Graduate School Doldrums - Why I have been loafing on the blog

Late in 2010, I applied to 5 MBA programs.  For this, I had to write about fifteen to twenty strange essays about myself.  It was overwhelmingly dull. 

Once I hit the submit button, the real pain of the process began.  Powerless waiting has to be one of the worst pastimes, and the application process slugs along under this banner of futility.  I have been left to strange coping devices.  The options are not vast, but include combing the gmatclub.com forums for information leaks and painstakingly reading through submitted essays, hawkishly scanning for errors that may influence an outcome while roleplaying the perspective of an admissions committee.  The things I have done for the illusion of control are feeble and embarrassing. 

The gmatclub.com forums are filled with oversensitive overachievers, hyperintelligent Indians, and the whines of north-easterners.  You hesitantly welcome terms like ding (to be denied admissions), WE (work experience), and adcom (admissions committee) to your vocabulary, feeling sorry that the future of the business world hangs out spouting shorthand in seedy dens of speculation.  As the process chugs along, and the days pass with anvil seconds, you pathetically welcome additional comments on your dream school's thread with a strange exuberance.  The other day, I found myself excited about a new page in the MIT role call admissions forum, one that I had yet to read, only to disappointingly read some guy from Bangalore's concern about something so painstakingly mundane and detailed oriented that to type it may cause me to grand mal with boredom.  In general, trying to discern the pixels on your computer screen is more exciting than reading the gmatclub.com forums.  But I do it, to the tune of perhaps 25 visits per day.

So where did I apply?

1.  Hong Kong University
2.  Duke
3.  Yale
4.  M.I.T.
5.  Indiana University

I realize this post has little to do with travel beyond the implications of a degree in Hong Kong.  I felt that I needed to address my current plight in some form.  What better place to vent than my own website.


I visited the Indiana University campus in Bloomington this last weekend, and could not have been more impressed.  Below are some pictures that I took while there.

It was cold