Loric

I wonder if I should even post if I get accepted.. it'd disappoint so many people.

Are you sure it cant be upgrades or modified? At all? A call to the airline to at least hash it out a little is probably in order. Most bookings have some wiggle room - you cant cancel, but you can change the how/what of it. All else fails, fly back and forth - get you some free airline miles.

"We all romp about, grieving, wondering, but with rare exception we mostly remain suspended in the rhetorical colloidal 'Forever' that agglutinates between Might and Do." - Tony Kushner So what will become of you when the application season is over? Will we never see you again? Should we start saying our goodbyes..? Will some of you be back, because you're reapplying? I mean really, it occurs to me that GradCafe is mostly supplied by transient personalities - those who are only here while a single task is completed and then they move on. How does that breed real community? Why are people so "tight knit" in cliques when you've known each other all of a millisecond? Is the adaptation to a clique so knee jerk and ingrained in the muscle memory? I'm ever curious. What will become of you? Will you find a husband in grad school..? And will you tell us if that downvote was the little extra nudge that got you into the program of your dreams? Ever so curious...

Not a good book to reference if you want to imply your purity and non-hobaggyness. Hobaggyism? Hobaglity? Gah, words are difficult.

Or they very well may not be done. You're not rejected until you're rejected.. don't hope for it faster, you just might provoke them into granting your wish.

I hope they laugh at you

Just say you're following up, no rush, just wanted to make sure he had all the info he needed. Rolling schools are still under a seasonal crush this time of year. I also had a clarification request late in the game and am now twiddling my thumbs. It's fine to talk to the admissions people. They know it's stressful. You can always ask what the timeline roughly should be. Rolling isn't the same as hard deadlines where they notify by a certain date so it's ok to have questions.

I have to run across town after work to deliver some paperwork.. And then after that I have nothing I "have" to do. For the next several weeks aside from work. Terrifying.

They never mentioned mine, but I'm sure they don't have it because I never applied there. You'd think they'd be more on top of things like this.

Ok, if you're not looking for a relationship you're not dating - you're sleeping around and hanging out with random people. A hookup is not a date.

And before you say "if dating sucks, why do it?" Being alive generally sucks too, but it's better than the alternative.

Hmm... I'm tempted to like what you've stated but I know for certain that no one actually likes dating.. Dating is awful, sometimes ok or even fun (at that point dating ends, relationship begins) but it is generally awful. Human conflict is a matter if what one wants versus what another is willing to give in incompatible amounts. Dating is a minefield kludge of creating these situations. Who wants sex? Who wants the door held? Who is getting the check? Awful. No one likes it. It's the same as running. Those people who say they love it are liars.

This is floating in my head, so why not post it? You think "What do they want?" You think "Make a decision!" "Why not say it's for naught?" You think, well it's a thought, what will be their response? But then what if they knew who you are when you know that you're not what they think that they want? And what if you are, what the adcom envisions? Although how can you know what you are till you know what they want - which you don't? So then what do they pick: where you're safe outside and yourself but everything's wrong? Or inside where everything's right but you know that you'll never belong? And whichever they pick, do it quick, because this is starting to suck and resemble malice.

Pinged my admissions adviser.. (advisor? whatever) Adcom is.. doing something.. I think they're waiting for a sign or whatever. Adcom apparently will not ever "meet" to decide (it's rolling admissions) but rather the parties need to vote or decide or whatever they do. I'm thinking maybe they'll cast bones. Cleromancy is pretty hip these days. Best part is admissions is apparently over it and wants a decision. That's inferred from the tone and the note that they've "asked" the adcom to make a decision ASAP.

Dayum... if only I wasn't morally opposed to being enlisted that'd sound like a great deal.

If they bother to read it - see the visual arts forum for the lowdown on "reading is asking too much of the adcomm".

For the record, people on the adcom say they see typos all the time and it's no big deal if it's just one or two or whatever.. but if the rest of your app is weak it makes it look worse.

