I know some of my friends and family folk read this blog sometimes, so–well, Friday, I got a second notice on a package waiting for me at the Post Office (you’ll note here that I never actually received a first notice) and, when I got there, the new, shiny, I-guess-we-live-in-the-future package delivery robot/automated machine informed me that the thing had been sent back some several days earlier. Sent back before the second notice was delivered, mind you. Fantastic. And, since I wasn’t expecting anything, I’m of course dying of curiosity to know what it was and from who. So someone out there is getting a long-distance (I assume) return to sender. If it was you, please speak up!!
Right now, sitting on my couch trying to read through the applications for the Dartmouth Summer Institute on gender in Judaic and Islamic studies. It’s a fascinating process, trying to glean what people have done and why they wanna come. Oldest cliches in the book still apply, though: a well-written cover letter will win you more points than a badly-written one, and yes, we can tell when you’re BS-ing. Fascinating to see who this thing has attracted, from which ends of the earth. There are just a lot of them, so I’ll need to take a break soon so my eyeballs don’t fall out.
[UPDATE: This is absolutely crazy. We have applicants from Malaysia, Uganda, Nigeria, the West Bank, Israel, England, Germany, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, Turkey, Iran, and a whole lotta very, very, very smart Americans. And I’m not even done looking through them all yet.]
Golly, is it a lovely day out.