My friends are dragging me...

Ok, they aren't really dragging me per se, I just promised them I'd go.

When I make a promise, I try to go through with it unless extenuating circumstances do not allow me to. But I'm sure you knew that ;).

So, I'm going to a retreat that my school has every semester. I don't know when I was supposed to turn in my forms for it, they are almost always looking for people to go to this retreat and are almost never full of people. It costs $40 to go, but you can get a half scholarship if you want, you just have to interview for it. We're supposed to leave at 3:30pm-ish. So I'm nervous. I don't have a sleeping bag or anything to take with me if I wanted to go. We'll be getting back around 1pm on Sunday.

There's a part of me that really wants to go, there's also a larger part of me that doesn't want to go so I can get some work done. But I promised I would go.

I went over to my friends room like I normally do just about every weeknight when I get out of work at 8pm. This time they were working on stuff for the retreat. They kicked me out. Man did I feel abandoned.

I ordered a medium thin crust pepperoni pizza from dominoes (because the pizza hut right next to the school isn't delivering, the deliver guys' vehicle broke down. The fact that I order enough for them to have told me that is really sad...). I ate it by myself while I chatted online with some friends before I talked on the phone with my fiance about my fiasco with getting the supplies for my upcoming ebay business (long story, more on that later).

I started going to counseling to talk out some of the issues I thought I had with stress and what not. Everyone gets stressed out about applying to graduate schools (or at least those people who do not really think they are God's gift to graduate programs) and I've got a lot going on with the wedding. I've got a lot on my plate and I really overdid it with 17 hours of classes, including research and an independent study topology class (which is going ok, but could be going better).

But we've talked about much more than my apprehension about applications. I have issues, lots of them. But who doesn't? I recently went to a session about personal statements and what aspects you want to highlight in them. The speaker consistently said, "you won't be the first one" to have XYZ quality. "Look at what you are going into, academics are weird." Weird is good, because that means there is no standard way that people think/act/look. I know I won't look like everyone else, or think like everyone else, or work the same as everyone else; but why did I seem more nervous/apprehensive than everyone else I know?

Even if they are nervous about their own situation, everyone thinks I'm a shoe-in for graduate school. I just don't see it that way. One of the things we have talked about in my counseling sessions is that I am overtly critical of myself. This is true, I know it. But how do I overcome something like that? I always feel like I should be reading some math text, learning about new theorems, crunching out numbers using Maple or MathCAD. There are many overachievers in mathematics, but most of them have spent time on math and not necessarily outside crap that could be taken care of by someone else.

Sometimes I feel like I wasted too much time during my undergraduate career. Like maybe I'd be much smarter if I had paid more attention during my classes or I had put things down and didn't become involved. A larger part of me wants to see change and that part of me took over one too many times in the course of my undergraduate career. I think.

Or is this me being overcritical of myself? In high school students get involved thinking that extra-curriculuar activities are important and that colleges want to see students who are well-rounded and are not just bookworms. It helps to be a bookworm somewhat because a high GPA certainly didn't hurt anyone. What if graduate school, despite most schools saying they look at the "entire package", is really just about GPA and GRE scores. What if I became disillusioned by the idea that I could do activities and it would add to my application when now it won't even be looked at because my GPA isn't a 3.5???

I could be totally over-analyzing this and should just send out my applications and forget about this, or at least put it to the side for now, and not worry until I know they are going through the applications.

Cross your fingers that I get in to at least 2 schools (yes, I'll be applying to more than 2 schools, probably from 6-10 schools). Who knows, I could be exactly what a committee wants and I don't even know it. The likeliness of that happening, I think, is slim. But I am a hard-worker (isn't everybody) and very involved in what I do. I also love the subject area and know this is what I want to do and where I want to go with my life. I'm very directed and completely certain about very few things, math is one of them. Let's hope that gets through in my personal statement.

- Vanes.