What is Ellen up to? A Frequently Asked Questions guide

Job:

Ellen enjoys working at the library. Once a boy asked her to recycle a single staple and it was hilarious. She completes many projects, but the two most exciting have been buying $1,000 worth of e-books and helping with the digitization of the college archives.

Grad school:

Ellen got into graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study Library Science. She isn’t sure if she’ll go in the fall because of money reasons, but she really would like to. If she does not go in the fall she’ll look for jobs in the greater Wisconsin/Minnesota area for a year in order to get in-state tuition. If she does go to school she will start orientation the last week in August, with classes starting September 3rd.

Class:

Ellen is currently in her 7th block at Cornell, in a low-level biology course called “Sex and Food”. This SOUNDS really exciting and provocative, but really it’s all about evolution and miosis. She has two tests and very little homework. Her professor is really wonderful, studies the sexual activity and evolution of fruit flies, and is pretty crazy (but in a wonderful sort of way). She does not want to graduate for sentimental and academic reasons, but is still looking forward to new things. (Update: She is now in 8th block Senior Seminar for Education, and is writing about introversion and collaboration in the classroom).

Car:

Ellen recently bought a 2003 Hyundai Elantra from Dan Deery’s in Cedar Falls after looking for eight months. After taking it to a trusted mechanic, she bartered for it with a nice man at the dealership and paid a fair but not ideal price for it. It has around 70,500 miles on it, and gets 32mpg highway. It is grey with a purple cast to it, and she enjoys it greatly.

Men:

Ellen is not currently involved with anyone at the moment. She had a crush on a boy but it turned out that he had only ever been to the school library once, so she dropped him.

Summer Plans:

Ellen does not currently know her summer plans, beyond traveling to Alaska in May. She may stay in Mount Vernon and live with a professor’s dogs while he and his family are on a research trip in Oregon, or she may move to her new job (see: Grad school).

Garden:

The garden is doing well, granted that it stops raining soon so she can get it tilled and get everything put in. The new gardeners are wonderful, and she is only having sort of a hard time letting go.