More Application Troubles

 I've done everything I can do. I've paid all the application fees and turned in all my resumes and writing samples.... and two of my three letters of recommendation have been submitted. But half of my grad school applications close today, and one of my recommenders hasn't submitted hers. 

I've sent follow up emails and the like with success, her email is correct in the system. I don't think there is anything else I can do, she just has to do it. I don't know if applications have closed already of if they're due tonight. None of these websites clarify. I'm just sort of being eaten alive by it right now. I don't know if recommendation letters are on the same deadline that I'm on, either, so maybe I'm stressing out for nothing. Maybe she'll do it and everything will be fine. I don't know. I'm just frustrated. 

She's my strongest one, too. I've done my best work by far in her class. Not that my others are weak, but man.... If she wasn't going to do it I wish she would have told me so that I could find another professor to write one. 

I'll try and go to her office Monday. She doesn't check her emails on the weekend, so any attempt to reach out now wouldn't be seen until tomorrow anyway. 

The ones due today (last night...?) aren't my top choices anyway. If I get into at least one of my other options then it wouldn't matter at all. But what if I don't get into those and I've lost my other chances by no fault of my own? 

Frustrating! Not enjoyable! I want to go on a walk and get some coffee but it's below freezing and my amphibious ass can't stand it. 

Edit: I spoke to her today and she said "they don't care!" so I'm trusting her with it! She turned them in just now, so I guess I'll be fine. I would really appreciate if there was more clarification about when letters are due, as well as if she'd had said something about that previously. She was the professor who really helped me prepare for this process, and as far as I had been told, the deadlines were hard. But I guess there is wiggle room for recommenders. It makes sense. But boy did it stress me the hell out. 

Minotaur State of Mind

 I do have to wonder if I am a minotaur because of how often we are in a state of transition. Transition has always been very hard for me. As a child, transition meant I was leaving a place of comfort (my mother) and going to a place of stress (my father). When it comes to my sensory issues, a transition means going from one sensory experience to another, which may be unexpected or unpleasant. In school, which I have not yet left, it is always a transition from one grade to the next. I bounce between science and the arts, in both curriculum and career. There is a never ending application process, constantly looking for a new place to live and new roommates. And within myself, I am in constant transition between someone I want to be (queer, expressive, a bit strange) and someone I have to preform as (straight, a good sorority girl, keeping up appearances for my family.), or between a version of myself that I have crafted to keep me safe (the fictional gillman) and the version of myself that remains untouched (the wild jersey devil). My gender, my family history, other things that I won't dive into here....

Much of this is because I'm young. My childhood was unusual in that way, but adolescence and young adulthood is nothing but transition after transition... 

The Minotaur is about transition, about that state of being In-Between, unable to fully pull myself up onto one bank or the other. I think about being a gillman and a jersey devil, about how I struggle to draw lines as to where one ends and the other begins. There is such a distance between them, the things that they embody and experience, but they are just two points on my spiderweb. I remind myself that in being a Minotaur, I will likely never be able to draw clear lines within myself. 

I'm sure adulthood will sort itself out and I will become more sure of things. I'm sure that my reasons for being a Minotaur will eventually fade into the background and become just a small pebble on the mountain of identity-formation. But right now the yolk is heavy, and I haven't gone to the gym in a few months. 

All of this being said, I don't think being secure in things would make me happy. Knowing things such as housing or grad school results would ease me, of course, but within my identity? I don't think I could ever wish my complexity away. I think wishing and washing and tumbling along is apart of it. I think that being still or stationary or sure in anything takes away a bit of the allure. I am in a bath of ice water, and it is good for me, and I just need to dunk my head in and relish in it. I am generally good at relishing in things, so long as I remember to try. I think about one of my favorite songs. 

Slouching towards the sky's extent

From the edges of a waste

With something darker than a hope

Something brighter, still in fate

In the saddle of my tauntaun

Is a sapphire studded ring

And I keep it to remind me

Who I am and what I'll be

 

When true simplicity is gained

How much then is lost?

I invested in them feelings

I paid dearly for them thoughts