Voldemort + Tory vacancy = SUCCESS

I am so ridiculously excited about the new Harry Potter movie, I did a little squeal when the advert came on telly yesterday evening. I am going to see it with Donna and Zoe on the first night (which is good!) but I have so far not managed to persuade them to dress up to stand in line (which is bad!). There is still time!

On a related note, I went to my department's Postgraduate Open Day today. I felt like a bit of a hypocrite (as I spent the majority of last year bitching about the department) but I thought I should consider all options.

The MAs sound interesting (the phDs sound insane); there are two options in Linguistics, my preferred field. Applied Linguistics and Literary Linguistics are both kind of appealing, or there is a joint Modern English Language option (but I suspect you end up specialising in Applied or Literary at the end of this anyway). It is definately something I could do; it sounds harder than the BA (obviously), but I am getting a lot better at the course since I gave up Stones. However, it is not something I have a mad passionate burning desire to do, and I cannot justify spending £howevermuch on something which I will not really enjoy and which will leave me in exactly the same position that I am in now, only two years older and considerably poorer. Plus, there is a reason I was so unhappy at the end of last year and I would be a fool to willingly put myself in that position again. I came to uni because that was really the only viable option for me at that time, but continued academia is no longer my only choice and I would be silly to do it because it is safe, or because I would quite like the prestige of being a Dr., or because I am too scared to go out into the world and make my own living.

I am probably going to apply for a PGCE, once I work out a) what this involves and b) how to do it. I want to go and teach in some backwater village in the wilds of Yorkshire, living in a stone cottage with honeysuckle and lavender in the garden. I will grow my hair down to my waist and own a treadle sewing machine to run up last-minute costumes for the Christmas pageant. I will always be 'Miss' to the small adoring children I teach, but there might be a heartwarming romance with a local farmer or lord to make me happy. There will be a knitting circle and a book club and all the locals will love me despite my funny 'foreign' accent and I will organise May Day fairs and bonfire night and solve the occasional village murder as and when it happens.