$75 and a bachache

I didn't realize December was so close. When did this happen? I have exactly one month and one week until my application to my goal school is done (five days earlier, two other schools' applications are due, and January begins another long list--I am applying to a dozen schools total, from nearly every region of the country).

I spent my study hall period doling out information to manila folders, penciling each school's name on the tab, parceling out web printouts and application forms. I spent a good while hunting down where to send transcripts and, at five dollars an official transcript, had them sent to each school, some requesting two (I had one sent to myself just in case). I'm glad my transcript is thick with classes--two hundred credits as an undergraduate (when I only needed one hundred and twenty) and a nearly-finished M.Ed. This makes that five dollars per copy worth it, that and the lovely seal of the university that assures I don't need to worry about printing out one more thing in my packets.

I get all panicky when I think of these things: organizing and sending out the letters of recommendation, the disappointment that was the GRE, and the most frightening, because it is the most important--my statement of purpose and my portfolio (some places allow up to twenty five pages, others six to ten--I prefer the smaller numbers; it's easier to winnow down your favorites; I'm afraid of what might kill me in the expansive allowances of twenty five--and honestly, in many ways, I thought that was the point of graduate school, so you could develop more than a handful of poems, so you could have a manuscript in the end, after three years of study, not go in with half of one).

And I think of my modest achievement as a writer, how so many who have thick C.V.s listing prestigious publications and fellowships and grants... I think of how pathetic my own experience will be and how percentages are in the single digits as far as acceptance to any of these programs go.

I think: What am I thinking applying to all these graduate schools?

I'm thinking: How can I not?