I am extremely fortunate that my roommate this year is a senior or I would be completely lost. She has been losing her mind studying for the GRE, attempting to go abroad and writing her senior thesis. A few weeks ago she returned from an information session that as a junior I should have attended. This is something that nobody actually tells you. Well, luckily, she revealed the whole awful truth to me about how I need to prepare now or I’ll be doomed come next May. I was glad that we had this conversation, because if we didn’t, I would be a blind sheep for the rest of the year.

Apparently, I haven’t been focusing my energy in enough directions. Lately, I’ve just been worried about pre-registration and the long term planning of graduating on time. However, that is not enough. I’m planning on attending graduate school at this point but never actually took the time to really consider what I needed to do to get there. My biggest concern when it came to graduate school was deciding what I’m going to study. There are so many options open to me, I just haven’t had the time to really process what I want. This problem is petty compared to preparing for the GRE. I should have bought books in September so I could continuously study for the GRE to take next Fall.

If I wasn’t so caught up in life, it should have made perfect sense, like the way I started studying for the SATs junior year. I’m hoping and praying that the GREs are just a number and are not counted too heavily by graduate schools. I’m just not good at standardized tests.

Then there’s the idea of going abroad. My parents said ‘no’ a long time ago so it’s completely out of the question for me. Going abroad is something that is looked upon very favorably by graduate schools, which stinks for me but is great for you if you still have time to travel. I wish I even had enough guts to go abroad. The idea of completely uprooting myself from this campus to start over again for just a semester or year somewhere else is not very appealing to me. I would also worry about the sense of possible disappointment that might result in it. I’ve met many people who have gone abroad and then become very bitter about the fact that UMass is nothing like the exotic place they just came back from. These people tend to be pretty miserable and are not pleasant to talk to.

I think the icing on the cake, and the biggest mistake I could have possibly made this year, was when my roommate told me that I should be going to job fairs. I figured that since I was planning on attending graduate school I didn’t need to go to job fairs to look for a job. Well, it’s one thing to plan for graduate school but actually getting accepted is another story. The idea that I wouldn’t be able to get into a graduate school never crossed my mind. I evaluated the application process to be similar to the undergraduate application system where you will apply to some tough schools and then to safety schools that you know will accept you. Nope. There is a chance that you will not get accepted into graduate school and that you will need to find a job. Selling yourself at job fairs is the best way to ensure that if all else fails, you will have a job.

That last one really scared me. I feel incredible sympathy for the seniors on this campus who are planning on graduate school but didn’t think of all of this stuff during their junior year. Now that I’m aware, I have something new to be stressed out about. This weekend I’ll have to go out and buy some GRE books and go online to research some graduate degree programs. I hope that this information was informative to someone out there, because much of it was news to me. And now I’m a whole semester closer to the fate of graduation, which means that an even harsher dose of reality is on its way.