Led to a New Place

While the independent work project basically took over my year, it wasn't all I did.  While I had to drop Kindred Spirit (the Christian a cappella group I am a part of) during the fall, I rejoined in the spring and my life was greatly enriched by the fellowship of the seven wonderful new members.  Because of the independent work project, I had to move one departmental class from this year to next, but overall I've completed nearly all of the requirements for my degree (yippee!!).  Though the schoolwork was tough, breaks were fun.  Fall Break I went to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to meet my boyfriend's family (same boyfriend as last year, in case you didn't know ;]), and for Thanksgiving he came home to meet mine.  Christmas was home as usual, though I spent nearly the whole time working on my independent work project and other term papers and such.  Even so, my fall semester exam period was quite grueling, and I ended up having to stay up three days straight to get everything done.  In the spring I purposely lessened my course load, taking only three classes besides my independent work project and rejoining KS.  Troubles in the dining hall stemming from mismanagement and abuse of power have led me to stop my employment there, so when I return next year I'll either have a lot more free time or get way more involved down at Public Safety.  I applied to be an RCA next year in December, but was rejected in the first round, which really hurt since everyone had always told me what a perfect candidate I was.  When I went to the dean about it, he told me I wasn't confident or strong enough for the position, which really made me stop and re-evaluate where I was personally.  Hopefully I've been able to use the criticisms productively and can continue to grow with the feedback I receive.

In fact, this January I went through a season of rejection.  Several elected or appointed positions which I thought I was highly qualified for I didn't receive: KS Fellowship Chair, PEF Officer/Service Team Leader, RCA, and Dining Hall Student Coordinator.  Again and again I was passed over, until I began to wonder what God had in store for me.  I figured He wouldn't just close all of these doors without opening some amazing opportunity that was truly His plan for me.  (To be fair, I was led to this conclusion by the wonderful wisdom of Danielle, the PEF staff for the junior girls; on my own I would likely have been more tempted to despair about the situation).  So I prayed about what He truly wanted me to do with my senior year; it seemed that, one by one, my ties to Princeton were being severed.  Just before Spring Break it occurred to me that taking a semester to study abroad, something which I had always wanted to do but thought that my opportunity had passed when I chose to do a year-long independent research project, was once again a possibility.  I considered my options and talked it over with my parents, who were more than enthusiastic for me to go.  (My Spring Break was spent in Florida with my family, a very nice week considering I otherwise wouldn't have seen them for an entire year!)  Coincidentally, just about the time I started thinking about this again there was an information session for the Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA), an organization which connects with foreign schools and sets up integrated semester and year study programs for American students.  The benefit of going through a third-party program like this is that many of the administration details are taken care of, and an American transcript is provided at the end of the program.  Originally, I was considering Australia or New Zealand as my destination.  (At this point my options were either Germany or an English-speaking country; although Mom was confident that my French would return quickly enough should I choose to go there, I was less sure.)  The only problem with a southern-hemisphere university was the schedule: their second semester begins in mid-to-late July, and the German internship I had applied for didn't end until July 31st.  So, after much back=and-forth with both my internship coordinator and the Institute for Study Abroad, narrowing it down to the United Kingdom and then researching the course options at each of the universities, I decided on the University of Edinburgh in Scotland as my program of choice.  I quickly found the class equivalents I would need to fulfill my remaining degree requirements and got them approved by the Mechanical Engineering undergraduate coordinator and department chair.  I spent a day running around to all the other departments acquiring signatures of approval for other courses for distribution requirement credit and handed in all of my forms, just in time for the deadline as usual.  There was a brief scare when none of my paperwork seemed to have gone through by a week after the program deadline - it turned out that there was an unexpected death of someone on the IFSA staff which threw a wrench in the works.  Everything was soon sorted out and my application sent off to Scotland while I finished up my spring semester, fortunately with much less stress and more sleep than the fall had produced.  Spring Exam period was relatively relaxed, but as three and then four weeks went by without any word from Edinburgh I began to get anxious.  However, as God is wont to do, as soon as I (finally) prayed about it I received an email the next morning expressing the congratulations of the IFSA staff on my acceptance into the fall 2012 program.  I'm still not sure if it's really sunk in that I won't be at Princeton for the fall, but I am truly looking forward to the break in many ways.  While a good friend of mine earnestly encouraged me to take a year off to travel instead of replacing one of my semesters at Princeton, I think I will be glad of my choice.  While I love my school, it has really worn me out (or perhaps, the way I have chosen to do it has worn me out) and, more than any other year, I am very close to the class of 2012 and Princeton won't feel the same without their presence.  Studying abroad for a semester is a form of escape for me, for good or bad, but I intend to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded me by the experience.

