Waiting -- An Addendum

Getting back on the writing wagon is harder than I had anticipated. For one thing, it's something that I haven't done in over a month, maybe two. Starting cold, especially after a significant delay is the hardest part of writing. For me, it feels so awkward, so unlike learning how to ride a bike again. There's nothing comfortable about the process; I'll spend an hour here, an hour there listlessly typing a few sentences, then deleting them, then typing a few more. Needless to say, I'm horribly jealous of those who can block all the distractions out, and start and stop at will.

Worse, getting back into the writing habit is infinitely harder, at least for me, with this whole "waiting to hear back from schools" business. And I can only imagine that it'll get harder the close we get to February. Imagine: You know exactly when and by what method each of your top five schools will let their applicants know who has been accepted. You've circled the days on your calendar in a big fat red marker and you're just counting down until that fateful morning when you wake up, receive the call, and run outside in your underwear with joy. But wait. What happens when those days, weeks, passes and no word? Then what?

Not every school will accept you. There's bound to be some rejections -- in fact, it'd be a safe bet to say that the majority of schools you apply to will reject you. That's why we apply to so many. So what happens when February 7th passes by and you hear nothing but crickets? It seems to me like some sort of horrible punishment, an awful torture to subject yourself to. The thing is, these dates are not hard and fast -- in fact, they're anything but. They may give or take a week from year to year. Some students may get the call earlier because they were the ones that the faculty could come to the quickest consensus on. Other students, much later. Some schools roll out their admissions -- a call to three students today, a call to the other three next week. There's the waitlisted folks. A hundred reasons why you may not hear from your beloved school on February 7th, but for all intents and purposes, it'll feel like a bald-faced rejection if you don't get that call. So you wait. And you wait some more. And you still hear nothing. It's the waiting that's excruciating, because even though you know that there's a hundred reasons why one person hears back one day and one another day, the longer you go without hearing, the more and more the odds are falling against your favor. Yet, until that rejection letter comes in the mail, there'll always be that sliver of hope, which is undoubtedly the worst part because it'll make you vascillate between the greatest of joys and lowest of despairs.

Yet, does all this stop me from checking those dates and reading those blogs and visiting those forums? Hell no.