Three Down

I convinced myself earlier this week that I'd try and get back into the habit of posting here on a regular basis. Yet this morning I found myself uninspired-- what do I have to write about, apart from graduate school applications? My work is consistent and uneventful, my personal hours mundane. I typically spend my time perusing school websites, torturing myself by fantasizing about attending a particular school, living in a particular city, having access to a particular health care package (I'm not kidding).

I've long tried to adhere to the idea that one should hope for the best, yet expect the worst, so I've been trying to convince myself that I won't get into grad school this year. After all, it will hurt less in the long run if I know it's going to happen beforehand, right?

Except, it's not that easy. When I received my first rejection, I was philosophical. The school is number one in the nation for the program to which I applied. I likely lacked the necessary experience, proven publication record, genius-esque test scores. No worries. Still five schools left.

When I received the second, I was sad, but realistic. After all, getting into an Ivy League school is damn near impossible, right? Don't they choose their admits using a dart board? Or pin the tail on the donkey? Or one of those raffle-style drawings? Disappointing, but not too bad, yeah? Still four schools out there that I haven't heard from yet.

But this morning, when I received the third rejection letter, it started to get to me. Going to grad school is something I've wanted to do, thought about, planned for, since my junior year in high school. I made sure I took all the right courses in college necessary for a graduate program in the sciences- physics, organic chemistry, statistics. I studied hard and spent extra time on papers and lab write-ups, to make sure I received the highest possible grades in my classes. I took courses in the arts, anthropology, music, math, and film, to make sure my education had some breadth.

I got to know my professors to facilitate good letters of recommendation. I did independent research, wrote an optional senior thesis, took a year off after undergrad to get additional research experience and outline my goals. I attended research conferences and presented my results. I applied for grants for both my undergraduate research and my proposed graduate study.

I spent months (and around $1000) on the actual application process. I was careful to contact potential graduate advisers beforehand, to express my interests in their studies and inquire whether they were planning on accepting new students. I carefully crafted my statements of purpose for each school, relating concrete yet vague research interests, advisers with whom I wanted to work, and why Such-and-Such University would be a good fit for me.

And now, months later, I'm seeing the fruits of all my labor returned to me, in the form of generic, automatic-response rejection emails that all say pretty much the same thing: thanks for your money, but we don't want you.

I sent emails to my two undergraduate advisers this morning with the news of the first three rejections. I didn't want to spam their inboxes with an email every time I received a letter, so I waited until I could tell them about several schools at once. I received a response almost immediately from one of my advisers. It said, more or less, F*** those schools.

In some ways, I'd love to. I'd love to rant about how they're retarded and how I never really wanted to attend that program anyway. About how it'd be crappy to live in that Big City or in that Yuppie New England town or in that Hippie-ville coastal place. How it's the school's loss, because I'm going to be successful and garner positive attention in my field, and it'll all go to the school that accepts me, and those other schools are just going to miss out, and isn't that too bad for them?

But I can't help but feel now, after three rejections in a row and no contact from the other three to even suggest the possibility that I might be accepted elsewhere, that maybe they were right to not accept me. Maybe I'm not ready for graduate school. Maybe I'm not good enough.

And what the hell am I going to next year if I'm not?