barshmie

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 ?

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. 

Trader Joes has this ahmazing coconut milk ice cream if you ever get a chance to try it. Goes well with Xanax, I’ve heard. 

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

Ice cream, STAT! I’m gonna stock up today, I think. 

During my interview they said they expect decisions to be out before this Friday for Chicago! 

I have Stanford down for the first week of February and UCLA for the second week.
Fingers crossed we all get some good news very soon!

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. 
???

@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?
 

Anyone else just kinda feel like:
 

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.

Memes are my only solace from this nightmare

!!! Omg! I'm so glad you came here to talk about this album because it is EVERYTHING. I saw Phoebe Bridgers open for The National this fall and I wasn't familiar before but IMMEDIATELY was hooked. She's a genius!

I can't speak for other schools. The only reason I have this information about Chicago is because I discussed it with a professor yesterday. That said, I believe a similar process occurs at Columbia; while I had a few friends who interviewed there (and were not accepted), the friends I have who were accepted to their PhD cohort were accepted straight away. From a logistic standpoint, it makes sense: if the candidate is a good fit, if she has an interesting resume, and if she has strong LORs and has demonstrated excellence in some way (whether through conference presentations, winning grants, extracurriculars, etc.), why would one waste their time interviewing? The language of Chicago's emails seems to ratify this perspective. After all, not every candidate who signs up for an interview gets an interview—and if the school based all their acceptances on these interviews, would that not be unfair, or at the very least myopic? 
As an aside, I also do not like interviews, and am grateful most schools seem to function off application materials alone. I interviewed Charles Bernstein a few days ago for a book chapter and essentially sweat through a shirt because I could not hear him but pretended I did, rather than say "could you speak up," etc., ad nauseam. 

Hey y'all, I would like to point to jonnyboy's posts in the Applicants thread - it appears that not getting a request for interview from UChi does not indicate a rejection. Interviewees are those whom the adcom is unsure of. So if you were invited to interview, you're still in it! If you haven't heard anything, you are also still in it!

Ended up falling asleep yesterday before hearing anything, and woke up this morning to the generic, cryptic email not inviting me to interview ? So it goes.
Congrats to all those who got an interview and wishing you the best of luck! Would love to hear about your interview experiences, if you're inclined to share afterwards.
 

@bardie, I haven’t, minor freak out to ensue! Going to read everything I can manage of theirs since I didn’t list them in my SOP...

Me too... can’t breathe! Congrats, @snorkles

Maybe the email went out already...and just none of us got it. hahaha. =/ 

Remember, it isn't a rejection until it's a rejection!!!!! Y'all got this!

so like... who else is on the verge of a heart attack at all times?

Right there with you. The dread is real.
There are no wrong emotional responses to this process. It’s not self deprecation, it’s recognition of the exceedingly low acceptance rates of humanities programs. Dread of not being accepted is often (and definitely for me) coupled with dread of low job prospects and being not in my 20s anymore.  It’s okay to feel sad and defeated already.  Just as it’s okay to feel optimistic. We’re all in this together. We all have our own ways of processing this process.   Very happy for all who have been and will be accepted. Also standing in solidarity with those of us who are very afraid of what the next month or so holds.

Thanks  I try not to get in the minds of the adcomm or think how/why they're choosing people for interviews, because that will drive me insane!
Thanks, good luck to you too!

i think we're all being a bit too harsh on ourselves and a little bleak... i mean, reality IS gonna be pretty cold for a lot of us in terms of fave programs (and some of us may not be accepted anywhere, which is nothing to sweat even then), but decisions haven't been released yet -- that stage is only beginning
 
it might help to live in the moment for the time being? idk, like maybe go bungee jumping lol if you're an adrenaline junkie?  i think it's easy to let anxiety get the best of you, especially if you uh have an anxiety disorder (*sweats nervously*)
 
this is my first time in the grad apps process but i honestly think the key is just being stubborn and embracing the life of an artist.... the whole idea of, "i don't care if i have to friggin wait tables for a year, i'm doing this."  idk i know i'm an optimist so i may be shedding undue light here.  but also just wanted to share i've been reading a punk history book all of today and stubbornness and suffering and just time are exactly how a lot of the bands became big.  not saying most will be "big," but just saying, if you're persistent and a little headstrong, you get places lol im just rambling at this point