This week, I began the daunting process of filling out applications. Unfortunately, schools of public health haven’t completely converted to a centralized application forum like other graduate schools. Thus, while most of my friends who are applying to dental school or law school are zipping through their apps ( I’m sure they wouldn’t describe it that way, but you get the point!), I’m slaving away over a billion dull application pages, filling in information about my city of birth, my extracurricular activities for the past two decades, my maternal great-grandmother’s blood type, and how old I was the first time I rode a bike without training wheels.

Seriously, though, it’s quite an intimidating process. For someone like me, who isn’t inclined check if all the t’s are crossed and the i’s dotted, especially when filling out piles of tedious forms, it’s an agonizing process. More than anything, it’s nerve-wracking, because etching out my name over and over again on those forms makes this process suddenly real. I haven’t put myself out there in this way in a long time. I don’t consider myself conservative, but when I think about the choices I’ve made over the years, most of them have been cautious, calculated, and undertaken only if I was fairly certain I would succeed. Interestingly enough, I’m taking the opposite tactic with my graduate school applications. Because I do love my job, I’m applying to only my “dream” schools—because if I were to give up working full time, it would only be worth it for an equally exciting academic opportunity. It’s still not an completely wild risk, since I have my job to fall back on, but it’s strange and scary to think of the realistic possibility that I might not get in anywhere. I'm not all that accustomed to failure, but I hope that in the case that I don't get admitted anywhere, that I make like an overplayed pop song and brush my shoulders off and try again.

On the bright side, at least I don’t have to answer any incredibly cheesy questions about what kind of mural would I paint on the side of a skyscraper in Chicago or who my real-life hero is (a hot-dog themed amusement park, and my grandmother, respectively) like in the undergrad admissions apps. I guess that just means I can keep my BS juices flowing here on this blog instead, then!