Email, ain't it reliable?

Mes Amis

Just got a very odd email. As some of you know I was meant, by now, ot be studying for a PhD in philosophy at a lovely university. I was looking forward to this but in the end decided to turn down the offer because I could not raise the appropriate funding for this venture. It was a sad fact. So I talked in email with my potential supervisor and finally sent an email saying, "Okay, keep me on the books for one more year, but if I can't raise the funds by then I guess that's it".*

It didn't get through. Today I got an email from the faculty asking me why I hadn't registered. Hopefully my reply will get through. I had wanted to do this but in some ways I have to wonder whether I don't need to take time out and concentrate on the writing (yesterday, I sent off two more short story submissions to anthologies and hopefully another one will be on its way out soon enough) and see whether I could make it work for me. After all, I seem to be having far more success at this than at philosophy. For one thing instead of losing money I'm making a tiny, teeny little amount.**

Well, we'll see where this goes...

Au revoir

Russel

*This may not be an exact quote but I can't be bothered trawling my email archives.

**Have you seen how much tuition fees are for postgrads? And you can't get a student loan and grants are really difficult to come by if you work in one of the neglected disciplines like Philosophy. But like a friend of mine says, sometimes the world just seems to push you where it wants to go. And like my mum (and a million Scottish parents) says: "what's for you won't go by you."