I've mostly been spending my time writing to profs. at graduate schools, reading through prospective student pages again for the first time--being responsible right on time.

*Most of the application deadlines are December 15.

*So far I've tagged all the relevant profs. at U. Wisconsin @ Madison, Mt. University and Stanford, with some research done on U. Pennsylvania (where my friend Selene is) and U. Michigan @ Ann Arbor.

*So far the response has been positive. I wish I had gotten this kind of treatment when I had tried finding a job.

*So far I stand a good chance at getting into the big leagues: My GPA is either in the middle range or just a little below for accepted grad. students of yesteryear. The average GRE scores are pretty impressive, but hopefully all of my studying has paid off. I have three big advantages: years of research experience, good recommendation letters and experience as a graduate student by proxy. If worse came to worse, Mt. University is my safe school.

*So far I have three schools down, 3-5 more to go. I need to find one or two other top schools I haven't already looked at. I need to look through the net and get some pirated statistical figures from U.S. News (since they like ranking shit).

*Life is starting to resemble a checklist, so far.

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I have to make a poster for the Conference on Neuroscience in November, which I thankfully don't have to go do in person. My psychology subject test (a different one from the GRE general test I mentioned) is on the 11th of November. With all that shit on the horizon, I need to step up the emailing and the establishing rapport with professors thing. Trouble is that it takes about 2 hours a shot: one to get into their research, one to write a concise letter (since you don't do form letters for this shit). Still, around 3 professors a school at 3-5 more schools isn't bad.

It's mostly those tests that are getting to me. I never found out how I did on the GRE test that I took last year. I had four courses that semester. I can't remember how long I studied. I used the Princeton Review. Never again. I'm using Barrons and it teaches all the shit straight, not using 'stump the system' methods.

Fuck this things scares me. I remember sitting down in the completely quiet testing room, at the computer, surrounded by dull, lifeless colors and plastic cut at right angles. Everyone else in the room had left (since the GRE is about 3 1/2 hours long with a 1, 5 and 10 minute break). They'd brought up a second analytical section. I was frayed by this time. I went through question 13 of about 48. It was a logic puzzle, the kind where you have dicks A, B, C, D and E, where dick A is longer than dick B but shorter than dick D, dick C was longer and inverted compared to dick A..etc. etc.

Part of me gave. I still remember looking at the screen, feeling so tired and burnt out that quitting (and thus invalidating) the whole test felt like a relief. A very hollow, damning kind of relief. I couldn't quite think, only feel. It occurred to me that I'd failed myself. I was going to cancel the scores, but that didn't stop the fact that I'd given up. I gave up. I told the remaining administrator there that I'd cancelled my scores. He said "oh" in a round tone and ripped up my official scrap paper. I told everyone else I'd cancelled my scores. To this day I feel ashamed, but it'd felt like I couldn't fucking go on. I never want that to happen again..and I've hopefully invested enough time so that that doesn't happen.

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In other news, my mom's cat Moonbeam is nowhere to be found. He's been gone for 2-3 days now. His food and water are untouched. He'd been pretty scratched up when last we saw him. Mom keeps hoping he's holed up somewhere healing. We all keep hoping it wasn't the local raccoons or coyotes. The cat is practically deaf but he has/had good wits about him. I miss him. Mom gets close to tears about it sometimes. She put up 'lost cat' posters around the neighborhood. There were some cat-like turds on the fake grass carpetting outside, though. Maybe he's under the huge ass RV in the driveway.

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I really want to wallow in self-pity and just say that everything is going to complete shit, but there's no sense in thinking or acting that way. I caught myself being depressed again at the slow and small response to my art on DA. Just seems like I'm being tested on all sides, that is until I realize I'm buying into another old habit pattern of mine.

I've got to cut that shit out.

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