five things make a post

[bedlamsbard]

1. I'm having another fit of agony over grad school apps, which is exhausting because there's not really anything I can do except write them and cross my fingers.

1a. I e-mailed four professors asking for recs, got one "yes," one "out of office until Oct 31" response, one "no," and radio silence from the fourth, who happens to be one of the ones I'm counting on. I'll e-mail him again on Monday, and then e-mail another professor I had at Tulane and hope I can scrape up three recommenders. (I really only had a handful of professors at Tulane, and half of those were for Greek and won't work for recs -- my Greek prof was the one who said no. Leicester isn't much better, and I don't want to go back to undergrad for recs if I can help it, but I might have to.)

1b. I'm really concerned that my apps will just be thrown out because of my GRE scores, which the GRE website says are valid through June 2017, but which are over five years going by most university admissions pages, which say "within the past five years." (They're from August 2011.) But I also don't want to take the GRE again just on that off-chance.

1c. I need to e-mail the professors at the schools I'm applying to, which I haven't done yet because I hate writing cold e-mails, and what if they say "ha, no thanks"? What do I do then? Agh.

2. My father and my cousin both left within a day of each other, dropping the household from four to two, so now it's just me and my mother.

3. I still can't deal with Rebels S3 spec, and there's not really any good way to say that to people without sounding like I've lost my damn mind.

4. I'm more emotionally stable at the moment than I was a month ago, but I'm still at the point where one little thing will send me into a anxiety spiral.

4a. I'm kind of in one right now because of the grad school thing.

5. WHAT IF I DON'T GET INTO GRADUATE SCHOOL I will die in this town and my life will be over.

5a. I'm not actually sure I want to go to graduate school because the amount of stress literally makes me sick every time, but on the other hand I've been just as bad these past few months after grad school, so, like. There's no way to win here.

Comments

[pinesandmaples]

99% of grad schools will tell you that you need newer GRE scores. They won't just leave you hanging.

[bedlamsbard]

I feel like in that case, since they have a lot of other applicants, that will probably also just be "yeah, no, sorry" and cause for rejection? I don't know. I really don't want to take the GRE again, but I also don't want to go through the whole application process for six schools for it all to be pointless because of my GRE scores. *sighs*

[pinesandmaples]

I am drunk so i'm less polite than usual. But dude. You have two masters degrees. I know you doin't get to control your anxiety so here's how to roll: apply.

Then call the office lady like a week later and ask if your GRE scores were okay. If they weren't okay, a[pologize and retake. But YOU HAVE TWO MAKSTERS DEGREES YOU ARE KIND AQUALIFIED LIKE REALLY KINDA QUALIFIED

[bedlamsbard]

Ha, that is a good point! I always, uh, forget about that. For some reason. (Today has been a day that can sum up as *internal screaming*, which I guess is mildly preferable to yesterday's "angry about everything.")

Mmm, drinking anything good?

[pinesandmaples]

My default home cocktail is rum and coke with local rum. Right now, I have a bottle of Rougaroux Sugarshine which is 101 proof/50.5% abv. It's hot stuff. It was a really big, really strong rum and coke tonight.

I'm sad we didn't hang out when you lived here. I didn't want to make your life harder, though. You seemed so stressed.

[bedlamsbard]

Mmmmmmmm. I've been making Painkillers when I do cocktails, which isn't that often since I'm a lightweight.

I am sad too! Hopefully I'll be back sometime and we can meet up?

[aldanise]

Grad school apps are awful. I had to repeatedly get a friend to tell me I really could do this, and even after working on them for three months, I still submitted at the last minute.

For GRE scores, I know cold emailing sucks (so badly; I am literally the person who will agonize for 1-3 hours over a single email), but I can tell you from firsthand experience that emailing the graduate student coordinator to ask for clarification on the question works. I was in the awkward gap between the old and new GREs, without a writing score, and the coordinator (who was also the point person for applications) was really nice and helpful about it. And it's one less piece of stress in the whole miserable process to have a human being tell you the rules.

And speaking of the "you can do this," the way you talk about your research, just on LJ/DW, is the way that my friend who is finishing a fully-funded classics Ph.D. talks about his, and you've finished two master's programs and many long, dense writing projects that nothing but your own willpower (and characters and audience, yes, but mostly yourself) was making you write. You've already been doing graduate school and doing it well, whatever the anxiety says. (Seriously, applications are the worst part of the mess, and they have a way of making one forget anything good ever happened.)

[bedlamsbard]

Apps are the WORST. This is something like round five for me, I think, in all previous cases I think I only managed to get one app out a year, which had, like...a fifty percent success rate. And I think I put all those in at nearly the last minute too. *fistbump*

Thank you for reminding me that e-mailing and asking is probably better than just driving myself crazy; I've been doing that. Or, well, I did it for one uni, we'll see if I get around to the others or if I just cross my fingers and hope. Doing things, I am bad at them. (E-mails are the worst. I finally sent one out yesterday that I started at the beginning of September.)

Aww, thank you. *hugs*