Quigley

game on

Honestly I don't know either. I didn't feel much anxiety until about 2 weeks ago and now it's getting unbearable. This feels like being a little kid on the night before Christmas and time just slows down to a crawl, only over several weeks instead of one evening. I'm going to owe all of my co-workers, family, and friends big time by the end of this. But in the meantime I'll try to keep my head from exploding 9 times a day when they ask if I have any news yet/reassure me I will get in *everywhere.* Sigh. I know they mean well.

Mmmmmmm. I think I'm going to have to go to the crepe place tonight.

Wow, congratulations! How are you going to celebrate?

chess rules

blood bath

wet willy

hot toddy

chamber pot

Minute maid

That really sucks, but if it's high on your list then you should consider it an investment towards a very large reward... especially if you think that not going could hurt/eliminate your chances of getting in. It would be a shame to have worked so hard getting to this point of the process and look back on this sometime in the future and think you didn't get there because of $800. I don't know if you have more than one interview request but if so, maybe you can talk to the department about arranging a date that might coincide with your other interviews so that travel might be cheaper overall?

I'm expecting most of mine to come around the second week of February, but it looks like a few of my schools may start contacting around the 1st or even the week prior.

When people ask where I've applied, I generally don't tell them about the two Ivies on my list except for my parents and a couple of close friends. Seemed like a good idea at one point and I just stuck with it.

Most of my mine have been listed, but I also get this a lot: "Oh, well at least when you become a professor you'll be making bank!"

But the geographic isolation is a bonus, right?

Stanford's program and faculty, UCLA's weather, Princeton's campus, located on the isthmus in Madison.

I'm curious about what your typical day/week looks like as a PhD student balancing classes, TA or RA duties, research projects, homework, family/relationship, etc?

Interesting. I considered UW but it didn't seem like a very good fit for my intended research focus. And I've lived in the Northwest my whole life and grad school seems like a good opportunity to experience someplace where everything isn't waterlogged and dark grey for 10 months per year.

Wisconsin or Washington?

I don't think it's weird. This is a deeply personal process and a major turning point for our lives. Everyone goes through significant events in their own ways. I have been excited for the big road trip when (if) I head to school when I will take my dog and whatever I can load in my car and head to wherever the next chapter of my life will be. To me, it would be a chance to really transition mentally and reflect on what I'm leaving behind and what I'm heading towards. That's been the plan for a while now, until my mom saw the movie "The Guilt Trip" a few weeks ago and came up with the idea to invite herself along on my road trip. She's so excited about it and I don't know if I have the heart to tell her no. I've never lived more than 3 hours away by car and she's already started crying about the idea of me moving every time I see her.

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. This is all helpful, especially the feedback on creating a contingency plan that will help me to feel in control of my life. I have a feeling that time is going to slow to a crawl during the next 2-4 weeks. My heartrate already spikes every time I hear the e-mail alert on my phone and I know that the absolute earliest I should expect to hear anything is the end of the week after next.

Well I've pretty much convinced myself that I'm going to get straight rejections, but hopefully I will be doing the following things to celebrate my first acceptance, roughly in this order: 1. Stop on my way home from work to pick up a 6 pack of good beer and a really nice steak. 2. Spend some time alone to let it sink in and obsessively research the city/things to do/potential living situations/etc by spending way too much time on GradCafe, Yelp, Craigslist, Google Maps, etc. 3. Call my parents, grandparents, brothers, and text my closest friends. 4. More GradCafe, Yelp, Craigslist, Google Maps. 5. Massive party. 6. Attempt to figure out what to do about my underwater mortgage.