disidentifications

Does anyone else kinda feel like waiting to hear back is sorta like a middle school dance? Like, slowly everyone you know has someone to go to the dance with, and you're stuck not knowing what's gonna happen to you ?

Why do I keep thinking schools will just magically notify me in the middle of the night on a Saturday 

i'm not sure if anyone here's a fan of hamilton, but on the note of chicago's polar vortex... 
 

i'm not sure if anyone here's a fan of hamilton, but on the note of chicago's polar vortex... 
 

I, for one, welcome our new adcomm overlords.

i'm not sure if anyone here's a fan of hamilton, but on the note of chicago's polar vortex... 
 

i'm not sure if anyone here's a fan of hamilton, but on the note of chicago's polar vortex... 
 

i'm not sure if anyone here's a fan of hamilton, but on the note of chicago's polar vortex... 
 

lmao the idea that adcomms are on this thread looking at my memes is a god damn nightmare

UChicago is opening back up tomorrow, according to their website. I'm guessing we will get news Friday. 
*also jk about having doubts about Chicago. Admissions, if you're out there, I love youuuuu ?... ??*

i've been feeling the same ever since my mentor mentioned the polar vortex after i told him about my likely rejection from chicago. im not sure if it's self-consolatory or a genuinely practical concern, but i'll take it as long as it assuages my poor, sensitive heart ?

All this waiting is reallyyyy getting to me today.

I would very much like to know where/if I am going to graduate school !!

silence might just be a good thing! it might be a waitlist!! 

Throwing my hat into the ring of rejected Duke applicants. Surprisingly not that disappointed, and still holding out a bit of hope on other programs. It also doesn't hurt the morale that I just found out a few days ago that I'm a semifinalist for a Fulbright grant... so I can treat my wounds with some nice ego-soothing salve. 
Continuing to wish you all the best of luck with the upcoming decision announcements!

i need paper bags to breathe into. 

i can't really speak to the rest of your queries, but I do know a couple of people who've been to EGS, and my sense is that no, it isn't as much of a cash cow as everyone makes it out to be. classes there are terribly intensive (you're only going to be up in saas-fee for a few weeks anyway), and you are going to be talking to, and learning from, some of the best minds in the profession -- it's really like no other phd experience. the only things are that: 
1. learning at EGS is highly self-directed, which means that the onus is on you to make your time and money worthwhile. 
2. their courses are very much centred around continental theory/philosophy as well as cultural/media studies, so if those aren't your areas of interest, then you probably shouldn't be looking there. 
3. you'll get no training on the teaching side of things, which will likely put you at a disadvantage in the job market. (then again, most people go there only for the opportunity to study with certain star academics who don't teach elsewhere, so i doubt that is their primary concern.) 
other than that, i guess the only other thing that you really have to weigh against the value of the experience is the cost of the degree itself -- it is prohibitively expensive, so perhaps a conventional phd route (with a stipend) might suit (whatever little I know of) your situation more? 

isn't it? i've been listening to a lot of that and max ritcher on repeat as i work (or attempt to, whilst i try not to freak out about *gesticulates wildly* this.) 
ohh what's the piece? i'd love to read it!
also, if you -- or anyone else -- are looking for other literature on the limbo of the airport, olga tokarczuk's flights is an exquisite novel in fragments that addresses the topic rather brilliantly, i think.
i'm currently reading a lot of beckett for class, and i must say, i've never really felt the frustration and absurdity and absolute misery of his never-ending loops more than i do right now. imagine endgame, but with me and uchicago-- 
chicago: we'll notify you of your admission status now. 
me: then i'll know i've been rejected and fall into a state of utter despair. 
chicago: we'll let you know that you aren't going to be interviewed. you'll be wondering if you've been admitted all the time. 
me: then i won't know if i've been rejected. 
???

@FiguresIII yes, "something is taking its course..." but all i really want to know -- and want not to know at the same time -- is which courses i will be taking in a year, as well as where i'll be taking said courses. 
sorry, it's a terrible joke. i'll see myself out. but before i do, i must say, i love the bersani as well! (though given my professor's project, which he's currently exploring in the seminar that i'm taking, he does have a quibble with both bersani and beckett, i think.) 

Disclaimer: do not freak out!
 
I was just scrolling through all my app portals and opened UCSB’s to see “accepted”
...had minor stroke
...immediately thereafter noticed the accepted was referring to my app fee waiver, my app status is still very much submitted.
Lol why am I like this? Reading is supposed to be my thing, right?

