I need to kick it up a notch.

Here's to hoping that I knock the socks off some admissions committee. :]

Weird things I like to do:
~ map out the route that UPS takes to get my packages to me (based on arrival/departure scans) and try to guess how many days it will take for my package to arrive
~ play package delivery race with my boyfriend and bet on whose package will arrive first (obviously mine because i'm pseudo friends with our mailman "Norman")

I think I like getting packages and tracking their progress to my doorstep more than just buying a gift at a store. The anticipation makes it super exciting when the self-present actually comes. I'd like to think that the guys who drive the huge trucks filled with packages across the country feel a little bit like Santa Claus.

Sometimes people make predictions about your life that they think are nice normal comments like "Oh I'm sure you'll get into this program" or "When you guys get married/have kids/whatever...". And it makes me really really nervous because I feel like they're inadvertently jinxing my life with their happy thoughts.

I think a big part of it has to do with expectation. I'm scared of expecting good things to happen because I always feel like such an idiot when they don't. When asked about things that are actually really important to me, I try to act noncommittal and indifferent. I hate making big declarations that might not come true so I always tell people that I'm sure the worst will happen instead because I'd rather be surprised than disappointed. Maybe I lack confidence. Maybe I lack faith. Maybe I'm just an incorrigible pessimist.

But that's not true at all. The truth is I hope. I hope all the time and for too many things. I try desperately not to be the girl who lets everyone know that all her eggs are secretly in one basket and she doesn't have a back-up plan. But it doesn't matter. Because even if no one else realises it, all the pretty daydreams that I have about the future linger in my sleep at night and refuse to be dismissed. I'm that ridiculous girl who hopes and dreams and wishes for the silly things she can't say out loud.

So please be careful what you predict or promise or act like is a given. Because once you get me thinking that way, its going to be so much harder to accept disappointment.

I am terrified of my graduate school applications.

My entire college career has been geared towards this moment. I remember planning all the classes I would take at orientation with graduate school in mind. I took the entire introductory 10 series with students one or two years older than me. I joined and now (co-)head the undergraduate research journal and the English honor society. I started research and presented at my first academic conference my second year. I applied for grants, submitted papers to national publications, and took the GREs. I worked on my senior thesis this summer and this quarter I got started on Latin, my third foreign language, so that I can learn to do my own translations of texts. I planned for this moment from the very beginning and to a level completely beyond the nonchalant way I approached college apps.

But now that I stand on the precipice, ready to take the plunge, I feel doubtful, afraid.

Everyone I know who is applying is a year older or is taking a gap year to apply. They seem so mature and confident and I feel so young and inexperienced. Leaving college means being an adult and fending for yourself. I won't have any financial support from my parents and I shouldn't expect to. This time next year, I could be all alone in a strange city, paying bills and doing taxes, slaving over 20-pg papers and leading discussion section for students my own age.

I try to convince myself that I'm ready, that life forces us to grow up. But whenever I think about my future lately, I get that anxious feeling in my chest that I get right before a big speech or when something scary is about to happen in a movie. I've been planning for this all along, but now that it's here, I feel like everything is going way too fast and all I want to do is slow down.

I made a decision early on to graduate college in three years. And now that I'm in my senior year, I am seriously freaking out like no other.

I'm afraid of having an insufficient writing sample or not being able to find a good third letter of recommendation. I'm afraid of not getting in anywhere, of being seen as young or green or naive or stupid. I'm afraid of not being able to pull off a long distance relationship; I'm afraid of being one of those TAs that everyone hates or being admitted into a program where everyone quotes Lacan like its Harry Potter and is infinitely smarter than me.

It's Judgment Day. Which side will the scales fall?

"But then if you're so smart, tell me
why are you still so afraid?"