"...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead"
I've been really lazy with my good news. And now the news doesn't seem so exciting, that's why it's taken me a month and two weeks to write about it. This will not be a glorious post with interesting stories, I'm just documenting it.
I got accepted into Minnesota (exciting now because Ceri got accepted there too). I'm in a group of nine "early admits" that will hopefully be in front of the funding line. So far, the only perk to being in this group was a trip to the school to meet the faculty and professionals in the area. After meeting the eight other early admits, I had the feeling that I was mistakenly cast as an over-achiever. I don't know how the nine were picked, but I'm assuming I was selected based on my age alone, not on my scholastic merit. And as the weekend progressed, I kept waiting for the dean of the college, the assistant dean, the chair, or the graduate advisor to pull me aside and kindly explain that they had made a mistake with me. Maybe it was an e mail sent in error that had caused me to end up in this group of over-achievers, maybe there was another Ellen they meant to accpet. But they never did pull me aside to send me home, they only shook my hand and kept saying how glad they were that I was there.
What was I left to do? Should I have told them they had made a mistake with me? Explain, that they may have misread my GRE scores or GPA totals? Didn't they see the nose dive my grades took toward the end of my college career? Instead, I chose to act like the architect I was trained to be and faked my way through the professional conversations, nodding my head in agreement, and asking questions. I didn't act like the Ellen I've grown to know and love, the one that makes a fool of herself in important situations, the one that is usually out to sabotage her career before it even starts. She, oddly, didn't make an appearance and now I'm left with nothing to write about.
I got accepted into Minnesota (exciting now because Ceri got accepted there too). I'm in a group of nine "early admits" that will hopefully be in front of the funding line. So far, the only perk to being in this group was a trip to the school to meet the faculty and professionals in the area. After meeting the eight other early admits, I had the feeling that I was mistakenly cast as an over-achiever. I don't know how the nine were picked, but I'm assuming I was selected based on my age alone, not on my scholastic merit. And as the weekend progressed, I kept waiting for the dean of the college, the assistant dean, the chair, or the graduate advisor to pull me aside and kindly explain that they had made a mistake with me. Maybe it was an e mail sent in error that had caused me to end up in this group of over-achievers, maybe there was another Ellen they meant to accpet. But they never did pull me aside to send me home, they only shook my hand and kept saying how glad they were that I was there.
What was I left to do? Should I have told them they had made a mistake with me? Explain, that they may have misread my GRE scores or GPA totals? Didn't they see the nose dive my grades took toward the end of my college career? Instead, I chose to act like the architect I was trained to be and faked my way through the professional conversations, nodding my head in agreement, and asking questions. I didn't act like the Ellen I've grown to know and love, the one that makes a fool of herself in important situations, the one that is usually out to sabotage her career before it even starts. She, oddly, didn't make an appearance and now I'm left with nothing to write about.
posted by Ellen at 1:34 PM
4 Comments:
My parents are all proud of me for getting into schools, but I'm terrified of myself for reasons similar to those you mentioned--almost like it's a fun little (expensive and labor intensive... but still) game to apply, but THEN once they actually start letting you in: yikes. Was there some mistake? What if I can't actually do this?
Still... congratulations...
congratulations!
I think we feel that way all the way through. Here I am, finished with classes, about to take my doctoral exams, and all I can think is "how did they let me get so far?!" And "when will they discover that I'm not really smart?!" The amazing thing to discover is that most (if not all) grad students feel exactly the same way. Like frauds that will soon be exposed.
It's so true. After studying speciation and taxonomy for a year I still feel like I only have a marginal grasp of what is going on. And I had no idea I would be studying speciation when I got here. A colleague of mine told me right before my proposal defense, "If you feel like you don't know what you are doing, you're probably exactly where you need to be." By the end of your degree you should have exponentially more questions than you started with. You might also have a deep desire to answer those questions which leads you to a PhD or another masters.
Basically, you can’t teach someone that already knows everything and in reality we are all ignorant or we wouldn’t be in school. Professors want someone that is excited and wants to learn. Another quote I heard the other day, "A masters degree is a certificate to learn."
Although, some professors are conceited and feel like they know everything, which they don’t, and you want to stay away from them.
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