As a senior in high school, I had my whole life planned out. From the credits I would take in each semester until graduation, to the grad schools I’d apply to, even, embarrassingly, a five-year plan for a relationship I am no longer in. Something I learned in these past three and a half years is that, while it is amazing to plan and know what you’re doing, things don’t always work out right. I changed my major Sophomore year, lost and gained friends and relationships, and the big kicker: COVID-19.
I paid for my GREs before the pandemic and made the mistake of not following up with grad schools to double check their requirements before the August cutoff date for GRE reimbursement. A lot of grad schools are no longer taking GRE scores in the English department due to the pandemic. I wasted $400 there that could have gone to the application fees looming in the distance.
Picking a grad school got even harder when I rekindled lost friendships with my old high school friends, as well as rekindling a romance, too. I was ready to apply to Texas, Georgie, Ohio, literally anywhere to leave behind my life in Jersey. But now, I don’t want to. I like being close to my friends and knowing that at any moment we could go to outdoor dining or go for a hike.
I narrowed my schools a it to be in the surrounding states, and lessened my far out-of-state choices to only two: Notre Dame and Rice. The rest are NYC schools, NJ, or Pennsylvania. While I can joke around and say it’s because of my friends, it really came down to money. I went on unemployment at the beginning of the pandemic and , from my last article, there isn’t really any demand for the service industry right now. I’m lucky to still be working shifts here and there with my old job at the Elks as well as having a consistent job with writing services. But, it really isn’t enough for me to survive on if I don’t get enough scholarship for the far away universities.
I’ve broke down many times just thinking about this. It’s funny seeing in retrospect how aware and confident I was with grad schools my freshman year of college. It was even a bit naïve to believe that everything would work out as I had planned. But, sometimes even the best plans are ones that happen spontaneously.
I have my letters of recommendations, I started half of my applications. It will just take that last leap when I ask myself “is this college’s decision worth the money and time?” I know I’m not the only one working toward grad applications during this time. I wish you all luck and always remember: you got this.