Manhattan

The wonderful Emma Patten informed me today that she accepted an offer from Princeton University, and that they are even going to pay her to become a Doctor with a PHD from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. This is amazing news, and I'm so immensely proud of her that I can't even express it, so I'm not going to try and will instead move on to dissecting how this affects me.
Princeton University is in New Jersey, which is where Jason and Kristen come from, and is a short ride from New York, which is a place that I have always wanted to visit. Do you see where I'm going with this? If I can scrape together funds, I could reacquaint myself with several old friends and tick a location off the old bucket list.
Of course, this will require quite a bit of funding (especially if I want to try and visit other parts of America while I'm there, which I probably will), so when I finally land a paid job (and I keep telling myself that this is a 'when' and not an 'if' scenario), I'll be saving for quite a while. And this got me to thinking about goals, both long term and short term. I actually know quite a few people who are planning the same thing as me- find employment, save like a badger, go somewhere cool for a while- Patrick, Poppy, Ella (who's already got a headstart on the find employment part and is presumably even now ferreting money away beneath her pillow). Poppy even said she was just going to repeat this cycle ad nauseum. 'But what after?!', a whiny little voice in my head (I suspect it may be Melodrama) is puling, 'what do we do once we're back from America?' And the answer is still 'I don't know'; but maybe for now, I don't need to know. Unlike the future Dr. Patten, my future is not clear-cut or well-defined, yet I know for what I'll be aiming during at least the next ten months or so- to visit America. And I can make a long-term plan later, when I've exhausted all my friends' hospitality twice over and no one else is willing to put me up. I'll be just like Llewyn Davis.
Except I will win an Oscar.