The Jersey-Whoops, Graduate School Blues

I’m going to admit something. I almost wrote a blog about The Jersey Shore. Alas, having just pressed the submit button and released my graduate-school applications into the stratosphere, I feel I must commemorate this moment somehow (I still love you Ronnie!- The Indiscretion [courtesy of the Jersey Shore nickname generator]). I want to talk about the application process a little bit, which is one part fear, six parts frustration, five parts procrastination sprinkled with willpower and ingenuity, and entirely fueled by sheer stupefaction about what is really expected of you.

You begin by looking at the criteria. GRE requirements, GPA ranges, program goals, and you try to place yourself somewhere on the spectrum between caveman IQ and Einstein. The truth is you really don’t know. It’s the ultimate abyss. Can I get into this school? So you slave (presumably) over GRE (MCAT, GMAT, etc.) study guides, or obsessively, yet sporadically, study for weeks at a time, only to abandon your books for the following month before your next study binge (like me). And you go in to take the Graduate Record Examination, at least that’s what the computer tells you you’re going to take, since everything in your brain has suddenly turned to mush and two plus two is two more than you can even fathom at the moment. Three nightmarish hours later, you click a few more tabs to indicate you have finished the test, and get an immediate math and English score break down. There you go, Einstein. Time to move on to worse things (as if you had imagined there were any).

You start the application with the menial stuff first, because, you know, it feels like you’re gettin’ stuff done. Your name, your address, your resume, etc. Good job! It’s all filled out. But then you reach the personal statement. And the recommendations. Time to reconnect with those pleasant professors. Really though. I got lucky. I had some favorites who obligingly agreed to write fantastic things about me that may or may not be true (I theorize that all professors are forced to exaggerate in recommendations to make us sound like super-students, in order to distinguish between other professor-proclaimed super-students). But then you tell them the deadline. And you send them reminders. And misleadingly cloying emails filled with gratitude, with the underlying message that they should SERIOUSLY turn them in NOW. Like right now!

Let’s not forget about the most important self-summary you’ll ever have to write. No pressure at all. Just be yourself. What that really means I couldn’t tell you. Like I said, total abyss. You (or I) work on this confounding two-pager for three months. And then you (or I) assume that whatever you wrote must, MUST!, answer the question at hand, which just so happens to be the vaguest query you have ever had the pleasure of meeting. And then you send it all off with a kiss (á la Legally Blonde) and a $70 charge on your credit card statement—per kiss, that is. Voilà! (And good luck to me.)

-Elina is a blogger for The Daily Vine. Check out her bio to see where her view comes from.