Yo dawg, I heard you like grad school…

It’s right around the time of year when a particular group of students gets extra antsy and touchy about school. Graduate school, that is. For the class of 2009 and the returning students, the next 4 weeks is the ultimate showdown: are we in?

To make matters worse, there is always that one friend with the perfect grades and the perfect references and the perfect research job with the perfect publication list. It is definitely a lousy feeling to learn that your best friend is getting all the first round draft pick while you are left in the “maybe” pile. But hey, as long as you get in, right?

So here’s the waiting game. The no-call-until-three-days-after-date game. This is a game that none of us was ready to play. Ever since the new year arrived, each and every one of us checks our e-mail, online application, and snail mail obsessively. Our hearts stop at the sign of a phone call from a restricted or unknown number. Every “I got into grad school!” Facebook status and text messages from each other pulls on our heartstrings. A two-month window is too long for an emotionally vulnerable, high strung, exhausted student with sernioitis.

And what’s with the schools that don’t send out rejection letters? If we pay $150 for an application (app, transcript, letters, scores, etc.), the least you can do is to send us an official piece of paper to tell us that we should have tried harder in physical organic chemistry.

Now that I have received my first admission offer, I can finally take a breath and joke about it. I will never forget where exactly I was and how relieved I felt. I had just gotten back to work from an extended lunch break with my post-doc mentor. When I casually (and compulsively) checked my e-mail out of the corner of my eye, there it was: a precious little e-mail. I couldn’t read through the 3rd line when my eyes started watering up.

My mentor came to my cubicle since I had called him. I pointed at the letter, speechless. When he realized what had happened, he gave me the only thing I desperately needed: a big hug. There I was, crying my eyes out in the middle of a corporate office inside a national lab. I left work that day with a new sense of certainty that I haven’t felt for months and months. I am going to grad school, and nothing is going to stop that.

Cheers, congrulations, and hang in there,

Noel

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