what to do next year?

I'm 30 years old, I should have a bit more of an idea of what I'm doing. On the other hand, I was in the midst of posting "tried the american dream - house, wife, car, two cats and a dog - and it sucked (well, except for the dog)" when I found my rejection note in my inbox, so I can't say I haven't welcomed some sort of instability. Or perhaps realized that stability is all pretend anyway.

Many or most universities in the US want their new professors to have PhDs. 10 or 15 years ago, this was not the case. Statistically speaking, since women need more education to be considered equal to their male peers, women especially must need PhDs.

So there is a new demand for PhDs. Universities are responding by adding PhD programs. Since these are new, their reputation has not been established. Berkeley, however, has a fairly solid reputation AND it is a funded program. Meaning that unlike most other schools, instead of paying them, they pay you. Of course, no true artist would let such petty concerns dictate their choice of studies, but, uh, Berkeley gets a lot of applicants, I'm sure. They take one electronic music person every year. therefore, out of hundreds of applicants, there only needs to be one person better than me, which apparently, was the case.

Eh, so applying to schools on another continent is really even more annoying than doing it in your home country. Like 2 or 3 times more annoying. So I only applied to Berkeley, even though it would have been wise to also apply to Stanford. I don't want to move outside of the Bay Area in the US, not that it matters because all the deadlines for American schools have passed. There's always next year.

There's also Europe. Sophie tells me that the schools are easier to get in to. However, I'm not so hot on IRCAM, so I'd be looking at some schools in England or maybe the new center in Marseilles or McGill (Canada is practically Europe) or I could, you know (gasp) get a job and join the legions of MA-degreed musicians toiling away in the Leap Frog audio department. bah.

I'm too old to get another student visa. Nicole needs to be doing something wherever I go. Moving any place outside of Paris or Berkeley means doing the whole making new friends, figuring out the city, learning the local dialect thing AGAIN, which, yikes, but on the other hand, who wants to live in America? Do I need a PhD to get a job at GRM?

I'm taking suggestions.

Tags: Grad School, Celesteh