Well, grad school decision letter number one has come and gone, and I didn't get into Yale. As you'll recall, of the 36 linguistic applicants last fall, only TWO were accepted, so I wasn't holding out much hope anyway. My official personal predictions, again, were that I'd be rejected from Harvard, Yale, and Brown and accepted to UF, U Pitt, and UNC. The jury's still out on number seven, Georgetown, which is my number-one choice - they have about a 38% acceptance rate for graduate students, so I have a decent shot, but I truly can't even make an educated guess on my chances at that one.

Truth be told, I'm a little relieved. I know I'm going to have to work hard wherever I go, but I'm realizing more and more these days exactly how easy I've had it throughout my entire college career so far. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I barely have to work at all here at UF, especially compared to what I did for IB in high school. Had I been accepted to Yale as one of those lucky two Ph.D students, I would have spent the next six months being horribly nervous as to whether or not I was up to the challenge; all my awesome credentials here mean nothing there. That's not to say I didn't want to get in - of course I did, if only because they would have given me a full scholarship - so it's a disappointment, yes, but something of a relief too, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, one down, six to go. We'll see if my predictions hold true. I've said all along that I'd be happy at any of the schools, since they all have their own big pros and cons, and I stand by that statement. But... keep those fingers crossed for Georgetown, anyway.