The NSF GRFP

After carefully reviewing the National Science Foundation's announcement dates for their Graduate Research Fellowship Program, or GRFP, from previous years, I was almost certain they'd announce this year's recipients on April 9th. It seems in years past, they've almost always sent out emails on Fridays or Mondays, so to get the email this past Tuesday morning, the 6th, was unexpected.

I'd convinced myself that this week would be good for me-- great, even. After all, I had it coming, right? Especially after having put so much work into my undergraduate education and then waiting so many months hearing nothing but bad news. So I was disappointed, although not particularly surprised, to read the title of the email in my inbox: "NSF GRFP Honorable Mention Notification."

No, I was not awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship. I did receive an honorable mention.

On the one hand, it makes a lot of sense. This was my first time applying for a major grant. The proposal I used was (to my mind) unique and exciting, but something I'd adapted from a course assignment completed several months previously. I didn't spend a great deal of time modifying it to fit the submission criteria, and I certainly didn't spend hours agonizing over the little details-- what to include, what to omit, this word or that one, this reference here or there.

Additionally, as I've been coming to understand more and more over these past few weeks, I'm still considered very young and rather inexperienced in the field of ecology. I may feel prepared for graduate study, but there are others who have more field seasons accrued, more research experience, more publications, more contacts. And I'm sure there are plenty of people who've applied for the GRF more than one time. There's something to be said for having gone through several rounds of the application process, if for no other reason than the fact that the feedback given by reviewers may prove to be useful to applicants in subsequent years.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel a little cheated. I suppose having received the honorable mention is better than nothing, but, as one of my undergraduate advisers noted, it really seems like runner-up in a beauty contest and no money to write home about. Realistically, it's nothing more than another line on my CV, and in the long run, who's really going to care about that? I think in some ways my disappointment is made all the worse by the fact that so many GRF's were awarded this year. 2000 applicants received fellowships this year-- 752 more than were awarded last year, and 1087 more than were awarded the year before that.

I suppose there's something to be said for having applied. I'm more familiar now with the guidelines for GRF proposals, and I'll be better prepared next year for the formatting, if nothing else.

But, while one round of the application process may increase my awareness for margins and page limits, I'm not sure it has helped my understanding of what exactly reviewers are looking for. My rating sheets, written out by the three individuals that reviewed my proposal and personal statement, simply lacked any sort of constructive criticism, save for one review, which said that my proposed outreach was "a bit vague" and that I could have "developed laboratory methods more fully." Well, let me tell you... If the NSF allowed more than two pages to construct a graduate-level study complete with background information, methods, potential results, scientific and societal impacts, and references, I'd be glad to elaborate on laboratory methods and community outreach. As it is, the topic required a good deal of introductory information to make sure that anyone reviewing would be able to understand the premise of the study. Throw me a bone.

Apart from those two comments by one reviewer, everything else was highly positive. The phrases "exceptional academic background","great GPA and GRE", "outstanding LORs", "strong promise to be one of tomorrow's leaders", "demonstrated leadership", and "good knowledge of the scientific process" all made an appearance in my rating sheets. It may just be me, but those all seem like comments about an award-worthy individual, or at least someone that's well-suited to graduate study. If that's the case, I have trouble seeing why I wasn't one of the lucky 2000, and even more so, why I haven't been accepted to grad school yet. How many people apply for the NSF GRFP every year, anyway?

I will admit, the hardest blow of not having received a GRF came in relation to my applications themselves. I'd convinced myself that having a GRF in hand would greatly increase my chances of acceptance to the three schools from which I hadn't yet heard. In truth, it very well may have paved the way for me to start my graduate studies. But I suppose it's no use dwelling on those thoughts now, and I'll just have to wait and try again next year.

Wherein I express my fondess for the writing of Mr. Charles Dickens

Last summer, having very little to do outside of work, I engaged in what can only be called a reading frenzy. The little library in Newcastle became one of my favorite haunts. I usually visited once a week and checked out two books on each occasion. I'd constructed a fairly lengthy reading list throughout my time in college, and though I never go a day without reading part of a book, my hectic schedule my senior year prevented me from making much headway into The List.

