OK, so I'm supposed to write a statement of intent for my graduate school application. I have been instructed by my academic advisor to finish it soon, and pass it on to him to review. I'm not feeling too terribly daunted by this task, but have been finding it difficult to motivate myself. Writing a statement of intent signifies that I have hope of being admitted, and I've been feeling rather hopeless lately.
I suppose this shadow of malaise began the day I took the GRE. My scores weren't bad, but they weren't fabulous, either. 650 verbal and 620 quantitative. I had hoped to achieve a score high enough to detract attention from my measly 2.75 GPA. So I spent the following several days under a cloud of uncertainty, waiting for the chance to ask my advisor what he thought. I'd already given him a heads up regarding my academic shortcomings, but he'd sent me a message telling me not to give up on grad school, that we would meet and come up with "strategies" for getting in. So at least there was hope, or so I thought.
Finally the day came to meet. I handed him my "DARS" report. Of course, the first thing he did was look up my GPA, and visibly gasped at the low number. "You have a very low GPA. [No shit, sherlock. We've already discussed this. Maybe next time you could review the e-mails we've been exchanging before we meet.] I'll tell you right now that you are not getting into the agroecology program. They typically admit students whose GPAs are around 3.5."
I could feel the lump forming in my throat. It wasn't so much that I was expecting a miracle - I knew where I stood academically. It's just that he had given me the impression there were strategies that could be implemented
given I have a low GPA. But the look on his face said, "You're a lost cause. Give it up. You're wasting my time." And then the worst possible thing happened. I held my head as high as I could, and swallowed that lump. But it was too late. I could feel my eyes tearing up.
Oh, for the love of god, I thought,
not now! Now I am an intellectually inferior loser with a weak character too. The look of discomfort on his face was obvious. He apologized for not having any Kleenex, and I apologized for my emotional display.
So he told me about how I could still apply to the agronomy department, and the steps I would have to take, about how I need to find a potential advisor, and write my letter of intent, and somehow prove that I am a good candidate for grad school. And I heard his words, but only in the background of a barrage of negative thoughts.
You're not good enough. You're lazy. You'll never fit in. You don't deserve to succeed.I know these thoughts are the result of years of low self-esteem and negative self-talk. I'm aware of this. Being aware doesn't mean the problem will suddenly evaporate. An alcoholic who finally admits his condition and quits drinking is not automatically cured. Sure, I can pretend the thoughts don't exist, so that I don't have to put up with supposedly well-meaning (but more likely, ego-masturbating) so called friends who would tell me to snap out of it and stop feeling sorry for myself. I am human and experience an array of emotions. The prevailing emotion of late has been despondency. Don't tell me too get over it. It's not your place. Go find someone else to feel emotionally superior to.
And so, my attitude becomes not only self-defeating, but antagonistic toward others as well. Enemy-centered, so to speak.
But if negative self-talk isn't helping me, then neither is keeping it to myself. I'm bleeding. That's what I need to do. I'm bleeding all over anyone who reads this. I'll move on once the blood has been let.
So on with my letter of intent. Last year truly was an extraordinarily bad year for me. Two weeks before classes began, I took my mother to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a terminal illness. For the sake of her privacy, I will not go into details. They did nothing to help her, basically told her she was going to die, and released her way too soon. She had great difficulty getting around and needed some help. So in addition to driving an hour south to campus, once I got back home I was driving an hour north to assist her. I had very little time to do homework, take care of my kids, or anything else for that matter, not to mention, waking up every morning wandering if my mom had made it through the night. Add to that, my 2 year old who still wasn't sleeping through the night, leaving me a walking zombie every single day, and this was how my school year began.
Two weeks after school began, I came down with the flu (supposedly). I was of course prescribed Tamiflu. A month later, I was still sick, so I returned to the doctor who said he really didn't know what it could be, but prescribed antibiotics as I told him my babysitter's son had had pneumonia. The sickness persisted for another month. There were days when I could barely see straight from the awful incurable headaches and nausea. I was quite literally sick and tired, and trying to take care of my mom, and trying to take care of my kids and make supper almost every night and meet the demands of the high school calling me every single day complaining about my at-risk teenager. In retrospect, I can see that the illness may have been prolonged due to exhaustion. It's funny, when you're in the thick of it, you don't think of those things. You just keep pressing on.
By the second semester, my mom was getting around much better, and I only visited her maybe once a week. But I was still chronically exhausted, and got sick again. And it was the same situation as before. I was again sick for two months straight and trying to homeschool my son (because he was probably on his way to getting expelled) while attending school. I had to bring him to Madison with me in order to keep him out of trouble. In April, I quit taking Zoloft, and found it significantly easier to think straight, but by then the semester was almost over.
Which leads me to what I'm doing differently this semester. In the beginning of the semester, I informed Ron that I would NOT be making dinner on Mondays and Wednesdays. It would be up to him to feed the kids, because I would not be getting home until 7:00 pm. Of course, for the first couple of weeks, I would come home and he and the kids would be starving and he'd ask me what was for dinner. He knew full well I wasn't planning on cooking, but he was testing my resolve. He does that. If he can get away with not helping out, he will, regardless of the hardship it causes me or someone else. So of course he and the girls are eating at Grandma's on Mondays and Wednesdays now. Which is just fine with me.
The point here is that I am putting my foot down. I am delegating. I have tried open dialog with Ron and it gets nowhere. He simply does not want to help. So I simply have had to refuse to do some of the things I don't have time for. It would be wonderful if we had the type of relationship where we worked as a team and had mature, positive communication. After seven years of working on this, I have come to the realization that I must either accept that it's not gonna happen and deal with it however I must, or keep hoping and trying and begging and pleading and negotiating and bitching and still never get anywhere. Or end the relationship, but let's not go there.
So between nixing the Zoloft and being selfish with my time, things have gotten better at school. Violet now only wakes up once every night. I still don't have much time for homework, because now I have to take my daughter about an hour out of my way every morning, to the babysitter, before I go to school, which I didn't have to do in previous years. This brings my total round trip travel time to about 4 hours on many days, depending on certain factors. But that's the price I'm paying for having the absolute best babysitter in the world take care of Violet.
My advisor has instructed me to mention reasons why my grades fell last year and what I'm doing to make sure it doesn't happen again. He said I should mention what happened, but without the "gory details". So now I just have to decide on the best way to convey what happened in a concise, intelligent and yet compelling manner.
I don't get in these depressed moods as often as I did when I was younger. But they can be incredibly difficult to crawl out of. I'm getting better at it but have a way to go. I do realize that attitude is everything, and that the only way I stand a chance of achieving my goals is to think positive. I just need this time right now to be pissy. With that, I'll close with a wonderful famous quote a friend turned me on to:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." ~ Marianne Williamson
Maybe if I read it every day, I'll start to believe it.
