yivorechecho

Most of the time I like to get things done early. I don't think I've ever written a paper at the last minute; I don't enjoy the pressure or feeling like things are raining down on me and I have more than I can handle. I had my grad school apps done mid-October and was just sitting around waiting for my recommenders to send their letters in. On the other hand, I'm not a steady worker, either. I usually write papers all at once (often in the middle of the night) and then don't look at them again until I'm printing them out to hand them in. Usually what happens is that I will suddenly start thinking about an assignment and then feel more and more unsettled until I just sit down and do it, no matter when the due date is. This will happen with random stuff as well: I'll be falling asleep at 2am and suddenly think, "I need to wash out my Nalgene." And I'll be unable to fall asleep until I get out of the damned bed and go wash out the bottle. I mean, it could wait for tomorrow. So could the assignment that's not due until next week. But I get agitated and can't settle down until I just get it done. On the one hand, I have to have multiple tabs open in Firefox at the same time because I can't focus on one thing long enough to read the whole page and I have to skip around. On the other hand, most of my 10+-page papers have been written via sitting down at the computer for 12 hours straight and hammering it out (this tends to cause a splitting headache). I'm a study in contradictions.

Yes! So I passed my senior comprehensive exercise. I got into grad school. I graduate in 4 weeks. I have all my requirements done and don't even need to pass the classes I'm taking now except for the fact that such a dropoff would look bad on my final transcript. So I can barely make myself do anything. I'm not even bothering to look at assignments or study for tests more than a few hours before they're due. I never caught up on my sleep after freaking out about applications and my senior project, so I'm tired all the time and only want to watch movies and play online. I mean, I suppose after all this I deserve some slack, but I feel like I'm giving myself more than I've earned.

I tend to get very anxious about things, and not having any acceptances was a way to shove off worrying about all that. Now I'm holding 2 and it's all hitting me. I have 4 more weeks of college. I suddenly need to come up with thousands of dollars. I need to find my own housing after having it handed to me on a silver platter for the last 21 years of my life. I'm a bit reclusive, but I built up a group of friends anyway over the last four years and now I have to start all over again. I feel like I haven't slept well in weeks. First it was fretting about my senior comprehensive exercise. I passed that. Then I worried that I would never get in anywhere and would be living in my parents' basement working at Subway into my 30s. I got in. Now I wake up hours before my alarm worrying about money and the unknown. I don't do change well. Excitement over my acceptances buoyed me for about 3 days, but now I've crashed and I'm exhausted and tired of worrying.

Is the April 15th thing for Ph.D only? I was accepted to some MA programs and one of them is asking for a reply and $300 within 30 days. This has caught me off guard, as I thought I didn't have to decide until April. The other program is asking for a reply by April 15th.

Both my parents have been very supportive. They don't really know anything about the field I want to go into, but post-graduate degrees are a big thing in my family, so an MA in whatever is acceptable to them. They have paid all my application fees, ETS fees, gone with me to visit schools, proofread my PS, etc. I'm also using my home address and not my school address as the permanent address for my applications, so they have been opening and forwarding mail faithfully for months now. In a way, I'm glad, because I have 2 acceptances at the moment and my mom got to open one and tell me and my dad got to open the other and tell me. They have their opinions on various schools, but have made it clear that while they will give their input when asked, the final decision is all mine and they will fully support whatever I choose. They have been incredible.

My anxiety was intermittent and would loom up out of nowhere with no warning. I was accepted to 2 programs this week so thank G-d that part is over, but it was really awful. I'd be walking to class and then suddenly my heart would start pounding and I'd feel dizzy and sick and depressed and start freaking out. "I'm never going to get in anywhere, I'll be working at Barnes & Noble for the rest of my life like my friend A's half-sister, my parents are going to be so disappointed, I'll be so embarrassed to tell my recommenders, my PS was terrible, I bet my LORs were lukewarm," and on and on. I had myself pretty well convinced that I had a terrible application and that no program would want me. Fortunately my self-assessment has proven to be incorrect. It didn't help that my roommate is applying to Ph.D programs (she's actually away on an interview right now). One of us would start freaking out of the blue and it was contagious. It's been one of our main conversation starters ever since winter break ended. "It's cold outside, huh?" "How was your day?" "When are we going to hear from X, Y, and Z? I'm going nuts!" We really need new material. Oh, and I coped by watching the same DVDs over and over again. It's quite soothing.