oy vey!

We're almost a month into the semester already and it's all been a non-stop whirl wind so far. Somehow I anticipated senior year being all peace and quiet and finishing major requirements, but it's proven to be anything but. The major project on my plate at the moment is applying for the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships. I got into it very late - just before the semester started - and have been running like crazy to catch up and pull everything together in time for the October 5th and 3rd deadlines. So far that's meant tracking down 7 people to write letters of recommendation, meeting in person with most of them, and going back and forth between my own academic advisor, the Macaulay fellowship advisor, and the Hunter fellowship people. And then there's writing the personal statement, which so far has just entailed a lot of sitting starting hopelessly at my computer for long stretches of time.

On the bright side, attempting to do these applications has been very good for making me think about what I want to after graduation and in in the long term. I've found that many of the people I know are having a really hard time grappling with these decisions, and I think that the time pressure of having to get an application out in just over a month just made my own stress level about it skyrocket so quickly that I've now settled into acceptance of not knowing, and that's working much better. It's hard and it's frustrating because most scholarships, graduate programs and the like are looking for people who can say exactly where they plan to be in 10 years; few are looking for people who are just intelligent and hard working and will probably get somewhere eventually. I think the one main perk of being an undergraduate is being allowed the privilege to explore something just because it seems cool and you think you might like it, without having to write a thousand words about how and why you're going to dominate the field in a few short years. But I think that for the sake of my own mental health, and likely others' as well, acknowledging that I can't chart out my life in 1,000 words is a lot better than trying to pretend.

- Celine