beyond the wide world's end

Well I'd say that you can try applying to the USA ones later, and really it 's okay to take a year off. A few months off, even. You sound too frazzled to even consider applying for the US grad schools. You can just apply to the overseas ones, and then tell your mother you'll need to spend time to work on applying for the US grad schools because ohgod they have too-tight deadlines.

Uh.

I know exactly what you're going through, except I don't even have the excuse of homework and thesis and everything.

:|

I just haven't sent the query letters to the UK universities. Or Australian universities. *hides*