In the past week I've filed one application and am waiting on another to be posted.
The first was for a spring creative writing seminar. I'm really interested in creative writing and would love to take a class on it here, but, as it turns out, you have to apply. It's pretty straightforward, just a writing sample (what else could I expect? performing an interpretive dance wouldn't make much sense....). But the high pressure situation reminds me of last fall all over again. A crush of students filled the English department yesterday afternoon trying to ensure that their newly minted application made it into the right box. And to think that out of all those students, there is only room for 12 poetry kids and 12 fiction kids. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And there's always next year.
The second application I learned about won't be available until November 15th. It's for The Village Education Project summer program, which is a Swarthmore based organization that sends students to Ecuador for several weeks over the summer to teach. In Ecuador it's very hard for rural kids to go to secondary school because of the transportation and enrollment costs. The program gives the kids a chance to take english and math classes over the summer to improve their skills. Those kids that get a B average in both classes get funded by the program to go to secondary school.
I'm seriously considering going. The application doesn't sound too hard core because they probably need as many volunteers as they can get. It sounds as thought its just to make sure people are serious about committing to learning Spanish and have the funds to support themselves in Ecuador.
I also want to get involved with the aspects of the organization that are grounded here. They spend the year raising money to fund the kids' secondary education and recruiting volunteers. It sounds as though there are lots of opportunities for me to use writing to get across the message of the program (yay!).
Wish me luck. I'll keep you posted.
1 comment:
hey amelia...just jeanie, your former and future hallmate, being creepy and stalking swatties on their blogs linked to the admissions page. i almost did the VEP last summer but some stuff came up and i wasn't able to go. if the application is anything like last year's, you're correct, it is no big deal. i remember that the group of people who applied was whittled down substantially to the number of people who were accepted, so i believe that it's not that they're in such dire need of volunteers that they'll accept anyone but they're, as you said, looking for people serious about the project. you're a swattie, you're intelligent, you know spanish (right?), so i'm guessing that you'll have absolutely no problem getting accepted. good luck, and have fun if you go: it seems like a really great time and an awesomely valuable thing to do with a summer.
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