So, now that you know what I'm doing for the fall I should probably also tell you what and why I'm abroad for the summer.  After last summer in Germany, which certainly had its ups and downs, as those of you who read my blog know, I was enamored with the country and the culture.  My one goal this summer was to get back to Germany somehow, and preferably without having to do research again.  By the time I started seriously looking for internships at Christmas break, most of the deadlines for Princeton programs (the German Summer Work program, the International Internship Program) had passed.  My heart was beginning to sink until I came across a program through the Keller Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship called the Ruhr Fellowship.  This program lasted for the months of June and July and consisted of one month of language and cultural exposure (tours of the local university, excursions to various companies) followed by a one-month internship in an engineering company.  This being exactly what I was looking for (an industry internship in Germany) I immediately applied, although I hedged my bets with another internship or two as well.  This made things interesting for a while.  I applied to an online math tutoring job, figuring that perhaps I could do that in my spare time even with another internship.  I hadn't noticed that this was a year-round position, and so was quite surprised when the company contacted me right away for an interview and subsequently with a contract.  I momentarily considered taking the job in place of one of my campus employment positions, but it didn't pay as well as any of them and would have ended up not being as flexible as I would have needed, so I politely declined their offer, saying I might contact them in the summer if I became more available.  I am considering reaching out to them now even just to say that because of my sporadic internet connection and the time difference, I won't be able to do anything this summer either, just to keep my word.  We'll see.  The other internship I applied to was LeadAmerica, a sort of selective summer conference for bright and promising high school students.  I was also accepted to this position, surprisingly enough (after my first ever phone interview went astonishingly well), the catch being that they wanted a final answer about a week before I heard about my acceptance to or rejection from the Ruhr Fellowship.  It was a season of learning business etiquette and how to be tactful.  I ended up calling the director of LeadAmerica and personally asking for an extension on the deadline (again, on the advice of Danielle and one of the career counselors); he was so impressed at my courtesy that he granted it with no problems.  A few days after that I heard for sure that I had been selected as a Ruhr Fellow and called the director back, a little apologetically, to tell him the REAL reason why I couldn't accept his offer.  He was very gracious about the whole thing and told me he didn't blame me a bit for choosing Germany, wished me the best of luck and asked me to remember LeadAmerica in the future should I ever need summer employment again.  I am sure blessed!!

All this was also because the Ruhr Fellowship program was originally scheduled for June 1-July 31, and I was looking into possibilities for August.  As plans continued to unfold, however, I learned that Princeton's Commencement (Graduation) ceremony was held June 5.  The paperwork I began to receive from the Ruhr Fellowship seemed to indicate that the start date was not yet set in stone; crossing my fingers, I wrote "June 5" as my available date to leave the US.  When I noticed another place to indicate interest in extending the internship portion of the program, I quickly filled in that as well, though I had not at this point ruled out studying abroad in New Zealand as a possibility.  Though I had discussed my need for a later start date with the people in the Keller Center and gotten a green light, the program director in Germany was less than enthused and for a while it seemed that she might revoke my acceptance, though when I agreed to extend my internship to August 24th it appeased her and she continued to welcome me.

So now the plan was to stay at Princeton through graduation, fly out as soon as possible (the evening of Commencement) to Germany, where I would stay until the end of August.  Orientation in Edinburgh begins September 5 - that gives me approximately 2 weeks to get from Germany to Scotland (I worked it so that I would have enough time to tour leisurely through Europe, though I wouldn't quite have enough time to make a return to the States worth my while).  Although this means I won't see my homeland for a whopping seven months straight, it opens up exciting new opportunities to travel to places I haven't yet seen.  As of now I haven't planned anything concrete, but I have vague notions of meandering through the Netherlands and Belgium before dropping down to France (Paris for 2-3 days, perhaps?) and zipping under the English Canal to the United Kingdom, where I will continue to take my leisure through the rolling English countryside, nonchalantly arriving in Edinburgh on the correct day.  Regardless of how it actually pans out, I'm sure it will be an adventure.

Speaking of adventures, now I'm off to have a few more so I can tell you about them later... we'll get to Germany eventually, I promise ;)