13.10.2022. I’ve a tentative Outline or To-do list of what I need to get done in October just in time for scholarship deadlines by the end of November.
Week 1: Editing/ polishing up my grad school Resume. While completing my MA I was just having too much fun with friends, classes, and traveling to engage in other extracurricular academic pursuits. Normally I would feel guilty about not filling up every bit of waking hour with some kind of work/extracurricular to add onto my resume, but I cut myself some slack just this one time. I had to make up for lost time though by signing up for a bunch of volunteer stuff and taking on other part-time work post MA.
Week 2: Editing my writing samples for this week. I need to submit 2 writing samples as part of my PhD applications (though some universities only ask for 1 writing sample or you can directly send in your MA Dissertation). Since writing samples must be around 5000-7000 words, I’m editing out parts of my dissertation that I can send in as individual essays. This is probably the hardest part of applications (barring the Research Proposal which I don’t want to think about).
First off, I’ve no recollection of writing any of this. I feel like I got blackout drunk when I wrote it but it was most probably extreme sleep deprivation. Just looking at my dissertation makes me want to throw up, it's so embarrassing. I get the most violent urge to go back in time, smack past me in the face for procrastinating for so long and bullshitting my way through the latter half. I cannot believe my professor actually had to grade this. I’m currently editing out the worst parts pretending this was written by someone else so I can at least objectively evaluate it. If I make it through this without dying it will be a miracle.
Week 3: RESEARCH PROPOSAL. The way I’m dreading this. It is not so much that I don’t know exactly what direction I want to go for future research. It’s mostly the uncertainty. And also the fact that I have to contact a potential supervisor and convince them that my research is worth something more than the paper it is written on. Should I have contacted the university professors earlier about this? Certainly. Did I put it off from the sheer fear of rejection and/or judgement?? Absolutely. It’s fine, it’s going to be fine, I’m slowly working on it. There is a method to my madness, I promise, even if it looks completely chaotic from the outside.
