A while later.

I received an email this morning with a spam comment on the post below, and remembered about this blog for the first time in a while. The post below was written a few months shy of two years ago.
A lot of things have changed since then.
For one, my interest in pursuing a career in literature led me to an internship this previous summer at a respectable literary agency in Manhattan called Trident Media Group. At that job I was able to read the works of aspiring authors and it was in my power to decide if their manuscripts could make it to the next level of reading, the literary agents' assistants. I still can't decide if I loved it or hated it. I love the idea of being a literary agent, getting to work hand in hand with authors of my choosing to help them get their creative dreams published into the world. I interviewed a few of the agents during my time and found that they all really enjoyed what they were able to do for aspiring authors. But the idea of working myself up to the top by having to deny so many more people their dreams, it was a little bit heart breaking at times. One particular author wrote an amazingly heartfelt cover letter explaining what his story meant to him and how hard he had worked on it. However, the novel itself was nowhere near the caliber of work that I would be allowed to pass on to the assistant. My reader's reports on the manuscripts were not supposed to take into account how I personally felt towards the writers in question, but my opinion on the text of the novels only.
Along with this experience, I've also become much more interested in the idea of my original major, International Studies. I'm currently four months into a nearly half year study abroad program in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As far as developing nations go, Argentina is better off than a lot of the countries farther north in South America, though it has its fair share of problems as well. Being here as led me to a strong interest in International Development as a focus for my major.
Because of credit situations, I am officially an international studies major with a spanish minor and literature minor instead of majoring in Literature. After this semester, I need about 20 credits to graduate and so I am taking next semester off to work and intern, and then returning to finish out my two semesters of senior year. I could easily obtain a double major in Literature by attending school next semester, but the idea of saving 25,000 on tuition outweighs the benefits of having a dual degree.

The biggest change in the past two years in regards to my previous post is that my mentor and boss, Betty, passed away a little less than a month ago. She was 95 years old. I had not seen her for at least 5 months before that, and she was already under in-home hospice care when I finished work for Spring semester in May. It was an email I was waiting for, but still did not expect to get. She'd been sick before, with heart problems early August of 2009, and after working with her in the hospital for a couple of weeks she was back at home and as lively as ever. She always said to me when she finished her memoir, she knew she would be finished with her time on earth. We finished working on that for the most part in March of this year, right before she had another brief hospital stay. Following that, she was under hospice care and the only work I could really do was stay with her and read her poetry. She started writing new poems about her feelings on dying, and editing some of her old poems to incorporate the same sentiments. The experience of it all was difficult for me. I knew every word of her life story from having worked on editing it with her, and I knew she lived a complete and full life with which she was satisfied, but I was not done listening to her.
The moment I stepped out of her home in May I braced myself for the fact that I would never see her again. Every email update from her son I opened carefully dreading the words "Betty passed away today". In September I received one stating that she had a stroke, but that she was ok. It seemed she would always be ok. And then the first week of October, the first email in my inbox was subject heading "Betty's Memorial Service". The text of the email said nothing to explain what had happened, only that the service would be a few weeks later at the Quaker meeting house beside her apartment building. My only regret is being a continent away when it happened. She was an amazing teacher who encouraged me in everything I did, including my own creative writing and poetry which she insisted I read to her each day.
Coming across this blog, especially the post below, has allowed me to remember her a little bit more as she was before I knew she was dying. It has been a while since I've had the chance to do that.