The List, however, came with me to Wyoming and, between the library in Newcastle and inter-library loans from larger branches in Cheyenne and Jackson, I blew through The List in a surprisingly short amount of time. I read so much and so quickly that many of the novels have now escaped my memory. There are many I remember clearly, however: George Schaller's A Naturalist and Other Beasts, Alan Rabinowitz's Beyond the Last Village, Life in the Valley of Death, and Chasing the Dragon's Tail. Sara Gruen's excellent Water for Elephants. Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer (although I'd admittedly didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I had The Poisonwood Bible). Ishmael Beah's striking memoirs, A Long Way Gone. Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and A Long Way Down (both endearing and humorous, as is my favorite Hornby novel, About a Boy). And Michael Blake's Dances with Wolves, which happens to be even better than the movie. All those books, among many, many others.

I read so much this summer that when I returned to My Home Town, I found myself at a loss for new reading materials. It seemed as if every book I ever had an interest in reading, I'd read. Weird. I re-read some old favorites and perused halfheartedly through a couple suggestions. And then, one night, when I was at a greater loss than ever before, I picked up Great Expectations, and fell head over heels for Charles Dickens.

I've always loved A Christmas Carol, and not only in film. I read the book every year a couple weeks before Christmas eve, and it never fails to thrill me. But for some reason, I never considered that Dickens' other novels might be just as good, or better. Silly me.

I've never been particularly fond of classic English literature. Something about it always seemed tedious, as if the effort needed to read a classic English novel were far greater than the reward. So I approached Great Expectations cautiously, unsure whether the book would hold my attention for long.

It took just one chapter of Great Expectations, an astounding 5 pages, for me to decide that this Dickens chap wasn't half bad. I read the remaining 460-something pages of Great Expectations without any reservations, and found the novel to be one of the best I've ever read, and the experience of reading it one of the most enjoyable I've had in a long while.

Mystery, suspense, adventure, romance, coming-of-age, and perhaps more than anything, social commentary regarding poverty, social stratification, and the materialism of Victorian society characterize most of Dickens' novels. His writing is a mixture of realism and fantasy, his style florid and often poetic. He is prone to sentimentality, and on occasion his protagonists seem rather too idealistic. His novels present large, vividly drawn casts of characters, each one unique and strikingly memorable, lending to each novel a presence that convinces the reader that these individuals might actually exist in some society simultaneously with our own, and that they very may well be going about their lives as we speak.

What I enjoy most about Dickens, however, is his wry, often subtle humor, and I've found myself laughing aloud more than once at his quips and jabs, sometimes serving to develop a character, other times as a poignant remark on society. If you've never read a Dickens novel before, it may seem far-fetched, but in fact, he's really very funny.

Take several examples from my reading. The first, from Great Expectations, where two of the main characters, Pip and Joe, are discussing the will of a recently deceased woman, who left 4,000 pounds to a mutual acquaintance:

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "it do appear that she had settled the most of it.... leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket. And why do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left a cool four thousand unto him? ....And a cool four thousand, Pip!

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish on insisting on its being cool.

The second, from Oliver Twist, in which a gentleman, Doctor Losberne, tries to comfort two ladies in their home the morning after a robbery occurred:

"You ought to be dead; positively dead with the fright," said the fat gentleman. "Why didn't you send? Bless me, my man should have come in a minute; so so would I; and my assistant would have been delighted; or anybody, I'm sure, under such circumstances. Dear, dear! So unexpected! In the silence of night, too!"

The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the nighttime; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by post, a day or two previous.

Another, from A Christmas Carol, describing the home of Mr. Scrooge:

They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and having forgotten the way out again.

And finally, from David Copperfield, a scene wherein David describes an evening with some of his friends in which they are all intoxicated:

I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and continually, starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long before any was needed. I proposed Steerforth's health....I finished by saying, "I'll give you Steerforth! God bless him! Hurrah!" We gave him three times three, and another, and a good one to finish with. I broke my glass in going round the table to shake hands with him, and I said (in two words) "Steerforthyou'retheguidingstarofmyexist ence."

I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a song....He said, when he had sung it, he would give us "Woman!" I took objection to that, and I couldn't allow it. I said it was not a respectful way of proposing the toast, and I would never permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as "The Ladies!" I was very high with him... He said a man was not to be dictated to. I said a man was. He said a man was not to be insulted, then. I said he was right... He said it was no derogation from a man's dignity to confess that I was a devilish good fellow. I instantly proposed his health.

