Adventures in Graduate School: Episode 1

Acceptance

Yesterday and the day before were exciting days.  For many reasons.  (They were sad as well, but I don't want to get into that right now).

If you've read past posts, there was a post about my personal statement thoughts process.  I was then, in the process of applying to a total of 8 different graduate schools.  Looking back, I was seriously distraught over filling out the applications, hoping that I didn't waste money filling out something hopeless.

So naturally, late January when I heard positive replies from 4 schools, I was shocked.

On Thursday, I was accepted to the smallest program that I applied to and visiting in the third weekend of February.  I was super happy to hear that they offered me admission, even though I felt like they were small and probably not a great fit for me.

Then on Friday, after being pestered by family and friends as to whether I heard back from my top school, I arrived home for the beginning of spring break and hopped on the family computer to check my email.  Amid the mass of junk I receive on a daily basis and class emails from our school's class website program sat an unimaginable subject heading: "Offer of Admission".  I didn't need to read the email to know the news.  Rejections are more subtle.  I opened the pdf containing my letter.  In not-so-flowery language, I've been accepted to my top choice of graduate school; a school I wanted to attend for undergraduate.

Somewhere between sobbing and jumping up and down, alone in my house of course, I managed to tell the important people.

I'm only unsure in one thing at this point, and that is can I find at least 5 professors to potentially rotate with.  I have another school option, one where I got to meet someone I would totally work for.  But I'm not as in love with their school as much.

So this week, I'm going to take the time to look through both schools and weight the options.  At the end of the week, I will have a decision.  And I will be on the road to being a PhD student (well sort of).  The future is bright.  I'm finally seeing the light at the end of this path that was dark and unknown for so long.

Writing and New Beginnings

Dear world.  I'm really stressed.  I actually miss school right now.  I miss spending three hours sitting in silence near my rock in the chemistry library on Friday morning.  I hate having to tell my friends that I will literally be gone for half of February.  I feel like I spend the rest of my time at school doing schoolwork, eating or sleeping.  I haven't been to lab and will not be back into lab until the week after next.

Earlier this week, I realized that the concept of new beginnings is so relevant for almost every part of life.  I had a new beginning moving to a new town for high school.  I had a new beginning when I started college.  I'm about to finish this wonderful time at school for another new beginning in July when I move to wherever I go to graduate school.  It seems like life is just a series of new beginnings, followed by a few years of dealing with those new situations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about where my life is headed.  I'm happy that I will be able to go to graduate school and pursue an awesome (if not occasionally frustrating) career of studying the things I love most (which is still unknown, I'm waiting for that moment of epiphany).  I'm excited to meet new people (despite my introversion) but I'm not ready to welcome all this newness.

When I graduate high school, I was ready to run away, to find new spirits in a place more open than my dreaded overly white, overly Catholic hometown which I so often felt trapped in.  I tell people my major is biochemistry.  But the life and education I've led over the past 4 years has been much more than that.  I've taken courses in Japanese, Mongol history, drawing, philosophy, modern fiction literature, virology, 2D design, queer theory, and creative writing.  It has been a rich education.  In every class, I've met someone to attach myself or whom attached themselves to me.  In high school, I ran face forward towards the exit, but I feel like I've spent part of my college life run backwards to the exit.  You know, when you are being chased and you turn briefly to look back and see what's behind you while continuing in the same direction?  That's me.  But instead of fearing what chases behind me, I'm so happy to look back and see what I've accomplished and all the love I've yielded over the years.  It's beginning to settle in how bittersweet this ending will be and I'm still two months away.  I want to leave as much of me there as well.  I want to leave the best me to the people I love.

Speaking on the subject of new beginnings, I recently wrote a short story for my creative writing class that I really made me happy.  We had critique workshop for it and I was shocked at the compliments it received and a lot of the criticism for it, I expected.  I've really fallen in love with my two characters and I cannot wait to edit it.  It's kind of a redemption story, about forgiving people.  At this point, I'm rambling.  But I have been up to a ton of things lately and this impending doom of the end of the school year has been creeping into my mind through most of it.

