Moving Forward

April 15th has come and gone, and, officially, I will be heading to graduate school this fall at West Coast University. I did not receive any other offers, so in the end there was no choice for me to make. The decision simply came down to whether or not I wanted to go to school at WCU. I STILL haven't received official notification from four of the schools to which I applied. I'm reminded again how ludicrous this process has been. For the amount of time and money I invested in applying, I would have hoped (both this year and last) to have received more timely responses from programs. To some extent, though, it no longer matters. I was admitted somewhere, I accepted the offer, and I'll soon start working toward my PhD.

I've become a great deal more excited about the prospect of attending WCU after having accepted the offer of admission. The fact that everything is now concrete, the solidity of being able to expect what's in the future, that I can finally start making actual plans toward moving on with my life, has all been cathartic. I am, of course, nervous at the prospect of moving thousands of miles from home. And there are still unknowns in play-- the difficulty of the coursework, of balancing teaching, classes, research, homework; the departmental politics; the incoming cohort and how I may or may not fit in; how quickly I'll be able to find my bearings in a new environment; whether my research ideas will play out in a timely fashion; whether I'll be able to feed myself on my paltry stipend.

I admittedly still have some reservations about the department, specifically in regards to required coursework. I keep reminding myself, however, that everyone has reservations about their programs, and that, even though current grad students at WCU have often complained about how frustrating courses can be, they've all remarked (begrudgingly, perhaps) that they've found the material more useful the farther they've gotten into their research. I'll have to keep that in mind for next year.

For now, however, the feeling of finally being able to work toward something again, of finally being able to embark toward the next stage of my life, is helping suppress all misgivings or doubts. I'm in! I'm funded! I'm going to graduate school!