Couple notes (mainly for the peanut gallery).. What a school advertises and promises can be vastly different from what actually happens. This includes funding and class availability and general "not being a total jerk" when it comes to advisers. I had an adviser who expected me to work until 3am on a project in his garage at his condo across town despite it being against every rule and regulation at my school (not to work past 11pm, not to work off site and in particular not at the faculty's home). Sometimes they are just raging pricks. A lot of this website is about wanting to get in, so if there's little bits of information that show up which clearly show that getting in is not a picnic, that it's not just hard classes but possibly impossible people and expectations, unfair treatment, and sometimes rampant abuse of the student and broken rules.. well.. people dreaming to get in don't want to see that and react adversely to the message and messenger. "I wouldn't quit." Yes you would, you'd quit when your adviser began to sexually harass you. You'd quit when arguments turned to shouting and then turned to throwing things. You'd quit when your health began to fail from stress. You'd quit when the faculty chose to ignore safety protocols and put your life in danger. You'd quit when ethics were treated like obstacles to funding. You'd quit when you were told to pass a student in your class, despite them obviously failing, because they were related to the dean. Sometimes.. no, often, life is not a cakewalk served up on a silver spoon. People do tend to suck and it's only a matter or making the best of what crap you're presented with - and sometimes the "best" is to leave. Let me know how confident you are that little problems can be glossed over and people are just too sensitive when you're read the riot act for being late because you were re-ended in route while the golden boy struts in even later than you (in the middle of your chewing out) and is praised for the tie he chose to wear. These things have not all happened to me (thank god) but they have happened to people in graduate school.

Can, doesn't mean they are in a statistically significant amount. Books on grammar and citation and other various writing rules often still say you can refer to a group of people by the presumed gender when using a pronoun. The example commonly used is miners versus librarians. "When a librarian shelves books, she.." and "When a miner digs up a rock, he..." Just be happy our language doesn't assign gender to inanimate objects.

Depends on the area of study and then the schools/departments themselves. In in my old theater field it was assumed you'd be TA'ing, expected to be teaching a course or two by your second year if not your second semester. Funding was essentially built around your working for the school itself (tuition waivers, fellowships, etc.. were all to supplement that core income.) For my first semester I covered a few labs for classes and also co-taught a studio course (so I essentially got paid what an adjunct gets paid to teach a class.) But I've found when applying to programs outside of that uniquely quirky field that I need to mention that I want to be considered to TA or teach. For example, I know I want to go into a non-theater design program.. but I have the skills to teach or TA the the scenic design class the school does offer for undergrads. I mentioned this to admissions and they said that it would be considered. However, if I hadn't mentioned it they may not have even considered it a possibility. So if you randomly are fluent in Russian or something, having TA'ed it in undergrad, be sure to mention it to admissions. There may be something outside your department that you can do as well. The entire premise of Hole in the Paper Sky is a guy getting a work study to fund his thesis in another department.

If possible they'll pick the people who will be "in charge" of you. Probably the person who will be your assigned advisor and then any others who might be placed directly in charge of you. Say you will be TA'ing a class on basic oil painting, then the prof for that class - for example in undergrad a grad student was teaching intro digital media and basic drawing, his grad work was on something else entirely. Also anyone up the hierarchy. Dean, head of dept, etc.. might all make an appearance depending on who they have handy or who makes the decisions.

Not to mention, per the "experts" here - they don't read. Hard to garner much from this website without reading.. perhaps if we put on an interpretive dance..

And recommended viewing to pass the time whilst we wait things out..

Until someone goes after you like a junkyard dog with a bone - because they don't think you're the right kind of people to be on gradcafe or in grad school. If you don't think that will happen and you've not already offended some internet loon who is just salivating at the chance to "turn you in" then feel free to post all your stats and info. Or were you just saying you want others to be held accountable for the things you perceive as wrong rather than yourself for what they see as being wrong with you?