Needless to say, I've been quite enjoying myself lately, reading Dickens. Thus far I've made it through, as you might suspect, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and the great majority of David Copperfield, and I have plans to continue with Dickens and read, at the very least, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, and Nicholas Nickleby.

If you've never read a Dickens novel, I highly recommend you do so. Great Expectations has been my favorite thus far, but almost every novel Dickens published has met with great acclaim, so you probably can't go wrong with any choice.

As an aside to conclude this lengthy post, I've received no news concerning graduate school since I was sent my third rejection, the last week in February. I am hoping this means that I am still in the running for the other three schools to which I applied-- on a wait list, at the very least. The NSF is supposed to announce their fellowship recipients in early April. I'm assuming they'll do so on April 9th. And in my deluded, I-really-want-to-go-to-grad-school-and-can't-imagine-how-crappy-it-would-be-not-to-get-in-this-year reality, I keep reminding myself that if I receive the NSF GRF, I'm practically guaranteed admission to those final three schools, regardless of the fact that my chances of getting the fellowship are smaller even than the odds of my being accepted into a school.

I'm putting on a positive front, however. I'm now convinced that January, February, and March were just bad months, wherein nothing good could happen for anyone. April, however, is sure to be fantastic. Right?

Unlisted

For those of you who have been faithful blog-followers of mine from the start, you'll recall that this past summer I worked extensively in the field in northeastern Wyoming. You'll also remember that one of my main priorities involved tracking five radio-collared Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) on a weekly basis (which you can read about here, here, here, here, and here, among others).

Although my feelings regarding my time spent in Wyoming are ambivalent at best, I can say with utmost certainty that the thing I enjoyed most about my fieldwork for the BLM was tracking sage-grouse. I loved radio telemetry. I loved going out every week, usually on Fridays, and finding "my" birds. I loved being out on the prairie. And the places I visited and the areas in which the birds spent their time was consistent enough to lend some stability, some constancy, to my otherwise volatile life in the field.

Not only was sage-grouse tracking the most enjoyable of my field activities, I also felt that the data I was collecting was, potentially, the most important, the most likely to make an impact in terms of management strategies and conservation.

Greater Sage-Grouse are the largest type of grouse in North America. As their name suggests, they live only in areas of the West where sagebrush provides adequate cover, including parts of Nevada, Colorado, Utah, California, Wyoming, and Montana. During winter months, the birds subsist entirely on the leaves of sagebrush. They also rely on sagebrush for cover, both from predators and as protected sites for nesting.

Largely, however, Greater Sage-Grouse remain poorly understood. Scientists have yet to determine variation in seasonal patterns of movement and habitat use, the importance of habitat connectivity to breeding site selection, or the effects of anthropogenic influences, such as noise pollution, on nesting success.

What is known is that the number of Greater Sage-Grouse are dwindling right alongside sagebrush landscapes. In the last century, Greater Sage-Grouse have experienced a 90% decline in population and a 50% decline in habitat availability. Habitat loss is the single greatest threat to the survival of the species. The birds have been extirpated from much of their historic range, including British Columbia, Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

Greater Sage-Grouse were first petitioned to be listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) during the early part of the G.W. Bush administration. In 2004, it was ruled that the species did not need protection. In 2007, however, following an internal investigation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (the agency responsible for implementing the ESA), the ruling was overturned, citing that the executive responsible for the initial decision had acted improperly and without adequate scientific evidence.

Greater Sage-Grouse were then re-petitioned for listing, and after several years of delay, a final decision was made. This past Friday, March 6th, 2010, officials with the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced that the Greater Sage-Grouse will not be listed as an endangered species-- or even a threatened species-- under the ESA. Despite the rapid loss and degradation of sagebrush habitat across the West, as well as plenty of evidence that suggests that Greater Sage-Grouse numbers are under serious threat, the DOI refuses to list the birds.

The most frustrating aspect of this all? The government concluded that listing the birds as endangered is "warranted but precluded" by higher priorities, meaning that the species meets the scientific criteria for protection but that other species are in greater need of conservation.

Really, DOI? Is it really that "other species are in greater need," or is it that listing the birds would impact energy development throughout the West, including the all-important oil and gas industry? I have a feeling that the final decision had more to do with politics than anything else.