@flungoutofspace I totally feel you. I have a new appreciation for Beckett. 
I'm also reminded of one of J.M. Coetzee's ways of looking at Beckett; which really speaks to my experience:
Five.
Try again. A being, a creature, a consciousness wakes (call it that) into a situation which is ineluctable and inexplicable. He (she? it?) tries his (her? its?) best to understand this situation (call it that) but never succeeds. In fact, the very notion of understanding a situation becomes more and more opaque. He/she/it seems to be a part of something purposive, but what is that something, what is his/her/its part in it, what is it that calls the something purposive?
We make a leap. Leave it to some other occasion to reflect on what this leap consisted in.
A being, a creature, one of those creatures we, whoever we are, call an ape (what his/her/its name for himself/herself/itself is we do not know; we are not even sure that he/she/it has the concept of a name; call him/her/it “It” henceforth; we may even need to question the concept of having a concept before we are finished)—It finds itself in a white space, in a situation. It seems to be part of something purposive; but what?
Before its eyes are three black plastic tubes a metre long and 19 millimetres in diameter. Below each of the tubes is a small wooden box with an open top and a door that is closed but can be opened.
A nut is dropped (we pause to note this “is dropped,” which seems to have no subject, no agent—how can that be?—before we go on) into the third tube (one-two-three: can we assume the concept of the count, can we assume right and left?). If the being, the creature, the ape, It, wants the nut (always, in these stories of bizarre situations to which you awake, it comes down to something edible), It must open the correct box, where the correct box is defined as the box containing the nut.
The nut is dropped into the third tube. It chooses a box to open. It opens the third box, and lo and behold, there is the nut. Greedily It eats the nut (what else is there to do with it, and besides, It is starving).
Again the nut is dropped into the third tube. Again It opens the third box. Again the box contains a nut.
The nut is dropped into the second tube. Has It been lulled by habit into thinking the third box is always the lucky box, the full box? No: It opens the second box, the box directly beneath the second tube. There is a nut in it.
The nut is dropped into the first tube. It opens the first box. The nut is in it.
So tube one leads to box one, tube two to box two, tube three to box three. All is well so far. This may be an absurdly complicated way of feeding a being, an appetite, a subject, but such appears to be the way things work in the present universe, the white universe in which It finds itself. If you want a nut, you must take care to watch into which tube it is dropped, and then open the box below.
But ah! the universe is not so simple after all. The universe is not as it may appear to be. In fact—and this is the key point, the philosophical lesson—the universe is never as it appears to be.
A screen is introduced: It can still see the top ends of the tubes, and the bottom ends, but not the middles. Some shuffling takes place. The shuffling comes to an end, and everything is as it was before, or at least seems to be as it was before.
A nut is dropped into the third tube. It, the creature, opens the third box. The third box is empty.
Again a nut is dropped into the third tube. Again It opens the third box. Again it is empty.
Within It, within Its mind or Its intelligence or perhaps even just Its brain, something is set in motion that will take many pages, many volumes to unravel, something that may involve hunger or despair or boredom or all of these, to say nothing of the deductive and inductive faculties. Instead of these pages and volumes, let us just say there is a hiatus.
It, the creature, opens the second box. It contains a nut. It makes no sense that it should be there, but there it is: a nut, a real nut. It eats the nut. That’s better.
A nut is dropped into the third tube. It opens the third box. It is empty. It opens the second box. It contains a nut. Aha!
A nut is dropped into the third tube. It opens the second box. It contains a nut. It eats the nut.
So: the universe is not as it was before. The universe has changed. Not tube three and box three but tube three and box two.
(You think this is not life, someone says? You think this is merely some thought experiment? There are creatures to whom this is not just life but the whole of life. This white space is what they were born into. It is what their parents were born into. It is what their grandparents were born into. It is all they know. This is the niche in the universe in which they are evolved to fit. In some cases, this is the niche in which they have been genetically modified to fit. These are laboratory animals, says this someone, by which is meant animals who know no life outside the white laboratory, animals incapable of living outside the laboratory, animals to whom the laboratory, while it may look to us like white hell, is the only world they know. End of interjection. Go on.)
Again there is an episode of something being shuffled behind the screen, which It is not allowed to watch.
A nut is dropped into the third tube. It, the creature, opens the second box. It is empty. It opens the third box. It is empty. It opens the first box. It contains a nut. It eats the nut.
So: no longer three and three, no longer three and two, but three and one.
Again, shuffling.
A nut is dropped into the third tube. The creature opens the first box. It is empty.
So: after each shuffling, everything changes. That seems to be the rule. Three and three, then shuffling, then three and two, then shuffling, then three and one, then shuffling, then three and—what?
It, the creature, is doing its best to understand how the universe works, the universe of nuts and how you lay your hands (your paws) on them. That is what is going on, before our eyes.
But is that truly what is going on?
 

also @flungoutofspace, i believe, who recommended that sufjan side-D thing---so great for writing!!! 

oh noooooo... dogs, and especially labs, are too pure for this bamboozling business. ?

tbh, im stuck in a sort of limbo stage between desperately wanting to know and not wanting to know my admissions results at all. (ignorance, at this point, is both bliss and torture...) 

tbh, im stuck in a sort of limbo stage between desperately wanting to know and not wanting to know my admissions results at all. (ignorance, at this point, is both bliss and torture...)