I just got the recommendation that Candace sent in for me, and it was killer. I mean, even if all the others screw me, I feel like that recommendation should get me in. Even if my SOP sucks - and I currently feel like it really does - hopefully that will help. And Arizona is the only school that I have included a recommendation from her. So I feel more than ever that if I fuck up all the others, I have GOT to finish that one well.

So here's what's left:

1) CV
2) Outside Funding!! Really, I've got to get ON this.
3) Writing Sample. Maybe. I remain unconvinced by my writing abilities, and its optional (at least at Arizona).
4) GRE scores.

This is totally manageable.

So why do I feel so overwhelmed?

I feel like I should quit my job at Borders, even though I could use the money, and just devote myself one hundred percent to finishing this stuff off. Oh shit, I really really feel that way. Crap.

Crap.

So I took the GRE's today. There's a minor story there, but I'm too full to write it. Important parts are: I did score over my minimum 1300 points, so I won't be retaking the test; I didn't choke on the essays and even though I don't know how I scored, I am happy enough; and the experimental section was a bitch. I am not ecstatic, because I didn't get an 800 on the verbal, but I'm happy enough.

Now I will begin the actual application process. Woohoo!

This seems strange to me, but of all of the classes I took in college, the one that makes me sound smartest in conversations is Roman Religion. Now, I know the professor of that class happens to read this lj, but I'm not actually saying it for her benefit (it's too late to suck up - unless you can somehow manage to change those grades now, can you, could you?). Today in the breakroom at Borders someone started asking about what would have happened to Christianity if, in fact, Jesus had not died on the crossed for our sins [his phrasing]. He was genuinely interested, not using the question as a starting block for his own opinions. While I don't know that his question can ever actually be answered, there were a number of places to begin discussing it, but I was excited that I, at least, knew enough to be conversant on some of the early cultural context. I mean, I was steeped in Christian history in our bizarre "confirmation" training (oh, Apes ... you haven't blocked that retreat from your memory yet, have you? Do you know I still have a picture of all of us outside? If I could scan that puppy, you better believe it would be posted here for the shock and awe of all), but that had a lot more to do with (not surprisingly) what is important to us as Seekers and even us as Christians within a wider Christian context, than it did anything actually relevant to the people responsible for it's nascency and "nurturing".

The point is, this topic, and many others that also are relevant to the cultural context of very early Christianity, comes up way more often than any other. Classical Greece is the second, and current (particularly indigenous) almost never, but although I don't want to make it the center of my own study, it's a field I was raised to delve into and question and research and for all the texts I have on the Historical Jesus, this class was and is incredibly useful. I suspect that this may be the one class (followed VERY closely by Ancient Greek and Roman Sexuality, and then by the Iliad) that I take with me from college and never lose. Cool.

In more depressing news, I scored a 350 (!!!!!!!!!!!) on my Diagnostic test for the quantitative section of the GREs (that's 350 out of 800, just like the SATs). Yes, I am now beginning the studying, but the fact that I have forgotten how to get the area of a circle does not bode well. (My thought at the time was, "I think it has something to do with pi.") Hopefully it will all come rushing back to me. Everyone cross your fingers please.

Could any of my friends out there help me by getting me a username and password so that I can access JSTOR? I can't get to ANY information about ANYTHING and it's driving me nuts!

Thanks.