The good news is that the status of the species will be reviewed on an annual basis. Thus, if numbers continue to decline, Greater Sage-Grouse could be listed as a threatened or endangered species in subsequent years. Additionally, federal officials announced that they would review plans for new energy development on federal land with an eye to minimize the impact on sage-grouse habitat.

Fairly early on last summer, when I first began tracking sage-grouse, I mentioned the debate about whether to list the Greater Sage-Grouse to my supervisor, Dwayne. "God, I hope they don't list them. That would suck so much," he said.

"What do you mean it would suck?" I asked. "We're talking about protecting a species from extinction."

"Do you know how much extra work I'd have to do?" he replied.

I wonder how many government officials would prefer less work at the expense of effective conservation practices. I have a sinking feeling that Dwayne isn't the only one.

I also have a feeling that I'll be faced with similar situations for much of my professional career-- scenarios wherein protection is "warranted, but precluded by 'higher priorities'."

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?

Vicissitude

The past few weeks have been full of ups and downs. One minute I'll be reviewing my applications, thinking of all the things I did right, feeling confident, reading through school websites, and envisioning what my life will be like when I attend grad school this fall. The next, I'll be in a pit of despair, thinking of all the things I did wrong, bemoaning the state of the economy, fretting about the silence of the various programs to which I applied, and trying to accept the fact that I'll have to take the GRE's again, and slog through the whole horrible, tedious application process again this year.

On the one hand, the silence may not be a bad thing... It could mean that I made at least the first cut. I wasn't rejected outright. On the other hand, it could be a bad thing. Most programs hold interviews between mid-January and the first week in March. Having not been contacted by schools, this might mean I won't be invited for interviews. This, in turn, would indicate that I'm not a top pick at any school. Should this be the case, I'll likely be wait-listed, and my position on said wait-list and the decisions made by the top picks will determine my fate.

There's also a chance that programs have already made their admissions decisions, but haven't yet sent out rejection letters. That's the thing about grad schools- they'll inform their admits right away. The rejection letters? Meh... they'll get around to it, eventually.

Further adding to my near-constant state of nervousness is the confidence others have in my chances. My undergraduate professors, my family members, my friends, and the people I work for-- all are convinced I'll be accepted somewhere. Few people realize that meeting requirements doesn't guarantee admission, nor does surpassing them. Good GPA, research experiences, test scores, statements of purpose, and letters of recommendation might get my application to committee, but it doesn't mean that I'll be accepted. In many cases, "fit" is more important than ability. There is no such thing as a "safety school" for graduate admissions. And sometimes, even fitting well and having potential won't get you where you need to be. Sometimes, it really is just a crapshoot.

Especially this year. With large increases in the number of applicants and large decreases in funding, many schools' acceptance rates have dropped below 5%. Brown's graduate school, for example, has seen a 27 percent increase in applications compared to last year. Undergraduates graduating this spring have noted that the state of the economy has made them want to continue their education and avoid the workforce. Many undergraduates are looking to grad school as a way to defer loan payments until the economy sufficiently improves.

Thousands of applicants are competing for graduate school admission in the hopes of avoiding the job market during the economic recession. Most universities, however, have taken hits to their endowments. As a result, they are unable to provide more spots for Ph.D. students, and many schools have been forced to either accept fewer applicants or fund fewer of their admits. Stanford and Northwestern, for example, are planning to reduce class sizes for their incoming Ph.D. students by 5 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

According to an article recently released by Harvard's newspaper, The Crimson:

Ph.D. applications have increased by 16 percent at Northwestern, 7 percent at Michigan, 8 percent at Dartmouth, and 12 percent at Johns Hopkins. Overall applications for graduate study—most of which are for Ph.D.s—are up by 15 percent at Duke, 9 percent at Dartmouth, 5 percent at Stanford, 9 percent at Yale, and 9.5 percent at Princeton, according to deans at those universities.

These increases are dramatically higher than the 3 percent average annual increase in graduate school applications over the last decade, noted in a 2007 report by the Council of Graduate Schools.

Many applicants likely had not planned on attending graduate school until this year. Applicants are fearful of the economy and the job market, and view attending (or returning to) school as the most viable option during the recession.

