Би стресстэй байна

Day Five Hundred & Twenty-six
Sunday, November 13th 2011

Би стресстэй байна. The GRE is in six, count them, six days. I'm more stressed every day. A few things brighten my spirits. The first of which is that Lauren came to the Gobi from Selenge to visit, & she & Ben were in my village for a few days. Unfortunately I have to study, & I wasn't the most entertaining hostess. But Lauren did point out that the version of the GRE that is currently out is the revised version. Thus, according to Lauren, when universities state that the minimum requirement (oh, let's just say, for a graduate assistantship at ISU) is a combined verbal & quantitative score of 1,000, well, since the test is new, it doesn't necessarily compare to the previously determined minimum requirements. However, I also qualify for said assistantship because I had over a 3.0 GPA for the last 60 hours of my undergraduate work regardless.

My Mom & Dad have been asking if I have applied to ISU yet. Every time I am faced with this question (or errant statements about me, presumably, already in the throes of the process), I cock my head to the side much like a confused dog & think to myself “No?” I thought that perhaps focusing my attentions on the GRE for the next T-minus five days, fourteen hours, & fifty some-odd minutes would be most appropriate. But, you see, the little responsible devil on my shoulder said “Momentarily eschew the GRE! Apply!” & the little angel replied “But no, you should study right now...” “No! I'll make you worry so that you lose sleep if you don't start the application process!” “That's a good point,” the angel replied “& in that case, you should apply.”

So I started the application process. So stressed am I that when I came to the point in the application description where it instructs prospective graduate students to acquire three letters or recommendation via a handy dandy form, I nearly spat my tea on the computer upon realizing I am theoretically supposed to print the form out, fill in my personal information, sign & date it, & then, oh, casually give it to three or so recommendation writers. No, no printers here. Funny, that. Funnier that it would take roughly, well, a month or so minimum for any such piece of paper to reach its destination in the United States. Good thing I started the application (thank you, little shoulder devil), because if I didn't notice this hitch now, I would not have already formulated the plan to go to the Peace Corps office in a few days, print off the form, fill it out, sign & date it, scan it into the computer, email it to myself, & then later send out the (completed!) form to prospective recommendation writers all proper-like.

Now that reality is staring me straight on, I'm realizing how much I want this. I can see myself at ISU again, I can see myself being a graduate assistant. I even started looking at university housing. When I originally attended ISU, I lived in the university housing at Cardinal Court. It was a quiet place, filled with a lot of graduate students, & I never really had a complaint about noise. Unfortunately, Cardinal Court has since been thoroughly dismantled, reassembled, & when it opens in autumn of 2012, it will offer only two, three, & four-person apartments. No thank you. I'm looking at Shelbourne, I suppose, since it's the other apartment complex that ISU owns. It would be nice if I could live in a place like that, because when I graduated in the winter of 2009, I was able to get out of my lease early without having to sublease for the remainder of the school year.

Things will be extensively groovy if, when, I get my acceptance to ISU & I can rest assured that I will be in a good place, continuing my research (which is incredibly important to me), & I can look forward to moving my life in a positive direction with Cago in tow.

Yes, this guy.