littleraincloud's diary

[Beany Boo]

Does the retired professor have a boss? One who can give them a nudge about their responsibilities to their former students who are screaming out just to start their careers?

[littleraincloud]

Not a boss, but a coordinator for her academic department. She was the one who gave me Prof Retired's personal email, didn't sound like they'd had any recent contact. Prof Retired has no responsibility to me seeing as she is retired after all and can do what she wants. This is all a stupid distraction so I can avoid working on my writing, the most important part of the app, something I haven't worked on in months by the way, la-di-da. This is all pathetic

[HowDidIGetHere]

AGH for fuck's sake I'm never going to find a third reference letter and I'm never going to get into one of these fucking programs and I'm going to die!!!

you've got me wondering now. I applied for graduate school after almost 20 years away from school and I honestly can't remember what I did about the recommendations. I don't know that I was able to get anything from a prior professor, so I think I went with a recommendation from a fellow student, my AA sponsor (though I didn't identify him that way), and some third person that I can't remember.

[Side note: I didn't get in, but someone explained that it was probably because the program I was applying to was brand new and they wanted more high-profile students for their first cohort. I also didn't die, even though I felt well and truly smacked down by the experience. So there's that.]

[littleraincloud]

HowDidIGetHere: Recommendation letters are some gatekeeping bullshit. They only accept academic references, i.e. better hope your undergrad professors still like/remember you. After 20 years, as in your case, I don't see how that would work. Because apparently grad students are only important if they're fresh off the presses from undergrad /sarcasm/. I'm sorry that your experience was so negative.

I could get a much more accurate recommendation from my boss, who knows the person that I am now and sees how hard I work, but apparently WORK work is different from academic work. Plebs like me might not understand.

[oak]

Graduate school admissions, IME, are a dog and pony show, wrapped in mischief, and overflowing with shenanigans.

I remember during GA weekend, the main professor saying to me: "Your reference is one of my favorite people in the world". A moment later he was chuckling about my non-stellar 2.69 undergrad GPA.

A girl I knew, smart and ambitious, didn't get into the program.

So far as I can tell, observing with my own two eyes, is that there are two important criteria to getting admitted:

1. Fill some demographic desire for the cohort. (The opposite may be desired next year.)

2. Be wanted as a GA/TA/RA. This can work wonders, and quickly.

What I'm getting at is that just because graduate school admissions is just a game, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be played well.

[littleraincloud]

It is so exhausting having spent 12 years of my life feeling like nothing I do makes me any happier. What's the fucking point.

[littleraincloud]

By procrastinating on work that I know needs to get done, I'm only making myself more anxious and unhappy........and yet........I keep doing it!! Why why why why why why why do i do this to myself

[brownblob]

That's the mystery of mental illness. We know what the logical thing to do is, but somehow we keep doing something else.

[littleraincloud]

Sometimes I think I'm just not interesting/pretty/good enough to be loved and that it's better for everyone that I'm single anyway. Good. I'll just hole myself up here in my room and never talk to anybody except my fucking racist dumbass mom who's given me bad advice every day of my life out of a projection of her own anxieties, and someday I will become her, a fucking idiot who thinks she's going to become a billionaire through tax cuts and who dates Confederate-flag-humping chicken farmers because they're nice to me for five minutes and apparently that's all it takes to get with me.

[hobojungle]

I'm sorry you're in pain littleraincloud & I enjoy your sense of humor.