The Only Constant: Admissions! / Microscopy Woes

Unlike on Facebook, I won't feel guilty of boasting if I post this stuff here. Well, I guess it is technically boasting, too, but so few people read this blog -- and they do it voluntarily, I think -- that I think of it as just sharing the exciting things in my life like any other time I write on here.

Okay, so I just wrote some stuff about where I've been accepted to, but suddenly the slim possibility of people related to these schools somehow reaching my blog and reading my frank thoughts about each school dawned upon me, and I shouldn't risk that. Darn!

Well, I'll say I am going to grad school next fall and leave it at that! Okay, and that I am visiting Minnesota in March. Very thankful for this.

I think it's also safe to say that, while I haven't been accepted to Oregon State, I have high hopes that I will be.

I am learning that grad school applications didn't end when I sent in all my stuff and money. Most schools are on tight budgets, and they are very careful about whom they decide to offer admission to. I have had lengthy phone calls and many email exchanges with prospective advisors at two schools since they reviewed my file, and neither have a definite answer for me yet. Those interactions were just as important and nerve-wracking as the actual applications. One has sent me a paper and former students' contacts. I am excited to read the paper and hear the deal-io about working with him, but it's like... "Man, I thought I was done with this!" "Let me do some homework now!"... kind of, haha. Ah, rarely is life so simple.

Yes, it is much better to be not done and potentially be in a have-to-make-decisions position than have five rejection letters (or emails -- I feel like nobody mails things anymore) in my hand and be done that way. I do feel very fortunate, and I would be excited to go to any school I applied to. Some more than others, of course.

Overall this is a very exciting (word of the day, y'all) time for me, and I really don't know whom to thank other than a supreme being who is in control of all that happens. Thank you God, for giving me a direction for my path, paving that path, and giving me a light so I can walk on it. Happily.

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I did not anticipate economic geology to take such a toll on my body. Economic geology is also known as "ore deposits class." We look at polished slivers of rocks from all kinds of mines under a ginormous microscope that I can barely lift out of the cabinet. For a three-hour lab period. Except I came in an hour early and made it four hours today. And I came in Sunday night and spent three hours... examining three rock samples!

First, the eyes. The different light switches in the microscope keep making me blind myself accidentally. A rock microscope has a circular stage you rotate, which means you are constantly staring down into something either way too bright or too dim -- depending on your polarizer setting -- that is spinning. So, after blinding myself four times with sudden floods of light and watching spinning crystals intently for hours, the words in my textbook looked hazy for a few moments. Second, I am convinced this terrible crick in my neck is from craning it to look into this really tall microscope... despite that I had been sitting on a 980-page book on my chair. Also I've been sleep deprived, but that may or may not be because of this class. I love geology, I promise... just not microscopes...