The Waiting Game

 {we heart it}

For the past few months, we’ve been waiting.  Waiting to hear about to about where Matt would get interviews, waiting to hear how the interviews went, essentially, waiting to hear the next step of our lives.  The last step in our Ph.D program is a year long internship.  The whole interview/match process is complicated, confusing, and competitive, and in short. it sucks.  But instead of launching into nerdspeak to explain it, I’ll just say that it’s very similar to sorority recruitment.  Actually, it’s pretty much the same thing.  You apply to sites, find out who likes you, and interview at all of those sites.  Then you submit a long numbered list of your number one choice through your last choice.  Each site does the same thing and ranks applicants number 1 through their last choice (ouch for that person.)  Then, on one, big, stressful day, the computer spits out magical results of who goes where.  It’s all very mysterious, but apparently, it’s quite “efficient.”  Pssh, please.

But just to make our lives even more stressful, the big, fancy people in charge decided to split the unveiling process into two parts.  The first part you find out whether you “matched” or not.  (Translation: did the computer spit out a nice pretty internship romance for you.)  So on the first day, your reaction is either “woo hoo” or “crap.”  Well, after months of waiting, this first day is almost here.  It’s tomorrow.  TOMORROW.  So at 9:00 am tomorrow, we will either be saying, “hooray, the next year of our life is decided” or “crap, we need to figure out a plan B.”  But then, even if our answer is “hooray” we still have to wait till Monday to find out where we’ll be going.  Dang, more freaking waiting.  Our options?  Chicago, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Augusta, Oklahoma City, or San Antonio.  We are reeeeeeally hoping for one of the first two.  (Like a psycho I have already looked at apartments in both of the first two cities.  I couldn’t help myself, I had to do something with to calm my anxiety.)  So, although the computer has probably already finished it’s little matching process, keep your fingers crossed for us tomorrow (and Monday.)  We’re ready to find out where we’re going next, I’m ready to start scouring Craigslist for cute shoebox apartments, and I need to get my closet ready for a climate change.  Plus, we’re just plain tired of waiting. 

Am I the only one who hates waiting?

UPDATE: As of 7:21 this morning, Matt is “matched.”  Hooray!  But we won’t know where until Monday, dang.  Back to waiting :)