with clarity comes a new purpose

I officially got my final letter of rejection from graduate schools for the 2009-2010 school year.  while i haven’t been blogging excitedly about this crusade against jess in the academic community, i am surprisingly at peace with their decisions.  Minnesota admitted 20 of 225+, Boston admitted probably around 15 of 215-or-so and as far as I can tell most of their admitteds in my position were deferred to Master’s only programs which they don’t get any money for, Iowa admitted less than 10 out of 100+.  So out of 500+ applicants applying for less-than-45 positions, I managed not to make the cut.  That kind of sucks.  I think a jess of years past would greet this kind of failure with some sort of sorrow or sadness.  So far, I’ve cried twice.  Only once if drunken crying doesn’t count and for me these days, I’m not positive that it should.  My first tears were shed upon finding out that I wasn’t in at Minnesota.  My second tears were shed over spring break when I was reminded by that cruel voice in the back of my head about the time that Joe said I was too fickle to follow.  I guess Joe was right, in his own way.  I think I said something like “I’m not too fickle to follow, I’m just a failure.”  That’s melodramatic and not even true.  The truth is, that universities are too fickle to pin your hopes on.  And here’s the thing, I expressed to Dudley that I wished I would have applied to less-good programs so that I could get an acceptance letter like my friends are, but the deal is… the graduate market is indicative of the job market and I’d much rather go through this now when it’s going to turn into a probably good story for my children in the future about the time i applied to three  schools and didn’t get into any so I changed my career path.  The moral of the story will be one of humility, resilience and why it’s okay to fail.  And it is.

A little-known story from the night that Kyle proposed is that sometime after we got to the concert I was standing there with arms around me feeling heavy-hearted.  I said a quiet, tiny prayer that God show me what His will it was not for me to go to grad school.  Soon after, Kyle was on one knee asking me to be his wife.  Since that moment, so many things have been just falling into place that it’s hard to look at this new year off that I’ll be taking as anything but a good chance to take a step back and look at how I want to spend the rest of my life.  Maybe this is a sign that I should be going down a different path.  And so far, this new fork in my road looks pretty good.  For example, I have been offered and accepted a site administer position for a new website we’re doing at work.  It’s pretty baller.  I get to be the site administrator which is an awesome resume line, but further I get to sort of just add things to the site that I think fit.  Which is pretty neat responsibility.  Better? I’m getting a raise now.  The really awesome thing?  This job will translate into a freelance position that will pay some spending money and a good portion of the rent each month whenever Kyle and I move where we do.  More wonderful things are happening in my life, I’m just so excited to have a year to spend with my new husband, getting used to what it means to be married, before we dive into law and graduate school.

• Category: Journal
• Tag: Kyle, Texas Tech