ANLstyle

Congrats on being accepted to Berkeley. Berkeley is definitely my dream school and I'm hoping a professor is currently writing me a congratulatory email. One can only hope!

Does anyone know why UCLA's atmosphere is so competitive?

U of Washington's atmosphere is very collegial. Everyone co-publishes and there is much equality in the program.

Got promoted to conduct research in Trinidad! Dreams do come true! Yuuuup.

Got promoted to conduct research in Trinidad! Dreams do come true! Yuuuup.

Congrats to everyone who heard good news from the Caribbean and I'm truly sorry to all those who were rejected or designated as alternates.

And then there was Turkey (cricket, cricket)

ALT to Trinidad. My heart stopped a bit when I saw the ALT designation :/
To save myself the agony of further waiting and hoping, I am going note alternate status in my CV and carry on as if I was rejected. Thanks for everyone's support on this site, it has helped me tremendously. I'm going to take a hiatus for a while.

ALT to Trinidad. My heart stopped a bit when I saw the ALT designation :/
To save myself the agony of further waiting and hoping, I am going note alternate status in my CV and carry on as if I was rejected. Thanks for everyone's support on this site, it has helped me tremendously. I'm going to take a hiatus for a while.

Oh, man. You made my night! Here's to hoping we all get good news!

Ok Caribbean people, I called Pam (again). They're still waiting on the CA folks buuuuuut the Caribbean is confirmed. Notifications go out tomorrow.

Just out of curiosity: if you are rejected for a grant, do you also get a rejection letter in the mail?

Oh yeah, Caribbean notifications.... Is this the week or what? I'm tired of putting my life on hold because of bureaucratic red tape!

Is it better to know or not to know. Once you are an alternate you can spend months just hoping for another email. Hoping that get the notifications out for the rest of you soon, its driving me mad just watching you all going mad.

Fulbright notifications for the Caribbean applicants... whatever, dude.

Nope, Central Asia recommendeds received our emails at about 4:30 pm.

Seriously. Last Friday I remember thinking "Notifications haven't come through yet!! What if they don't come until next Friday!? No, that's crazy... that'll never happen... They'll be here by Wednesday at the latest..." Ugh...

Thanks for the call rtlc06! No judgement, I broke down two weeks ago and shot Pamela an email. So basically we are back to square one. It could come as early as now or the notifications can come in a few weeks. I don't understand why she would say we would be notified last week. Perhaps she's going off the normal turnaround time for the FSB? And yes, the vibe I'm getting is the emails come on in the morning, so anything after 3pm EST is a wash for the day.

Ok Caribbean people - after all my talk this morning about "the fruitlessness of contacting Pam" I broke down and called her (yes, called... I didn't want to identify myself). Anyway, she was super nice and seemed extremely empathetic towards our frustrations about notifications. Unfortunately (as I also predicted this morning) the conversation yielded no new information; Pam has NO idea when notifications will go out. Verbatim what she said was: "We've received notification from the foreign commission, but are waiting on notification from the FSB... which could come in at any moment." She said that notifications from the FSB usually are relatively quick, but for some reason (that she doesn't know) have been much slower this year. Thus, she anticipates we should know before the beginning of May, but the notifications could also come as soon as like... now (this info is basically meaningless, since she predicted mid-April a few weeks ago). According to "the information for recommended candidates" link that we were provided with on our recommended candidacy emails, "It is anticipated that all principal candidates will receive notification no later than May 15th." There is an end in sight...

I was venting to my sister about how frustrating it is to not know what the next year will look like and how, at this point, even a rejection would at least give me some sort of guidance. She, being the darling sibling that she is, said, "Wouldn't it be funny if you didn't even get recommended, it was just a glitch in the system that sent you that email and you've just been waiting and waiting for no reason?"
.....
............um, no.
That would be the opposite of funny. That would be like telling a pregnant woman on the day before her due date that she never really had a baby, and that she was just a part of a psych study or test trial for a weight gaining pill.

Thanks though, sis, for giving me another thing to worry about.
Note to self: This Mother's Day, send Mom an invoice for therapy needed for all the years of psychological torture her other daughter has put me through.

^^^ THIS.
Such diverse cultures & countries with completely different histories, languages (South Africa has about 11 official languges since its population is so incredibly diverse and consists of multiple major ethnic groups ... Xhosa, Khoisan, Zulu, etc) and cultural values are just grouped together as one monolithic group. Can you imagine just lumping western Europe -- Spain, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium etc -- together? For one, the Germans would throw a fit if the fate of any of their programs was tied to France.



Damn. That sucks.

Ok y'all, I'll be the one to say it this Sunday: This is going to be our week at last! Good luck to everyone as the notifications come rolling right in!

Hi, all-- I am in a bit of a bind. I just received a job offer from a university in Hong Kong that requests a final decision from me by 4/30, and I am still waiting for news about the HK fulbright (which is my Plan A.) If I sign the contract with the school, then bail out if I get the grant, I'll owe them three months pay. I emailed Jonathan Akeley a few days ago and did not receive a response. I tried calling yesterday and today, but the call won't go through. It doesn't even ring. I'm not sure if there's a problem with my phone, or if it's his. I know he doesn't usually respond to email. Just wondering if anyone else is having difficulty getting through to his phone. Thanks!

EVERYONE?!




(.........maybe next week)

I have good information that the IEE is in direct talks with none other than Oprah Winfrey. I believe the talks are culminating into a statement that should end up with something like the following:







/meh

For some reason, his response literally made me 'lol'...

I mean, there are only 10 days left in the month and a few of those days are weekends. It is either next week, or next month. I know he is in a tough position because he said he wanted them to be out by this week...or, that is what he indicated a while back. Slowly but surely it has been creeping back ( :: starts rolling back in chair :: )--just like this.

It is all out of his hands (and certainly ours), for now. And I just have to say for the record--Jermaine is an incredibly nice guy and very generous with whatever info he has.

What can we do, but relax on cruise control until they come out. We also 'hope' we are able to know until the end of the month. But if not, lol, what can we do? The decisions have been made, nothing else we can do at this point!

Hmm so no Caribbean notifications yet? I wonder what the hold up is!

I love how we are all doing this dance of "I've got a good feeling about tomorrow... or maybe the next day." Then, as the days tick of, we say, "okay, last week didn't pan out- so, it's gotta be this week." Around and around we go.

Perhaps, especially for us Caribbean/Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa folks, this is preparation for when we are actually in our countries. A sort-of stripping of the American ego and sense of immediacy and urgency. I'm trying to consider this a prep-course in "Tico-time." I'm hoping that this time next year, I will be laughing at my old impatient and frustrated self.

I say this after refreshing my email so many times today that my co-workers have started saying, "Reeeee-Fresh!!!" every time I look at my phone.