So, I was poking around the website for the school bookstore at $CITY_SCHOOL, under the theory that there's an advantage in doing advance research on the textbooks for fall semester (and thereby being able to order them from less expensive venues than the school bookstore).

It's got one of the worst user interfaces i've encountered for online merchandising.

I had a breakdown of sorts this morning, and a realization which has been slow in coming; ironically, I may have to thank my brother's surprise question about his father for part of it.

Fucking hell.

My half-brother, out of the blue, sent me email asking about his father (his father and our mother divorced when he was two).

The last email I recieved from $BOLT_SCHOOL said I would hear from them after yesterday, and implied that decisions would be made by yesterday. Having heard nothing, I summoned the courage to call this afternoon.
Update [2006-3-23 21:17:14 by rafael]:: In other news, $BOSTON_SCHOOL mailed me on teh 16th to say "Please come here, we'll give you $5500/year scholarship." :)

I had a meltdown over the weekend, and today i'm in full-bore waiting mode: $BOLT_SCHOOL said that I should know the results of their review of my file after today, and a bunch of people who got the same email I did said they heard yesterday.

On the phone with $EXPLORER_SCHOOL.

I'm in.

Details to follow in the mail next week sometime.

I got four pieces of law-school related snailmail yesterday. None of them were the mail I was looking for. Two of them were attempts to recruit me (it's awfully late in the season for that, I wot); one of them was a piece of bureaucratic paperwork; and one was a demand for a decision and some money.

I love $PROJECT_MANAGER. I love the fact that when i'm ranting about how a final ship deadline of today isn't possible when QA had a list of 100 stop ship bugs last Friday and more bugs have come in since then, he says "well, lets pretend those new bugs don't exist." He provides hours of comic relief, fun for the whole family.

I have an admission offer in hand, from a fourth-tier school that was my worst-case fallback: they were pretty much guaranteed to admit me, they are pretty much guaranteed to give me money to go there, they have a less than 40% bar admission rate. I got a great thrill when the admission letter came in, because they were the first place I heard from, and because on some level I doubted whether I could get admitted anywhere; it was a good ego boost to know that someone wants me, even if they are among the least selective people in the industry. (I read one report that says tht 60% of applicants never get admitted anywhere; I've avoided that fate, at least).

My first choice school, a top-twenty school with a reputation for having a less competitive educational culture than many others, sent me a cryptic email informing me that my file has been forwarded to a committee for review, and that I should hear back before the end of the month. That's good news, I suppose; it means that i wasn't rejected out of hand, and that the other schools I am applying to are also likely to not reject me out of hand, but it's also bad news; it means I wasn't accepted out of hand, either.

The other ten schools have subjected me to a deafening silence.

Major decisions usually take a long time to percolate; they simmer and stew and slosh around in my head for months or years, until they come to the surface with a power and a force which cannot be denied. So it was when I came out; the need to do so built in me for months before I actually did it, and then the dam broke and nothing was the same again. This decision isn't of quite the same magnitude, and it isn't as scary, as coming out was; but as the days pass since the decision was made, the implications become scary, and worries about the danger sof the path I have selected mount. But I know it was the right decision, and I know that failing to hold to it will render me an empty shell of a man. Postponing the day of reckoning, while indubitably the correct action, has something of the same effect; not only does it make the present into a soulless holding pattern, it lengthens the time I have to contemplate and worry about the effects. That's never good; I know from the past that the days between making the decision and executing it are the toughest days of all.

I have decided. I have no choice. To stay sane, to stay creative and energetic and in love with the world, I have to get out of the tech industry.