Trobon

The worst is when its not a waitlist, just a wait. I finally got in touch with one of the schools I applied to and they told me I was still being considered and that the committee was going to hopefully meet again this week. It seems like they didn't create a list, just put people in a pool to go over again. So no idea where I stand, how many slots they will be looking to fill, or how many other candidates there are. Stress levels are high.

You just nearly gave me a heart attack I'll have you know. I thought that I was cooked for sure.

You are now officially my hero for the day. Thank you so much for posting that.

I was eating dinner with my family last night and we started arguing about something stupid and inane. My younger brother got upset at me and, even though it had nothing to do with it, decided to attack me by sarcastically saying, "good luck getting into college". I ended up being stupid and before I could get upstairs to hit a pillow I punched a hole into my parents' house's wall. *sigh* At least I now have a small project to keep me busy instead of worrying about my applications.

My Kindle has never seen more use. I'm trying to use this time to get caught up on all the books I've always wanted to read.

I really came across it completely by mistake before I started my undergraduate studies. I was looking at where I might want to go to graduate school and what I would be most interested in for biology and I found University of Washington's Astrobiology page. The idea of that being a topic took me by surprise so I began looking into it and became pretty hooked on the concepts. Its a fairly interdisciplinary field and, being in a college that only had interdisciplinary courses, it seemed like a natural fit for me. There aren't any astrobiology programs by themselves at this point. Usually it is topics studied within microbiology (extremophiles), Earth Science (Early Earth evolution, planetary surfaces), Atmospheric Sciences, and Astronomy (planet detection). My top school actually has a program to get a dual-title PhD in my department and astrobiology. It requires you take course in another department and have at least one professor from another department on your dissertation committee. And yeah, I keep telling myself that I wanted to only apply to my top programs this year and spread out next year if I don't get in. Still it gets hard when you are looking at statistics on admissions and waiting for the decision to be made. Rationality has no place in this purgatory that is grad school admissions.

You think you should have applied to more? *looks at own signature* Why in the world would I convince myself to only apply to the schools with the exact programs I wanted to do this year? Future me now hates past me.

Well this seems like as good a way to pass the time as any. Although I feel like I'm setting myself up for judgement. Undergraduate Institution: Evergreen State College (liberal arts college), 2 degrees (Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry) GPA: N/A (Narrative Evaluations, no GPA) GRE: 164 Q (90th Percentile), 165 V (95th Percentile), 4.0 AW (49th Percentile ugh...) *Published a paper in the Journal of Double Star Observations *Founded and led an astronomy club at my college. *Helped a professor at my college write a grant proposal that got some money awarded Applying to Earth and Space Science programs focusing my research interests on astrobiology and early paleontology at: UCLA University of Washington