MeghanIsMe

I'm feeling a lot of self-doubt about the application process. Maybe it's the impostor syndrome that I hear is universal among grad students settling in early.

I have comments on a first draft from both my mother and my partner Danae. Danae is a current grad student and was going through this process herself a couple years ago so her contributions are particularly valuable, but I appreciate the comments from my mother too.

I just finished another draft with some comments to send back to Danae. My letter starts with "I became an idealist in my early thirties." As well as commenting on the high use of past tense in a paragraph that should be dynamic and full of action, she pointed out that the term idealist may be off-putting to some readers. That makes sense, but I also feel like it's important for me to be clear that I am motivated by issues of politics and social justice. I think that a program that looks on that negatively would be a poor fit for me. (This is why I'm as excited about Syracuse as I am.) But she and my mother both had some constructive criticism about that section, so I'm going to think about how to rewrite it and give it a shot tomorrow.

My first app is due in two days. That's scary.

I'm getting a bunch of emails from various programs asking me to consider applying. Amont others, a general one from the University of Chicago advertising its wide range of humanities grad programs, and a specific one from UC-Berkeley telling me about their school of information. I'd like to think that my process of selection got to me most of the programs that are the best fits for me. But since I was time-limited, and since I feel like I didn't have a lot of the right questions to ask until quite late in the process, I'm not sure if that's true. Seeing all these emails is making me worry that maybe I missed the place I really ought to be at.

I remind myself that the programs I chose are all ones that I have a high potential of being happy at, and if I am accepted to one or more, that's a really good thing. And if I'm not accepted to any of them, I'll have a year to sort things out and maybe try again.

I was originally going to also apply to a couple of library/information science programs as a fall back, but I haven't done that yet. I blame stress and schedule. I'm going to look into application deadlines for some while I'm in Canada, and possibly apply to one or two of those too. Hell, maybe I'll apply to Berkely; that would be pretty cool!

(Yes, I'm going to be in Canada for a week. Danae and I are leaving to see her parents in Toronto on Sunday this week. I'll be driving back by myself on the 24th because I very much want to be with my family for Christmas, while she stays later and gets a plane home.)

I have one more final coming up tomorrow, then I'm all done with the semester. I honestly haven't given my finals very much thought because I've been too focused on grad school apps and things. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I did fairly well on all of them anyway. I feel very good about all my classes, with the exception, of course, of the one that I failed to turn my paper in for.

The professor in question feels terrible about the situation. She's also young and newish. She talked to my advisor about what to do. It sounds like there's some chance that it might work out and she'll let me submit late. My advisor talked to me about it and said I might have an out, and that the professor will email me. That was a few days ago though, and I haven't received that email, so I don't really know what's going to happen.

Either way, I think I'll be ok. If I have to retake the class, it's actually not a big deal. I really do feel bad for having put the professor in a stressful position, where she feels like she either has to be unfair to me by forcing me to retake a class that she told my advisor that she knows I wouldn't get anything out of, or being unfair to her other students by accepting a paper in violation of her clearly expressed rules. As I told my advisor, I certainly don't have a grudge against her, and I'm not taking it personally.