Two months ago (almost to the day!) I promised that I would post again once I made my final decision. Well, the insider-lawyer-inside-of-me-that-is-busting-to-get-out (I wonder if there is a French word for that....or more importantly how about an App?) can be choosing to be picky here:
1.) Technically I am posting after I have made my decision, so therefore I am truth-telling.
2.) But I did not post once I made my final decision; which you can tell by the way I use my italics mean that this 2nd possible course of prosecution is a prognostication of how I will write this entry, or more acutely, how I began this entry. (See, more italics!)
So, for those of you out there that have indeed read my biography, or indeed read it often enough to notice when I add stuff; you would have seen that I had indeed made a decision regarding where I indeed have decided to attend. Yes, I used the word "indeed" 5 times.
For those of you who don't, I will be attending Arizona State University: Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and I am very excited.
Now, since I have - to greater or lesser extent - dedicated the last two entries to the process of applying to grad school, I would like to at least touch upon the last part of the process: making the decision.
It is quite funny how throughout the course of things the process of applying to graduate school actually reverses itself. Once you have concluded all of your interviews and have shaken all your hands and ridden all of your metallic birds and are sick of airport food, the offers eventually come.
Now you get to see how much the schools actually liked you - or how much they didn't in some cases. Some of it is beyond your control, while other parts of it are not.
For me personally, it was an exhausting and completely unenjoyable process. I was accepted into 4 of my 6 schools (all but the reach schools,) and very seriously considered offers from 3 of them. I juggled them until my cheeks puffed and my eyes rolled in their sockets and my tongue lolled like a dog. I flip-flopped and flop-flipped in a variety of directions and I wasn't really getting anywhere.
See, the trouble is this:
Schools don't offer you the exact same package, so in addition to the different packages, you're also weighing those things against the non-package related items. Things like: would you be happy living there? What are the opportunities like? etc etc. Would you take a place with little opportunity and tons of cash or vice-versa? I'm not saying that was once of my choices or even a question I asked myself, but you end up really trying to assess your priorities.
For a long time (all of March and a little bit of April) I flustered on what I was going to do. Eventually, I found a solution that straightened everything out.
I called a friend and we went through each school - one at a time, and I just wrote down and talked about everything I liked and didn't like about the school, how I felt about things, how I felt about the packages, etc. My friend kept track of all of the positives and negatives.
It was extraordinarily revealing to me how I felt about my choices. It turns out that one of my choices I actually liked a lot less than I realized. One of them I actually liked more than I realized. The third one I apparently ended up liking so much it turned out to be a landslide for that choice, which as I alluded to earlier, is ASU.
I found this to be a very helpful and revealing exercise, and talking with people (especially professors and with your parents) helps also - professors because they've gone and done it, parents because they help you figure out what is important to you.
In the end, I think my teacher (I think she will always be my teacher, haha) said it best, "I walk up to people at conferences and festivals and they ask how I went to school where I did. I say to them, 'does it matter? you're here just the same as me.'"
Really, no one cares where Beethoven went to school or Brahms. No one cares who Chopin studied with or Ravel or Ives or Glass or even Adams or Williams or Shore or Elfman or Newman, or even, yes, even Eastwood. No one cares. I know this because of the thousands of popstars who make millions of dollars performing songs written by other people. Ears just want to hear good music. Hearts just want to feel good music. Feet want to tap good music. Brains want to analyze good music. That's what people want.
School is school and people are people but music is human and humans are life.
So, to wrap up this saga about choosing grad schools and how to survive the process, the best advice I can give you is to remember that you will be in precisely the place you need to be at precisely the time you need to be there. It will all take care of itself.
Cheers.
May 11th, 2012
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