If I don't get accepted this year, it will likely have more to do with odds and bad luck than it will my quality as an applicant or my potential for graduate study. That may just be the most frustrating part of this all-- that I've done nearly everything I could to make myself a successful applicant, yet I may still have to face another year outside of school, another round of the application process, and another fretful season of admissions decisions.

Please, universe, help me out on this one... I could really use a break. Just one acceptance. Just one.

Top Ten Reasons why I will (or won't) get into Grad School

Top ten reasons I will get into grad school
1. I graduated at the top of my class, with distinction and honors, from a competitive, private liberal arts school.
2. I have received awards and grant money for my work in my chosen field.
3. I have no reason to believe that my recommendation letters were anything but stellar. My professors know me very well.
4. I have good research experience, including a long-term research project I conducted independently that resulted in publishable material.
5. I presented the findings of said research at a national conference.
6. I write well.
7. I applied for the NSF GRFP, showing initiative.
8. I exchanged emails with prospective advisers at each of the schools to which I applied, most of which were encouraging.
9. I had a 3.88 GPA overall, 3.98 GPA in my major, and received good scores on my GRE's (predominately 90th percentile rankings).
10. The schools to which I applied were those with programs that had a great deal of overlap with my research interests.

Top ten reasons I won't get into grad school
1. I have not yet been published.
2. My quantitative GRE score left something to be desired. My subject test score could have been better.
3. I did not call prospective advisers to discuss research interests, nor did I carry email conversations as far as I could have (in some cases). In other words, I didn't push it.
4. I don't have any international research experience.
5. I do not speak a foreign language with fluency.
6. I did not have a professor (or anyone, for that matter) proofread each of my application essays.
7. I applied to six of the most competitive programs in my field in the nation. I did not apply to more than six schools.
8. Though I requested ETS send my GRE scores to all six schools four weeks in advance of the earliest deadline, I did not receive notification from several schools that my scores had been received until after the deadline had passed.
9. The economy is bad. People laid off from work are looking to return to school. Undergraduate students graduating this year do not want to face an impossible job market, and are thus trying to continue their education. Funding has been cut nearly everywhere, resulting in fewer spots for grad school applicants overall.
10. I have not yet been contacted by any of the schools to which I applied. Three of the six held interviews in January.

I am already tired of February. The more I've read this week, the more I've realized that if I'm not contacted by my schools by the middle of February regarding interviews, my chances of being accepted are extremely slim. Essentially, if I don't hear from schools next week, it's unlikely I'll be going to graduate school this year.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Yes, I realize it's the second day of February, and if I really wanted to do things properly I'd have written a "2009: Year in Review" post closer to the beginning of January. But it's not something I've thought about until now, and it's better late than never, right?

2009: A Year in Review

I accomplished a lot in 2009... More than I'd realized until I started thinking about it yesterday. Notably, I:
-Traveled to Belize
-Got my first DSLR
-Finished my thesis
-Took the GREs
-Presented the findings of my thesis at a research conference in California
-Got a job with the BLM
-Graduated from college
-Moved to Wyoming
-Lost both of my pet rats
-Learned radio telemetry
-Visited The Badlands, the Grand Canyon, and Devil's Tower
-Acquired three new pet rats
-Completed my internship with the BLM and moved back home
-Competed in my first rodeo
-Applied to grad school

Overall, 2009 was a pretty good year. A lot happened in the span of 12 months!

So, what about 2010? I'm reluctant to set goals for the coming year. I infrequently set resolutions of any sort around New Year's, because I rarely end up following through with them. And with a troublesome economy, impossible job market, and fierce competition for positions in grad schools, it's likely that, even if I do set goals, I won't be able to accomplish them. Nevertheless, that won't stop me from making a list of things I'd like to do, if I am able.

2010: Stuff I'd like to do

-Publish the results of my thesis
-Upgrade my DSLR (low priority)
-Get accepted to grad school
-Get the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
-Move to a new city
-Start grad school
-Choose a research topic for my dissertation
-Apply for the NSF GRFP (if I don't get it in April)
-Select an adviser

Of course, the third thing on the list has to happen before the things below it do, and the farther along I go in the process, the more I'm starting to realize the likely possibility that I won't be accepted to any of the schools to which I applied. :( In that case, my 2010 will obviously look a lot different. Right now, that's not really something I want to think about.