Loric

Get a rescue. That's how I got my cat, adopted after leaving my first grad school.

It's frowned on. Time to contact is before the application. Also , do you really want his reply if it's nothing but bad news but then still have to wait for the process of apps to finish? Think hard about that.

What makes it worse is that they questioned things clearly in my SOP and resume. It's like they didn't read them. That's ridiculous. A lot of friends in grad school have told me this program isn't worth my time for how it's behaving. Maybe they're right.

I'm feeling pretty lost overall. Phone call letting me know the adcom has serious doubts about me has thrown me for a loop. Not sure I can even submit things to appease them. It's all limbo right now. As for what happens when the worst is finalized (I can't even get rejected without an obscene mountain of paperwork!) I'll look for a better job and take my writing more seriously. I've got a few false starts under my belt, so I am getting better at recognizing dead ends.

It's going to depend on the school. I think mine havent even been looked at.

And i submitted other writing samples.. so it's not like I was like "look - a book!" I even submitted a PDF of book-in-progress with much nicer graphics, format, layout, etc.. since I learned how to really use Adobe InDesign. I just.. I don't even know.

So, updated over in this thread: Anyone here who was questioning "Will they, in fact, send you a birthday card and then reject you on or just before your birthday?" Well, we will soon have an answer and it appears to be the one dreaded the most..

I had two, they both worked out to be $10 an hour, but by having two (one for the school formally - making me a state employee, one for a little company the program itself ran so it was "off the records" for hour limits and such..) they were able to pay me more and over the hours-worked-per-week limit that school put on grad students. It's sounds nutty, trust me, I know, but you asked.

I'm mentally debating if/when I get rejected (or maybe accepted, who knows at this point) if i should post a detailed post-mortem. Like all the when/why/how/what of it and post my SOP, resume - redacted a little of course - the stuff that's in the portfolio, the LOR i have a copy of, etc.. and let other people learn from what I attempted and what went wrong. That feels like a good idea, but also slightly mortifying. Thoughts..?

The admissions adviser mentioned on the call that it's a small program and they don't get many applicants (it has existed less than 2 years). I'm probably going to be the first person they reject. omg.

Hehe. And this dumb school is supposed to be easy to get into in the first place. It's like "we really want to take you and have you cuz we like students and making money from paid tuition.. but you're making it really hard for us by sucking so much."

Right now I'm all the full-emo stage. "Don't dream too far, don't lose sight of who you are. Don't remember that rush of joy." "Every so often we long to steal to Land-of-what-might-have-been.. but that doesn't soften the ache we feel when reality sets back in."

Give it a few hours, I'll be drunk on the floor of "The Lobby" posting "Don't even bother with an SOP! They don't read it!!!!!"

Lol, no one is even going to read this to learn from my mistakes. Oh life, you're awful.

I guess this is as good of a place to follow up as any.. If you read the other threads, you know the school sent me a b-day card which totally baffled me. Today I wrote a "thanks!" for the bday card with a note saying i hope everything with my app is going ok. Tonight I got a phone call from the admissions adviser apologizing saying my app should not take this long to process and saying he had some feedback from the adcom.. Not good feedback. They wanted to know if I had done all the work myself on my book. "Could you write a sentence or two stating that maybe? I'm not sure what they want exactly, I'll find out for you.." I did everything for that book myself. It's in my SOP and resume. I ended up emailing him after the call mentioning that, and how I'm at a loss how someone reviewing my file would ask that question if they read my SOP or resume. Heck, the portfolio part which includes the book sample even says that in the comment/descriptive box for the piece of work. And part two, "the consensus is that Mr. Loric needs to show more of his drawing work in his portfolio.." The heck?!?! The portfolio for he program specifically states it's multidisciplinary and will accept a whide variety of artwork - and writing samples - for a range of fields to satisfy the portfolio. Only include your best work. The emphasis on storytelling ability. I included scenic model, scenic painting work, full show designs, drafting/CAD, book samples, and because my admissions adviser suggested it, samples of short plays I've written (storytelling). And now they want to see some sort of hand drawing. I don't hand draw, I suck at it. Pencil to paper is not my forte.. I can do something kind of decent because of all the classes I've had.. but it's not my strong work, so it's not in my portfolio. I don't know what to do. Also in the reply email I tried to explain how drawing doesn't fit into my design work. How I had a guest artist in undergrad who built little paper models on the fly and never drew anything. Ok, I said this, and i regret it already and I'm probably insane.. "Back to drawings - I'm trained as a scenic designer who worked mostly via models and draftings. I am also trained as a scenic painter. I have taken several classes with drawing but it has never been my strong point. At one point in my coursework, my university had Henry Muttoo as a guest artist. He did the scenic design for Moon Over a Rainbow Shawl. When he was in our class he talked to us about the overall design process and his own process. All the while, he was cutting little shapes out of a piece of white printer paper. He'd begin sticking these into a little model box of a theater that was in the classroom. As he talked and went along, clipping and snipping, he managed to create a whole, strange, fascinating little world within the box. A beautiful stream of consciousness in physical form - a landscape of the mind. That's the sort of thing I aspire to and I'd love to say I do it as well as him, but I'm still a student and that's why I want to return to an educational program. I'm not a great drawer though. If my whole application hinges on what on I can crank out in a week or find hidden in my old boxes of classwork - that's it. Stick a fork in me, I'm done." omg why did I email that to him? I also mentioned multiple times how I'm horrified thinking the adcom doesn't think I wrote my book myself. Asking how I can prove it and what they want to see. I don't know what to think. It's not "over" but it sure as heck feels over. The criteria I thought I was being judged on, I'm not. The SOP and Resume were completely useless. I'm not getting into this program if this is how the portfolio review is panning out. Omg

That's what i said and people got all snippy.

I think the problem is that there's not always, or heck, often not a next year. It's now or never.

Well that's part of the whole point of why I mentioned this.. You're going to run into very well educated people who might not share your beleifs, or rather, become very offended when you offhandedly remark about something that is not your area of expertise. Same SOP in front of a literature prof.. probably ok.. if it passes the theater history or script analysis professor (who are often recruited to read applications of the english dept, btw) you're going to royally piss them off.

Fine, if you go around insisting we view great music and orchestrations as visual art with dots on lines. Cuz that's what it is and what explains it, right?

I'll hand you tubes of paint. Now go on, tell me how you know ALL ABOUT Picasso and Monet and Manet. C'mon, from the tubes of paint. Or better yet, an account of seeing their paintings in a museum from several centuries ago that tries to explain the experience to you. C'mon, tell me how you're an expert.

The Kings Men wrote/published the first folio. Otherwise all there was were the foul papers which were used to produce the cue scripting. What you read today as "Shakespeare" in literature is a complete fabrication. No such written thing existed when the plays were performed.. and they were created to be performed. Acting as if the literary analysis divorced from the performance has any validity is just academic masturbation.

Did you even look at the link? Hi.. this is the universe, i'm here to tell you it's not all about you.

Ugh.. Just stop talking until you take a theater history class or at least google it.

You get all the money. We get what's left over.