The Internet Filter

I miss the days of dial-up.  A lot.  Why?  Because could you imagine it taking 5 minutes to post a status?  But even before that, imagine how long Facebook would take to load on dial-up internet.  No one would have the time to put up complaints about life but maybe would only have time to tell the world the great day they've had.

I remember social networking was a new thing.  Sure there were people who just want to post their tits or dick as their profile picture on Myspace and you had to be invited to join Facebook way back when it first came out.

Social Networking, I feel is more beneficial to extroverts.  For the most part, extroverts don't have much of a filter towards people because they are more open.  They feel emotions outwardly.  For the introvert however, social networking is a disease.  They start to view the people on the other end of their friendslist as less human.  With 500 "friends" you've never tell half the stuff to, you post on Facebook anyways.  You take photos you would never show the public, but post on your wall.  You outwardly complain and tag the person whose guts you hate right now because that person doesn't seem as real online.

An introvert who posts statuses full of complaints and anger are crying out for help in a way they never usually do.

Earlier this year, I promised I would never post hateful, spiteful or anger statuses on my Facebook or Twitter.  My Facebook has turned into a profile of me sharing my love for the work others do, for art and for good Youtube videos.  My Twitter has been used to communicate with the art community for which most my followers belong.  As an introvert, I can honestly say that I post things on Facebook and Twitter that I would vocalize in real life.  I post things on my blog that I would vocalize in real life.

I want to leave this message for both extroverts and introverts: Skim through your Facebook.  Go back to when you first got it.  See what you've posted, the interactions you've had.  Do you see statuses that don't reflect you?  Do you see older posts that you can't believe you really posted?  Take time to ponder what you've written.  Understand why you post what you post on your Facebook wall, on your friends' Timelines and what 140 characters can really say about a person.
The next time you go to post on Facebook.  Type it out, read it out loud.  Ask yourself, would I say this to a friend in public?  Would I say this to an acquaintance in public?  Would I want to stand at a podium in front of my 500 Facebook friends and announce it to them?
The reactions they would have happen.  So if you can't imagine the above, think about posting that status you just typed.

~Ame

This class is killing me!

So, they say deaths come in threes.
I'm beginning to think that's true.  After Thanksgiving, I lost my aunt to ovarian cancer.  Two weeks later, one of my high school friends lost her dad to melanoma.  A little over three later, my 8th grade math teacher passes away.

I read the book The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, a wonderful writer who lives in Indianapolis.  I actually lost a chance to meet him when I was a senior in high school but I recently decided to pick up TFIOS again after letting it collect dust on my book shelf.

Through the experiences that have been had in the past couple of months combined with two good nights of sobbing over a fictional story, I decided that death is a very sad thing.  We don't know what death feels like; is it painful, is it peaceful?  Does the breath just leave you and you fall into oblivion?  Does it look easy on the outside, and your brain screams on the inside?

I'm not asking because I have a suicidal wish but because people these days say a multitude of things that have nothing to do with death but involve some form of it.  When I neglect to tell my friend something he wants to know, his response is "you're killing me."  When you are preparing for a final in that difficult inorganic chemistry class, "this class will be the death of me, I know it."

I know most people through around the words death, dying and being killed like its simple, colloquial even and means nothing in everyday speech.  But, I'm not killing my friend by not telling him things.  And inorganic chemistry, while a pain, isn't going to lead you to your death bed before you finish the final and actually pass the class.

Why does this matter, Ame?  For about three or so weeks, I have been trying to eliminate those words from my vocabulary unless they are in the proper context.  Why am I doing this?  Because death is a sad event.  It comes to us eventually whether by old age, sickness or more violent means.  But unless someone is murdering you, they aren't killing you and if inorganic chemistry is not a deadly virus, it is also not going to kill you.

These are just my thoughts, trying to change the way people say things.