RosemaryJuniper

Dear All,

This might be kind of interpersonally hideous to share, but at the end of January, feeling like crap, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my own damn letter and emailed it to myself. It might seem weird, but having this in my inbox really helps. Feel free to copy and paste/modify as needed. (It works!)



Regarding Your Applications For Admission to Graduate Study
27 January 2011

Dear [You]:

This is a letter from yourself. In the next month, perhaps two months, perhaps three, you will be receiving or not receiving emails, phone calls, and postal mail from eleven institutions scattered throughout the contiguous United States.

You sent in some (a very few) materials to these institutions. Fully half of these materials are composed of numbers (and we must remember how we feel about numbers). The remainder of the materials are 1) letters from three people who barely know you; 2) a statement of intent that could have been much much better, but wasn’t, possibly because you were lazy and intimidated and possibly because it's the best you had in you; and 3) a rather pathetic(ally abbreviated) semblance of a paper that traces out some extremely elementary ideas in a field that you are not wholly committed to studying exclusively and that you know fairly little about. We shall not speak about our syntax; no, we shall not.
It is true that you could have done all of this much better. The question of whether you should attempt to do so is not relevant right now, as is all anxiety about your non/acceptances. You must plan in the back of your mind to get on with things. That is, after all, what people do. You are a person. There are many things you can do with your life, time, and talent, and earning a doctoral degree in an esoteric field is only one of them.

You must remember that admission to all of the programs to which you have applied is not only selective—there are criteria for admission of which you are, never have been, and likely never will be aware.
You must recall that your identity is not at stake in this process. Period.
You must remember what is important: you have a darling cat, well-intentioned and loving family and friends, and the rich possibility of the unforeseen ahead of you. None of that is taken away if you are not “selected” for admission.



All the best,

Yourself.

I wouldn't worry too much about the 70-80 hour estimates--numbers are a lot fuzzier than you might think! Some examples from my schedule: I spend, on average, some 10-12 hours per week in an unofficial Latin reading group. I'm a medievalist, so I could count those toward my 'work' total (if I did, I'd definitely break 70hrs/wk!), but because I'm crazy, I tend to think of it as relaxation time instead. Likewise, what about the times I decide to 'study' at the coffeeshop where a lot of people in my program hang out? Chances are my productivity will be halved--and my work-time doubled--but for sanity's sake, I do it anyway. Probably, if I did all my work in the library at full speed, no distractions, I could cut my overall time working by a third or more, but as a quality-of-life issue, I won't. Basically, you make your own schedule, and whatever you choose to do will be right at the limit of what you *can* do.

I wouldn't worry too much about the 70-80 hour estimates--numbers are a lot fuzzier than you might think! Some examples from my schedule: I spend, on average, some 10-12 hours per week in an unofficial Latin reading group. I'm a medievalist, so I could count those toward my 'work' total (if I did, I'd definitely break 70hrs/wk!), but because I'm crazy, I tend to think of it as relaxation time instead. Likewise, what about the times I decide to 'study' at the coffeeshop where a lot of people in my program hang out? Chances are my productivity will be halved--and my work-time doubled--but for sanity's sake, I do it anyway. Probably, if I did all my work in the library at full speed, no distractions, I could cut my overall time working by a third or more, but as a quality-of-life issue, I won't. Basically, you make your own schedule, and whatever you choose to do will be right at the limit of what you *can* do.