Thanks for Keeping It Real, Mason.

Today began badly. I woke up and went right back to bed. Too bad I couldn't stay there. It didn't seem so bad when I finally got up though. I made it into the shower and got dressed easily enough. I didn't even need to change outfits. I was happy enough with what I settled on. Looking out the window I could tell it was going to be foggy, but I wore my new blue wedges anyway, compensating by wearing a warm button up. I made myself breakfast, the last blueberry bagel was all mine. And I even remembered to pour my perfect French-pressed coffee into a carry cup so I could take it with me and stave off the brown mud at the office a little longer. I used the last of my filet mignon to make an excellent sandwich and was ready to face the day.

But somewhere between my house and the office the day turned on me. Traffic on Rt. 7 forced me to take a shortcut through Great Falls that I didn't know so well. Looking at the clock I groaned. It was 9:42am and I hadn't even made it to the George Washington Parkway yet. I was in trouble.
Getting into the office I'm greeted with the news that the 300 pamphlets I hand cut all day Friday were not up to par and we get to start over. We have 1500 due by the end of the week. We only have 250 completed.
Then I called GMU to check on my letter of recommendation. I had forgotten to get my professor to send one to GMU at the beginning and she was kind enough to print another copy and stick it in her mailbox so I could hand deliver it to the Admissions office. Taking out that extra step I thought would save some time. A week later and I get an email saying my application is incomplete. I call and they say it probably just hasn't been processed yet, everyone's on Spring Break. Call back next week they say. So I do. This morning. Apparently I didn't drop it off at the Graduate Admissions office like I should, even though that had never been mentioned and they said they would put it in that mailbox for the Graduate Admissions people to check. So I am told to call the General Admissions office to check. They tell me to try calling the Graduate Admissions, or the Graduate ENGLISH Dept. I call the Graduate English Department. Nothing. No one has heard of my application at all, because the Graduate Admissions people are still holding onto it, waiting for the letter that the General Admissions people have lost. I start to cry. I have already recieved 2 rejections out of the 4 schools I applied to, I'm expecting to hear a 3rd from the other school in London, but I hadn't really cared, because I want to go to Mason. I've been counting on going to Mason, and now, all of a sudden those hopes and expectations might be dashed, thwarted, deferred! Thanks to an idiotic underclassman working as a receptionist in Admissions, who wasn't quite awake enough at 9:00am to take my letter and actually read the name on the mailbox that she slipped it into. THANKS MASON.

I emailed my professor again, crossing my toes and fingers, hoping that this sort of thing happens all the time and my 3rd request for this letter isn't the one that sends her over the edge. She's a really nice professor, kind and humorous, but I don't want to give her the impression that I'm a foolish, thoughtless, unreliable person, who shouldn't be going to grad school at all, and certainly shouldn't be recommended by her. Because that's how I feel right now.