Lately, I’ve been in a huge,  post-grad rut. There are so many things I wanted to accomplish IMMEDIATELY upon graduating from college (i.e. being a successful writer, getting my own studio apartment, making lots of money), and of course…none of that has happened. So all I’m left to do is sit and wonder why none of it is progressing at the speed of light.

The most frustrating part is: I GET IT. I know things take time. If I had a dime for how many times people have told me that, I’d already be a millionaire packing my floppy JCrew hat for the Hamptons. But my little 20-something heart has a hard time dealing with baby steps and time. Why doesn’t success hit as fast as a tequila shot? Anyway, I’ll get to my point.

I’ve been learning how to take baby steps (this should be a crash course in college). How do I do so, you ask? It’s pretty simple. For me, it starts with writing out a detailed financial plan and buying a huge calendar. I start making extra money by freelancing and working more hours (as a flight attendant), and work that income into my financial plan to spend in teeny trickles of time.

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I ran out of post it notes.

Now to you this may not seem like a moment worth mentioning, but to me this is a monumental deal. You see, back when I was a freshman, fresh faced and eager, I did things like shopping for school supplies. I bought pens, and paper, highlighters and binders, and, most importantly, I bought post it notes. (I’m an organization freak. For my kind, it’s the little things like multi-colored sticky paper that make life worth living, okay?) But these weren’t just any notes. These were the super stack, a 12 pad pack of multicolored 4X4 sticky notes. I was sure they would last me all four years of college.

That was before I started working on my senior thesis.

Thesis projects require note taking. They require page marking. They require a lot of post its. I printed journal article after journal article, photocopied book after book, stuck notes in chapter after chapter. This summer I finished the blue pad. In the past month alone I went through the purple, and this past week I finished the hot pink pad. My post it notes are no more. Seven months before the end of my college career. (I’m a little heartbroken. Don’t judge.)

That alone would be enough to make me reconsider my commitment to this whole “senior thesis” thing, but I assure you I have plenty more reasons. I started this thing back in May. I picked a topic, and wrote out a proposal. Over the summer I started doing some light research, reread the novels I was working with, and marked the important passages.  It didn’t seem all that bad, but this past summer I didn’t have four other courses to worry about. Now I do. Needless to say, things have gotten a bit more complicated. Read More »

Last week, I warned you that the grad school application process is quite a time consuming effort. Well guess what folks? You’re going to need to put ample time into choosing your prospective grad schools too! Sure, this might seem a bit obvious, but this columnist doesn’t always think things through.

For me, grad school was a roll of the dice, and six possible schools came up for me: Georgetown, Rutgers, Ohio State, North Carolina State, San Francisco State, and the school I eventually chose, hereafter refered to as X University.I chose these schools on a whim. Georgetown was my “reach,” and the closest I could get to Ivy League while maintaining a glimmer of hope for acceptance. Rutgers was relatively close to my hometown (by close I mean a 5 hour drive); Ohio State is a party school notorious for it’s tailgating parties (I swear, that’s why I applied- don’t judge); North Carolina State was an hour from my only other friend attending grad school; and San Francisco just seemed like a cool city to live in, as did the location of X University.

Rule number one in choosing grad school? Don’t be superficial when planning your future! Read More »