Heaven, I'm in heaven

I'm getting tears of frantic desire just thinking about this. There is a Catholic (I'm Catholic!) university in New York City (actually in the city! they have campuses in Manhattan and Queens and Staten Island, ALL THREE of these places!) where, oh my God, where they pay your entire tuition to get a master's degree in library science as long as you agree to work for three years thereafter in some libraryish capacity with underserved populations, and while you are getting your degree you do volunteer things with programs that, like, help young mothers get better about reading to their children. I'm not even kidding! You help them. To read to their children. Perchance by finding really good books for them to read!

Seriously, every time I think about this, I start crying. As I am typing this there are tears falling out of my eyes. This is so exactly everything I want in the entire world. I want a degree in library science, and I want so, so, so much to live in the city for a while, and I want to Do Good, and especially I love more than anything to tell people what to read and have it be my specific responsibility to pick out things for people to read, and there is virtually nothing that I believe more strongly than that teaching a kid to love reading is one of the most valuable gifts you can give to him/her.

(Sidebar insight into my psyche: Officially I have no problem with using "they" as a gender-nonspecific singular pronoun, and I find it less lame than s/he or him/her, but I can never actually bring myself to do it, in practice.)

But to return to the point: It seems absurd and impossible that I should be able to do all of these things that I love simultaneously and only have to pay housing (which is a lot obviously if I am living in the city, but OH MY GOD). And the place is Catholic, and I am Catholic, so they obviously love me, and I could actually write a really good essay on What Catholicism Means To Me, if they wanted one, and I worked at Catholic Charities this past summer, with underserved populations! I could get my grad school paid for by promising to tell people what to read for three years after I was done! Three years! Of telling people what to read!

I just looked into it a little bit more, and apparently they also take you all around to all the New York libraries and museums. OH MY GOD. A two-year paid-for guided tour of the New York libraries and museums, in addition to everything else that is wonderful. Oh, I want this so much. God invented this program for me. They have to let me into this program.

If this is financially viable, I'm on it like white on rice.

P.S. I've always wanted to use that phrase but never had the opportunity. See what a good program this plainly is?