barshmie

*Just received an official rejection from Stanford, everyone.* I got an email prompting me to go to the online portal. Not surprised at all, as fit was a real stretch. Best of luck to everyone else ❤️!

Everyone: Hang in there today! I know our nerves will be high today but let's stay positive and try to do things other than hit the refresh email button Can't wait to hear about some Chicago acceptances!

Hey all- does anyone have any updates on Chicago? The silence today is really eerie and is sort of killing me.

Does anyone else have nightmares about getting accepted to school and then showing up in the Fall and they say they've rescinded their offer? I had one about Princeton last night. Exhausting. ?

So did mine. She also said I should only check once per day. I said, "get real ?".

lol yes give us more

Ugh sorry I keep confusing people. I need faces to connect with events (but I too haven't put up a photo). We can be there for each other when we get rejected. Anyway, this is really killing me today. I turned my phone alerts on for my decision email this morning and used the ringtone "suspense" as I kind of cruel personal joke, which I do not recommend... the suspense is horribly anticlimactic when it's Vitacost reminding you that there are still items in your cart ?

Ugh same this is killing me. I can't focus on anything else. Didn't you have an interview? How did it go?

Taxes would total $1,460 for the Columbia stipend (32600)either way, but there is an additional New York City tax on top of that (I'm not sure how much this would be) if you decide to live in the city. Does anyone know which programs offer graduate student housing? Ugh... i'm totally putting the cart before the horse.

Is anyone on here the Columbia interviewee? I'd love for you to enlighten me about what's going on with that. I know Columbia doesn't interview everyone they accept for a fact, but I still think it might give us some insight into their timeline. Plus, we can all congratulate you ❤️ . Re: rent. I lived in Manhattan for a long time and the Columbia stiped would worry me(32600 before taxes ?) if I had the fortune of having such a problem. My two bedroom in West Harlem (very close to Columbia) was $2900 total, I paid $1450 for my room before utilities. It was a beautiful apartment on a park, but still. And my apartment was rent controlled.

@Warelin Thank you, you are always so helpful. However, now the anxiety has returned ?.

To the contrary, I think your memes would be a real boon to your application. Especially the one with the lab, which had me in stitches ?. Anyway it's almost insulting for me to suggest that they have the time/energy to read this forum, which they most certainly don't.

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 ?... ??*

Guys UChicago is closed today because of the polar vortex (feels like is -43 ?)... so I'm thinking none of us are getting congratulatory calls/emails from the Dean today. Frankly, all of this is giving me doubts about moving to Chicago anyway.

They must know that you are applying many places and that this is a trying time??? ?

I'm lactose intolerant ? My Xanax and I will comfort each other... (Me to my therapist: "I just need something, you don't understand, my life flashes before my eyes every time I refresh my email." Her: "Alright, fine. I'll do this for you. But just this once.")

?.....My heart is in my stomach.

@placeinspace @flungoutofspace @kendalldinniene Thank you all for your projections. I think Chicago interviews are concluding on Tuesday so that makes me nervous. I bet we will know by Friday. ? This is all happening so quickly (but also not quickly enough)!

Hey guys-- any thoughts on Stanford and UCLA? I have them down as possibly getting back this week. And UChicago-- are we thinking late this week or next? Hang in there everyone ?‍♀️

@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?

Omg same I keep picking up unknown numbers because any call could be *the call*, but the more you pick up the more they call. Ughhhh.

@Bopie5 That is totally true, thank you for the reminder. People who got interviews: Had you all contacted the people you are speaking to at some point during the admissions process? So proud of everyone who has an interview, you all are an inspiration!

@Bopie5 Did you get the initial interview invite email (where they asked for the doodle poll to be completed)? And don't worry... we can comfort each other from the reject pile ?

Guys... Despair ?. I just got this email: Dear Candidates, While some applicants have been contacted for interviews, application review is still underway and decisions are not yet finalized. We expect the review process to be completed in early February. Your decision will be posted to the online application and you will receive an email when it is available.

So happy for you! I guess all of the emails went out at once then? What was your timestamp? Despair creeping in...