(answer: no, i don't like guns.)

this past weekend -- 7 months after i began what can only be compared to the excruciating pain and shrewdness that comes with pledging a fraternity -- i completed the very last possible (controllable) piece of the grad school application process.

and after an unconventional phone interview this week with a school someone must have paid to pretend to show interest in me (but in case the honorable dean of admission is reading this, i'm deeply grateful that they did and of course i'd be flattered to attend your unparalleled, unpretentious school) ...

... i'm done.

i'm done writing essays. done filling in the blanks. done honing my resume. done regurgitating every small honor and unimpressive award i've ever received in my life (including the car i won in high school). done coming up with reasons why i want a jd/mba. done lying about why i want a jd/mba. done flying around the country showing some cleavage and begging for acceptance (otherwise known as interviewing).

i am done trying to convince admissions committees that my completely uninteresting, unoriginal, and unexceptional life is interesting, original, and exceptional.

applying to graduate schools with a normal (i use the term loosely here) affluent family, without having discovered a cure for cancer, and pretending to maintain a definite-concrete-unambiguous-specific career-ambition-that-completely-changes-pending-my-audience, has been a little bit like running a marathon barefoot. or staring in a porn movie without protection. or flying without the use of an aircraft.

and boy, are my arms tired. (badah-ching)

this whole application process has been fundamental to my life since i started studying for the lsat almost 2 years ago and the gmat a year ago. i guess that somewhere in between a grande/nonfat/vanilla/bone-dry cappuccino and hating my job(s), i convinced myself that i needed at least two graduate degrees to be successful in life. and since that decision to apply and get my ass accepted to a law school and a business school within the same university grounds, admission has been the prize.

and now that i'm done playing the admissions game (with a magic pen/red-window hint book i shall write if twenty-nothing: uncircumcised and uncut, does not work out for me), the rest of my life lies in the hands of admission offers. i'm left open, vulnerable, and naked (naked is perhaps by choice) for judgment as to whether or not my academics, extra-curricular activities, and awards -- my life -- and my cleavage, are good enough.

i hate -- hate -- not being in control. almost as much as i hate not being good enough (read: being rejected).

yet in a sick way that only i could construe, i'm having separation anxiety from the application process; i've become kind of good it. subsequently, i'm quickly developing a severe case of decision anxiety. i can't decide what i want for dinner or what movie to see. and now i have to choose an institution that will determine my education, contacts, friends, family and peers for the rest of my life?

holy crap.

you mean, i have to actually go to grad school?