I woke up this morning thinking 'Ack, Ack.'

I went up to Boston this past weekend to visit my good friends Corey and Chris. (You'll hear all about my trip when I download pictures to accompany it. And once I write it.) Corey and I walked around Harvard a little, and talked about grad school a lot. He and I are both preparing to go next fall, but I feel like he's a teensy bit better prepared than I.

During my trip up to Boston I read scholarship guides on the bus. Corey and I compared notes on the GRE Lit. test, which I took a few weeks ago, and he's studying for right this minute. We discussed potential references and talked about where we were applying. I'm going for University of Oregon, University of Texas at Austin, and three in London. He's a little more ambitious, applying for Ivy League schools for his M.A. and tons for his Master of Fine Arts (as he explained, so few accept MFAs that you have to cast a wider net).

Back home I scheduled my application deadlines into my Microsoft Outlook calendar, read over the requirements for entry once more.

And then, right on schedule, I had a panic attack.

I'm terrified that I won't get into these universities; that they will take one look at my sub par resume, my unconvincing recommendations, and my academic writing sample and they will laugh, wondering why I would ever consider graduate school.

Part of me wants to blame my lackluster GPA and academic performance (coming in at a paltry 3.2) on the fact that I never considered wanting to go to graduate school until I was in the real world and realized that my education was not complete. I missed the classroom, and not just because it was safer, but because I missed feeling alive and curious and studying literature. And now that I am volunteering with Higher Achievement I know that teaching is something I want to do, that I love doing. So, now I'm trying to salvage what I can of my undergraduate performance, shine it up and pass it off as Acceptable at the very least. But I don't feel Acceptable. I don't feel like I've worked hard enough or been dedicated enough to my studies. I compare myself to other students who seem to do it so easily, who never procrastinate, or always get the professor to like them. To all those students who understood math and took the SAT prep class. I feel like a fake and it makes me nervous.

Writing this I can see that it doesn't seem so huge, but the universities make me feel like it is. They're like these scary dragons who are waiting to judge me on every little flaw, rather than humans who make mistakes and take wrong turns too. They don't seem like sympathetic professors excited to pass on their love of learning to me.
I've been staring out my office window, contemplating the blueness of the Potomac and the silvery shine of the Air Force memorial by my building. The white marble of the city spread out before me and the grim reminder of the Arlington Cemetery in its neat white rows. It doesn't seem so big in the face of that landscape. I just need to take a deep breath and breathe. I've found meditation actually works in the face of my panic attacks, which seem to be growing as the deadlines approach. But today it's not working. I called my mom and she made me drop everything and go for a walk. I stood in the parking lot breathing deeply and wondering at how my body reacts to this sort of thing, and what will happen when I'm faced with other huge decisions. And I wondered if I should get medication. I think I am going to call my doctor about it because winter is just starting and I only forsee this getting worse. Maybe it will help to take Prozac or some other calming drug.