Reflections: Applications

By applying to a program, a job, a school, I say in a sort of formal but firm way, "Why yes, I do think you should accept me." This is a strange place for me. The jobs that I have had have either involved a deliberate choice to be there because of a personal interest--i.e., my job at Ivanna Cone--or because of personal need--such as my first job at Hy-Vee, a regional supermarket. When I applied for colleges some time ago, I felt the necessity to act differently; in such a case, I was hedging my bets on this or that institution. Wherever I went, the tour guide or someone else with whom I spoke claimed a profound, guttural draw to their school. I never got that pull in my stomach. Instead, I chose my schools loosely, and then decided in a calculated way--balancing cost, scholarships, programs, and size essentially. Presently, I don't even feel like I have much of that to go on.

Graduate programs and their success with students seems to be based on some harmony between the two. A student attends a program or school, expecting the support and cooperation of a particular academic to guide the student's research. Researching graduate school often or ought to mean researching the professors with whom one might work, noticing some of the school's specialities or the course that alumni have taken following their education there. So far, my graduate school research has focused on the programs themselves and I have been attracted to the subject matter and courses, such as Northern Arizona University's Sustainable Communities program. Another session of research and application will come, attending to the work of professors of philosophy and how my inquests do or do not mesh with those. At the moment, such an endeavor is frustratingly nebulous and I can't draw my attention to such a task without pulling it away from completing to some appreciable degree the labor of application to the cadre of programs I already have.

In most of the applications, I am expected to rehash my work and accomplishments, which runs into two difficulties. First, I do not have particular interest in running through a list of accomplishments as such. My work is my own, but it relates to what I have done for a classroom, literature I have read, films and even games I have encountered. With only a title and a date, it is difficult for me to take in much of a meaning for the work I have done. Second, that list isn't expansive. Gustavus generally offers a tiered academic scholarship, so you get one that represents their desire for you to attend, so I do not have many to offer. As for other accomplishments or awards, Gustavus is in many ways insulated from the need to excel in those categories; though it offers plentiful opportunities in its own environment, the application processes and deadlines never made it into my schedule. Instead, I established my own expectations and went for those. I am not one to rely on the praise of others to satisfy my own sense of self.

For these applications, I must suck it up--in one way--and work with what I know. I cannot say that I enjoy lamely accepting the expectations of institutions, I am too hardheaded for that, I suppose. Here I am, though, setting my own deadlines for applications that are generally due next spring. The work of application has provided notable tasks, like forming a resume and a curriculum vitae, neither of which I have done before, at least in any way that matters. To do that, I have collected just about all of the work I have done over the past four or more years in one place--which is actually two places, my computer and my external harddrive. If nothing else, this process has been a worthy challenge, one that demands perspective in unexpected ways. After most of the busywork is over, I plan to return to my paper on xenia which is intended to respond to Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers which we read in the philosophy senior seminar. I also discovered the handful of short pieces I wrote wile in Brazil, which are mostly autobiographical fiction. This has become an exercise in reflection, which I probably need now more than I would have predicted.