University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill!!!

I fell in love with the place, the people, the program the whole kit and caboodle.

Flashback to Friday, March 23 after attending a couple of very interesting panels at the Conference (“Medieval and Golden Age texts from inside the prison, the convent and the law” and about García Lorca’s Poeta en Nueva York) we all drove to Professor Domínguez´s house for a party. Here in the warmth of his beautiful house, mingling and chatting with professors, graduate students, staff and conference participants the idea crystallized. I found a bunch of grad students in the den watching the final minutes of the Tar Heels beating Ohio and immediately found a spot on the floor and sat down with them. When the buzzer went off and we had won the game, time stopped, everything went silent in my head as people jumped and screamed around me, the ceiling opened and a blinding white light fell upon me and I knew I was going to get my PhD in Spanish Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (No I was not drinking, I had given it up for lent). The rest of the evening is a blur. All I remember is levitating and smiling a lot.

Saturday I still went to a couple of panels at the conference and continued doing homework. Talking to people and checking off all the boxes of the “to do” list in my head. I bumped into someone I had met the night before at the party, Professor Lucia Binotti. She was nice enough to take me to beautiful Caffe Driade, where we had a great coffee. Saturday night was the final banquet where I was received as “one of them” and I loved the company, the conversation and learning about the whole shebang. That was the icing on the cake, the cherry on top.

I came home, signed the papers, wrote a check for my deposit and the adventure begins.

Epilogue: to this day April 17, I have not heard from Georgetown, Emory, Tulane or U. Tennessee, their loss.

Note: Here is the photo album I promised… enjoy! 

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