Applications and Waiting

I've expressed this sentiment before: grad school is just a series of applications.

First, in the autumn of the final year of undergrad, start working on my MA SSHRC grant.
Then, apply to get into my MA program.

And then, the fun really beings. Applications breed as though they have a little brothel under my desk. This conference, that conference, this series of workshops. And, of course, the two most stressful aspects of my grad career thus far: PhD SSHRC and applying to PhD programs.

You get a little breathing room early in September. Then PhD SSHRC can easily take over your waking (and sleeping) life. (Yes, I have had a nightmare about a bunch of scholars looking over my SSHRC.) Then, it's out of your hands and you are into final papers and submitting PhD applications in December and January.

The waiting after those were done? Blissful. I didn't have to fill out any more forms or make the choices that the forms brought back; I could just read comics for my course and think about literature in the 18th century.

That lasted for about a month, and then schools started getting back to me. This period, my friends, is the trickiest.

You have a decision looming, and not all the cards have been dealt. Some of them might not be dealt until you've removed yourself from the game. I feel like there's a poker metaphor in here somewhere, but I don't really understand many card games beyond whist and rummy, so forgive me for the crudeness of my figurative language.

I've been accepted to two schools. I haven't heard back from the other four. According to GradCafe, some have heard back from school that I applied to but haven't heard from. And now I'm on tenterhooks, because sometimes it's better to know than to be in a state of angst and I really just want to know if I got in and, to quote GOB Bluth, come on!

What I keep having to stop myself from doing now is worrying about making the wrong choice. If I go to A, will it be better than B? What will happen to me at B if I don't choose A? Of course, I can't really know (maybe virtual reality will be done by the time I'm done my PhD and I'll be off in a world with Digimon), and there are more practical factors like living expenses and funding, but that doesn't stop me from getting distracted from my coursework.

Speaking of getting distracted from coursework, I better go work on my proposal for the upcoming CSECS conference. It's due this Friday, 18thC friends, don't forget! I would really love to go again; it was a great time, both academically and socially, last year.