The Worm Turns

Today I dropped the supplemental materials for my application to UIC into the mail, and I nearly had a panic attack in the post office. This application required a sample of academic writing, and a sample of fiction. While waiting in line with all of the people shipping Christmas gifts to the four corners of the Earth my stomach seized and I could hardly catch my breath. I suddenly became aware that I was pinning the hopes for my future on mediocrity. I've never even had the confidence to seriously try to have anything published and here I was submitting a patchwork paper and some shreds of short stories to be compared with the work of some of the brightest minds in the country. But, I turned up the volume on my iPod and went through with it. Nearly forty pages work are floating through the postal system and will land in a heap on someone's desk in a few days. And I will have to wait nearly ten weeks for an answer.

The panic attack was set off this morning when I printed up the required checklist that is supposed to accompany the writing samples. On the checklist, they ask for a list of all of my awards and distinctions. To be honest, I have so few, the list was quite short. I may have been on the dean's list as an undergrad. But, I've never published anything. I've won a couple of service awards, but they aren't really anything special. My GRE scores and my GPA are respectable, but not awe-inspiring. And the work I sent them was solid, but not great.

Yesterday I sent my supplemental packet to the University of Chicago, and I felt better about that. By the end of the week I'll have completed the monster of them all, the packet for Northwestern. Then I'll be done.

Of course, none of this is helped by being unemployed. I'm waiting to hear on two jobs, and I'm meeting yet another recruiter tomorrow. The clock is ticking. Unemployment runs out at the end of the month and then I'm on my own. Later this week I'm going to set up appointments to register with temp agencies and then I'm going to hunker down and wait for the decisions.

Waiting has never been my best skill. I start imagining all of the worst possible scenarios and I can work myself up into an almost hysteria. It might be easier if I drank, but I don't. The only way I can get through this is to take it one day at a time and work through each issue as it presents itself.

But, it's night time, and I'm getting ready to go to bed, which always the worst time. I'll go to sleep, and in the morning I'll feel better. It's a new day and anything can happen.