Cimorene

I'm leaving Buffalo to go to Providence this summer. I'm so sad to be leaving. Get an apartment in Elmwood Village or Allentown (parts of Allentown can be mildly sketchy; nowhere in EV is sketchy). You can get a 2 bdrm apartment with huge bay windows, hardwood floors, and a yard for $625 in an old Victorian house in one of the best neighborhoods in the country (as Elmwood Village is constantly rated best neighborhood to live in, in various magazines and such). Don't do the Amherst/University apartments--they're totally overpriced and Amherst is a death-town, suburban wasteland. EV is amazing--great restaurants, cool bars. The theatre scene in B.lo is particularly excellent, as is the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Bistro Europa, on Elmwood Ave near Hodge, is perhaps the best restaurant I've ever eaten at, ever, in my whole live, anywhere. It's amazing and I want to cry because I live right around the corner and I dread leaving it. Allen St has the best bars--Hardware is nice. Coulter Bay has good beers, but a kind of frat-boy atmosphere sometimes. The Old Pink is great in a sleazy, drunken way. It's cheap at hell to live here. In the winter, get the clear plastic insulation (you can get it at Home Depot or, even better, TruValue hardware) so your heating bill doesn't get grossly high. It will get cold in the winter, but not as cold as Boston, MA (I went to undergrad at Wellesley). It snows more here, though. Be prepared, because Buffalonians almost never shut down for snow--only when it's really, really bad. Because if we shut down every time it snowed a foot in a day, we'd miss too much school and work. UB is a great school, but the campus is shitty for grad students. The neighborhood near South Campus, so-called University Heights, is sketchy and dangerous with lots of absentee landlords who don't care about their property, and lots of frats/frat-like houses that throw wild parties. Elmwood Village has a lot of homeowners, and a lot of old houses converted into apartments. It's nicer. It's the best place ever. Sigh. I'm sure Rhode Island will be nice, but I'm just gutted to be leaving. My partner is from Atlanta, and is a total Buffalo-convert. He doesn't want to leave, either. Live with someone--or two people, ideally--and your rent will drop dramatically. You can get a beautiful, huge, bad-ass 3 bedroom for as little as $800/month. It's an excellent dog city. The dog park in LaSalle park is wonderful, on the water and really nice, especially in the summer. I recommend Shakespeare in Delaware Park if you're here in the summer. Good theatre, fun, and nobody cares if you bring a bottle of wine and drink it in the park. Best Pizza: Bella Pizza, in Lackawanna (kind of far for just a slice, but if you're ever in the neighborhood). Best Pasta: Chef's, downtown, or Pino's, in Orchard Park (a suburb south of the city). Get the Spagetti Parm, it's a buffalo-favorite. Best Wings: I like Gordon's, near Hertel. Best patio: La Tee Da, on Allen St (Patio's in the back, only open Thursday-Sunday), or Cecilia's on Elmwood, though I find that crowd tiresome--they make amazing martinis, though. Niagara Cafe on Niagara St has great Puerto Rican food, Custard Corner on Porter Ave (nearish the dog park) has the best ice cream EVER, Fowler's has the best chocolate, Cafe Aroma has the best coffee, Spot has the best coffee-shop atmosphere. Trattoria Aroma (Bryant and Ashland) has the best properly Italian food--their pizza sauce is freakishly delicious. They make great cocktails, too. If you're looking for apartments, try ArtVoice, the weekly free newspaper. Also, try driving around--lots of people put up For Rent signs in front of their property without posting ads anywhere. Enjoy! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. I love this city.

I was offered an excellent package at one school, and 2 ok packages at others, and the head of the graduate program at both of the "ok packages" schools have encouraged me to negotiate. They both said that they could try to get more money for me, "to make a more competitive offer," as they said. One program actually had that in their acceptance email. I'm still trying to figure out what to do, though. I'm pretty sure that neither school will be able to match the other's stipend/fellowship deal, because they just don't have the budget. But it's accepted practice to negotiate. They accepted you, now they want you. Also, they can't reject you now that they've offered you a spot, so it's not like it can hurt to ask.

Feminist Shakespeare Studies, accepted at Notre Dame, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, Brown, UMass Amherst. Rejected from Cornell, WUSTL, U Chicago, Harvard. Haven't heard from GW or Columbia, so I'm assuming those are rejections.

I've been accepted to the English Department, and am feeling conflicted. I was offered a financial package that's quite a bit larger from an Ivy school, but Davis's program is pretty much exactly what I'm interested in (Shakespeare, gender, feminist studies). I'd love to go to Davis, all things being equal, but gambling on a UC school right now, in this economic climate, when I have an offer of a larger stipend, cheaper cost of living, and three years of fellowship (so no teaching during those years) seems unwise. Especially because I live on the east coast, as does all my family and my partner's family, and moving across the country (with a dog and two cats!) will be very expensive. I wish I was independently wealthy, so money didn't affect my decision so much. But I've been quite poor my whole life, and I don't want to be stressed about money the way I have been when I'm trying to write my dissertation. I'm also worried about things like research and travel money, which is available in spades at my other option. And I'm at a SUNY school right now, so I've seen what happens to a department at threats of budget cuts (or, actual budget cuts).

I was admitted and got funding. It's not as competitive as any other packages I've been offered (seriously less in one case), and it's more expensive to live in Davis than any other place I'm considering. It's very frustrating because I'd love to go to Davis, but it feels crazy to turn down well-funded programs that are just as highly regarded (if not more so) than Davis, but that aren't as ridiculously well-suited to my needs and interests as Davis.