A little bitterness, a little faith.
Sunday, 01.11.2015 - 10:25 pm.

I think we're done with doctorate program applications. We only submitted three, which are already hard to follow through on the letter of recommendation department. We had two more universities to apply to, but we found out they require official transcripts to be sent to their offices (we have a specific list of universities to which we can apply, per the scholarship we're pursuing. Otherwise we'd have tried others).

There's no time to mail the transcripts since the deadline is this week, and also, I'm not in the country where I got my bachelor's degree. It'd take me forever to ask someone from my family to get the transcripts in Central America, mail them to me in South America and then mail them to North America. I could skip one step of those three and still wouldn't make it on time. So what the hell.

We are done. Mostly because Andrew and I are sick and tired of filling out forms and writing statements and chasing recommenders and getting official translations and maxing out my credit card with fees of all kinds for the two of us (I took it upon me since Andrew is dealing with all the expenses of his brother's death). The expenses of just three applications are ridiculous, and most likely they will be for nothing.

See, programs are "very competitive". We may not be nearly as good as many other applicants, no matter many publications we have. Our GRE scores were below expected and we're not native english speakers. We poured our heart and soul on the personal statements but what makes a compelling case may vary from one person (me) to another (faculty).

So I'm very bitter. I get the strong feeling we're not getting accepted in either of the three. And perhaps as we get our rejections letters in the next few months (if we get any notification at all), I will regret this. I will regret giving up, not giving this process more time and attention, and not trying with one or two more options, not submitting one or two more applications. But I'm so tired right now and I can't afford it anymore.

I'm only talking about US universities. We still have the UK ones. That was Andrew's priority for a long time, and for a while I entertained the idea of making it my priority too. I actually would like to go there, it'd be getting to know a whole new world. BUT: it's so far away. From my family, I mean. Living in the same continent, I still get the chance to see them once a year. Living there may take that away from me. It's a long trip, more so, a very expensive trip.

I think I even dreamed of that last night, I made a decision not to fly to my home country anymore, even though I had the plane ticket. It was heartbreaking and yet it felt like the right thing to do. Oh, and I hate flying. Just the thought of flying over an ocean for 12 hours terrifies me to no end.

Perhaps I could live with that though. Not the flying, I mean, perhaps I could deal with the heartbreak. We're not ditching the UK options just yet. I know it's been Andrew's dream to go study there. He turned it down a little because of me and the reasons above, and because the US programs actually seem very cool. But it seems it'd be easier to get accepted in a UK doctorate program than in a US one.

And one last problem: what if only one of us gets accepted? what if we get accepted at different universities? I don't know about the second option. About the first one, Andrew says we go anyway (that is, if not only we are accepted but also are awarded the scholarship. We need the acceptance letter to apply for the scholarship). I say we stay because it's the two of us or neither but I don't know. I don't know.

I do want this so bad, for him, for myself. I'm bitter, bracing for the bad news and trying to digest the idea that we'll live at least another year and a half just like we're living now; which isn't bad at all but also it isn't moving forward. We can't get a bigger place, we can't think of having a dog, or a child, we can't even buy books or other things because there's always that idea of "oh, we'll be leaving eventually" and it's best not to accumulate stuff that we'll leave behind anyway.

I'm bracing for the bad news yet crossing my fingers for good news. Cross your fingers for us, please.

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