Dot Dot Dot

Damn it!  I thought I had more time!  There was so much I wanted to do, or more accurately, not do.  So many Internet videos I wanted to watch, video games I wanted to beat, walls with wet paint I wanted to watch dry!  I just thought there was more time!

But time is fleeting and my beautiful ignorant bliss free from decision-making has officially expired—those bastards!

This Tuesday I receieved my first response from a grad school; I’m waitlisted by the University of Minnesota.  Hurrah!

I'm the AC Slater to Minnesota's Kelly Kapowski

I was all set to explain what wait-listing is, to detail how it essentially means that I’m a back-up date to the school who is completely at the mercy of the fabled “accepted” to determine my fate there.  I was all ready to admit that even though Minnesota also wait-listed me last year, I had a pretty good feeling about it this time, which I still do, but all of that takes a backseat now.

Drumroll please.

This Friday I got an e-mail from the University of Missouri (Mizzou) saying that I had receieved a full acceptance into their M.A. program.  That means full tuition coverage, a teaching assistantship, and the possibility of qualifying for an additional monetary award on top of all that.

Whoosh!  Whoosh! Crack!  Boom!  Sparkle!  And the fireworks explode into the night air, and it’s so beautiful, so beautiful.  Ooh, aww...

This is my frist acceptance from a grad school in two years of applying to them—I’m writing it now and I’m still not sure if I believe myself.  It’s an M.A. (Master of Arts) degree in English with a focus in Creative Writing as opposed to an M.F.A. (Master of Fine Arts) degree in Creative Writing.  The biggest difference between the two is that an M.F.A. is a terminal degree where as the M.A. can/ is expected to follow up with a PhD because it applies a broader examination of English.  Mizzou’s the only M.A. program I applied to.

There are a couple of reasons that Mizzou’s M.A. cracked my list of M.F.A.s; for one an M.A. in English, and possibly a PhD gives me some more versatility and appeal as professorial job candidate afterwards; location was a factor; and again there’s that whole full ride schtick—that’s pretty nice too.  Every place I’ve applied to carries the same full-ride and assistantship with its acceptance, but Mizzou’s the only caller who’s come a’court’n so far.  

So I’m pretty stoked about getting into grad school—hey, remember the fireworks?—but I feel like I’m not as excited as some others are for me.  I know it’s practically all I’ve talked about over the past year, I’ve even dedicated an entire cough, cough totally awesome blog to it that everyone should tell their friends about cough, cough, but this moment is more emotionally complex to me than just fireworks.  Oscar Wilde once said that there are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it.  There are a lot of bittersweet components to getting what you want and without going into them here and now, I’ll just say that I haven’t made any decisions yet, about anything.  It’s just nice to have options on the table now.

I’m going to an Open House for the program in Columbia, MO in March where I’ll learn a lot more about the program and how it fits in with my needs.  Between then and now hopefully I receive some more acceptances, but even if I don’t, it won’t eliminate the need to make a decision that lies ahead of me.  I'll continue to blog, if only for my own sanity, so don't worry, or continue to worry depending on what you were doing beforehand.

Thanks for all of the support and well wishes from everyone!  They mean a lot.