Competitive Applicant

Let’s see…last update was around Christmas. So I only have to update you on…well, what seems like forever.

Shortly after Christmas I had one of the worst days/nights of my life. This is no understatement. It’s taken me a while to not dwell on it all the time and I know it will take much longer to forget about it…if that ever happens.
So I had quite a walk with God. I went walked around the railroad tracks behind my house. As I trekked through the deep snow, I asked, pleaded with God to ask me if I should stay in Vail or go home to Gainesville. I was completely miserable. Yet I had this nagging feeling that I needed to stay in Vail. I pictured packing my stuff up and going home, leaving my unhappiness behind. It was tempting. But then I pictured myself staying, sticking it out and surprisingly, had an irrefutable peace about it. God wants me here. I don’t know why though. I might not ever, and I guess that’s ok. Still, I wanted to go home.

I continued my walk for another hour and went exploring through snow covered trees and all along the frozen river. Chalk it up to endorphins, but the walk did wonders for me. God was walking with me in the Colorado mountains. He let me know that I was going to stay in Vail, and it was obviously for His purpose. I mean really, that’s what we want to know; that our life is for a reason and that it is being used for a much bigger purpose.

January 4^th was a big day. Since this summer, I have been looking at Fuller Theological Seminary for grad school. I’ve constantly looked at this one page that says “You must apply for fall 2011 by August 19^th”. I always thought that was a little late, but never second guessed it. Well, after about four times of Fuller randomly coming up in conversation, my mom asking me about the GRE out of nowhere, and even reading a book I hadn’t looked at in months brought up Fuller’s name, I looked at the website again. February 15^th is not the same as August 19^th. It’s about six months short of it. But that’s when the application was due. Crap.

What with all the depressed mood and self-loathing and just complete homesickness, I knew I was in no place to apply to the one school I wanted to go to. There was NO WAY I could bear my soul on an in-depth application, study and take the GRE and get all my transcripts and letters of recommendation in before February 15^th. So I called Fuller and asked when I could apply for the winter or even spring of 2012 semester. They informed me that because my school would be a cohort structure, I couldn’t apply again until Fall of 2012. That’s abouttt 2 years away. No freakin way am I going to wait two more years for school. Eight months has been hard enough. Two years would be unbearable.

So I had to do it. I went to the Vail Library that night and got five huge GRE study books and mapped out the next 45 days. 20 days to study and take the GRE and 20 days to write my application, with five days to spare. Arduous, to say the least. Bye bye social life and skiing, hello living room table and computer.

I write this now sitting at a Starbucks across the street from Denver Community College where I just completed the two hour fifteen minute Graduate Record Exam. Twenty days later, after countless hours of studying I have scored high enough to, in Fuller’s words, be considered a “competitive applicant”.

:)