A Cup of Tea

Working anxiously on my applications, I thought I would begin my blog with a mistake I made in my past applications. It's been on my mind for a day now so I thought it'd be better for me to talk about it rather than just suppressing my anxiety. So far I have sent 4 (due 12/1) and are currently working on another 8 or 9 (due 12/15 and 1/1). For a little background information on me, I am a History major that would like to pursue Psychology for a PhD. Many are confused by my decision to make such changes but my passion took a sharp turn in my last year of undergrad years (maybe this will be explained in another post). So as most of you can imagine, I have many doubts and even more worries about applying to a department that is so different than my original major. However, I took the leap and believed in myself to do the best I can. Because ultimately, if you don't believe in yourself, who will? So I made a commitment to push through these applications. I studied everyday for the GRE for couple of months to better my score (even though though I did not receive the score I wanted. But I must accept it now.) and made about 20 changes to my personal statement for each school. I had my friends proofread and edit them as well just to get a perspective on fresh eyes. Trust me, after reading the same thing over and over again, I think I was going crazy. Additionally, I quadruple checked each application to ensure that each school received the correct personal statement and information. Honestly, I think I have a problem at this point. Please feel free to tell me I am not alone in this anxiety-filled realm. Anyhow, after I submitted four of the applications that were due 12/1, I took a couple of days off applying to schools to recalibrate my perspective and emotions. However, the troublesome person that I am, I researched even more about how to apply to graduate programs and how to make better essays. Then I ran into a problem. Reading these blogs and journals from third party graduate students who got accepted to their dream schools, I realized that I did not go into details of the research I wanted to do. Of course I explained the gist of it and clarified my passion for the topic to the best of my abilities. However, I realized that I did not go into minute details like many students suggested because there were other questions each application asked of me. Maybe I got too clouded on justifying why I wanted this PhD despite the fact that my background is history and not psychology. I will never know if this mistake will be the result of my future rejection (or acceptance). However, I'll learn from this lesson and do better on my applications that are due in less than two weeks. Did the rest of you go into meticulous details about your research interest on the personal statement or simply explain it and move onto other things? I'm curious! It might not be a mistake after all if schools indeed wanted an even mixture of narratives in the personal statement. Thanks for reading my rambling. I've been stressed out about this and the applications coming up, as I'm sure most of you are going through the same struggles.