So, lately I've been experiencing one of three emotions: a sick, desperately-certain terror that takes up residence in the pit of my stomach, engendered by the knowledge that I will not be accepted to any of the seven schools to which I applied; a wild, flaring hope that is almost worse than the sick feeling, because it brings with it its own nausea, and I have to block out everything else in order not to throw up; or a numbness, where everything is muffled by cotton wool, and all other emotions are drowned in a lake of apathy. For the last month and a half -- since the second week of January -- I've been waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting to hear from grad schools. My last applications were sent to meet the January 1st deadline, and since then I've just been waiting. I've only heard from one school -- University of Wisconsin, Madison -- and that was a firm denial. Nothing polite about it, either. Just a check of the website, and a "Denied" link telling me that my application was not accepted. No reasons, no soothing boilerplate about the number of qualified applicants and the paucity of available spots. When I saw that, I really did want to throw up, and it took me a few minutes to bring my heavings under control.
I vacillate between thoughts about my unutterable stupidity for applying to a bunch of schools that, as my ex assures me, I really have no business asking for acceptance from, and thoughts that maybe one of them, somewhere, will actually like my personal statement and writing sample, and will give me the chance that I so desperately, desperately want. Cornell, University of Toronto, Notre Dame, the aforementioned University of Wisconsin, University of Texas, Austin, University of Virginia, and University of Indiana. . . . The thing is, none of these are really back-up schools, and I am learning that I really, really should have applied to about 100 back-up schools. I guess I just got carried away, believing that if this was really meant to be, that I would be accepted, and that all the cards would finally show a full house.
There's this website that is, as a friend put it, like crack to a crack addict. It's called The Grad Cafe, and among other things, it offers applicants the opportunity to post their results. So if you are a button-pushing maniac, like myself, you can refresh the page 50 times a day (and sometimes more frequently, just in case), to get real-time updates on the schools to which you've applied. That's how I knew, before I even checked the website, that I hadn't been accepted to University of Wisconsin. Obsessively clicking "refresh" led me to the post stating that "all those who have been accepted have received their notifications", and that it was all over bar the clean-up of drunken-spectator vomit. It's also how I know that I probably won't be going to Notre Dame. When I read that, back in the first week of February, a few people had gotten phone calls with offers of acceptance, and my phone didn't ring . . . well, let's just say that my hopes for Notre Dame now center around a potential wait-list.
There are also the forums, where you can chat with other sick, desperate people like yourself, and hate those who have been accepted. When I saw that one of the people who had been accepted to Notre Dame had been accepted as a medieval lit person, I congratulated them, then made a little doll with their Grad Cafe username and avatar pasted on it, and spent the next few hours poking pins and needles into it. They've got my place, dammit, but at least they'll hurt for it, and won't enjoy a second of it.
The terrifying thing -- the REALLY terrifying thing -- that I've learned from this site is that there are some people who are in their third go-round! They've done this -- twice -- with no acceptances, and have still mustered up the git-and-go to do it a third time. Frankly, I figure I can do this once more, and if that's that, and I'm not accepted anywhere, then that is God's way of telling me to find something else to do with my life, because academia ain't gonna be it. I cannot imagine finding the testicular verve to pony up the time, money, and emotional fortitude required to do this a third time. I was talking to one lost soul who's applied to 11 schools (third time around), and is currently 0-11. I'm hoping for her sake that she gets in somewhere -- unless, of course, one of the schools to which we've both applied (and there are a few) offers her a place instead of me. I have my limits of generosity of spirit.
I have learned one helpful thing from this site. There is a school that I didn't apply to, that it sounds like I should apply to, ASAP. It's Fordham, in New York, and it has a medieval studies center. Here are the two good things about it: my statistics are higher than their average accepted applicant, which gives me (I hope) a decent chance of being accepted; and they have rolling admissions, which means that I can still apply for the Fall, 2011 semester/quarter. The person who was accepted to Notre Dame (and who applied to many of the same schools to which I've applied), got their M.A. in Medieval Studies from Fordham. So it is, most definitely, worth a shot. If I'm accepted to Fordham, I'll remove the pins and needles from their little doll.
And, to top it all off, Borders is closing! What the hell?! It is a much, MUCH better bookstore than Barnes and Noble, and the fact that they lost out on the e-reader race, thus forcing their store to close, is just unbearable. So, while mourning my own probable defeat at the hands of the grad admissions committees, I'll wander off to Borders to mourn with them in their defeat, and take advantage, simultaneously, of their 25%-off sales. Just as I expect the crows to find solace in my carcass, so will I yet find solace in Borders'.
