but we're actually pretty excited about our Puerto Rico idea.  Perhaps it's because we're finally in control of our future again, or perhaps it's due to the novelty of a different future than what we've been expecting for the last two years, or perhaps it's because we'll be living on an island paradise in the Caribbean?  Regardless, we're no longer treading water but actually moving forward with our lives.  It's both liberating and thrilling to finally have a concrete plan and if this one fails we have no one to blame but ourselves.