The Anticlimactic Application Process

After a series of minor adventures (and some grumbling disagreement with Robert over aspects of a need-based aid form, in which I capitulated from realizing my boredom with the whole thing was probably making me dumb), this evening I submitted 3 of the 7 online applications. 3 of the others I am either waiting on emails to be answered by university staff members or need an online recommendation finished. The 7th one I am not going to submit for a couple of months, since it's my back-up school.

I started getting the various supplemental documentation that has to be mailed in to the schools together, but kept running into stupid problems (screwy jump drives, pens running out of ink, printer cartridges running out of ink, photocopies I need to make) and gave up on it for the weekend just now. Tomorrow I have already dedicated to other projects (my weekly major tread, differential equations, housework), so I will get back on this stuff Monday or Tuesday. I still have a lot of time, objectively speaking, but just want to be done.

Have I mentioned that I am on Day 6 of a tension headache that has me walking around feeling like I've been hit on the back of the head with a club? Fortunately, the intensity is varying from minor to nausea-inducing with an average around painful enough to feel pouty and grumpy and generally pissed that I can't take any headache medication that would do any good but still mostly functional.

This entire grad school application process is feeling ultimately unsatisfying. I had thought that finishing things up would make me feel relieved and happy, but mostly, it's like "I have been working on it for an eon and all I have to show for it is this?" Every little aspect of the process has been ungodly time-consuming and the final product seems unimpressive. I am hoping that this is because I am, by this point, so utterly familiar with my CV, statements of purpose, assistantship essays, GRE scores, coursework record, publications, selection of programs that have an excellent research match, etc., that I can no longer see that I have assembled an awesome package of credentials that will make the adcoms say "Daaaaamn."

Hmmm....working on a long, tedious academic project with a thousand little bureaucratic requirements that in the end, you have difficulty bringing yourself to care about anymore, even to celebrate its completion - this does sound like good preparation for graduate school. Doesn't every grad student feel this way about their thesis / dissertation?

Perhaps I will start feeling more excited about this whole thing after: (1) my headache recedes, (2) there is no longer part of my brain sending out excitement-dampening waves due to the need to retain exceedingly boring information about mass-spring systems and series circuits, (3) I have all these applications truly, totally completed, and (4) Ed McMahon's minion shows up at the door with the (Relatively) Big Check.

At least I am not like some people posting on the LiveJournal grad application forum who are freaking out over the fact that they have Dec 1 deadlines but don't have their statement of purpose, letters of recommendation, writing sample, etc., ready to go yet. I definitely prefer dull and bored to vibrating-into-other-dimensions from anxiety and fear.

I will wait for the anxiety to kick in as I wait to hear from the programs.