#fail

well.  i got the final phd rejection email this morning.

technically, there is hope, i guess... i've been accepted to one master's program, and waitlisted for one phd program.  but i can't afford another master's, and i consider the waitlisting incredibly tenuous and effectively another shut door.

well, it is lent.  time to learn how to die, i guess.

part of my... despair?  that might be too strong.  part of my intense disappointment and also bewilderment is that for most of my life, i didn't have much of a direction.  my parents always said, "when you go away to college..." and i went to college full of ideals about higher education and got myself a real, traditional education.  i walked out reading french, latin, and greek, with a head full of over 2000 years of literature, art, and philosophy.

but i had no network, no connections, and honestly no real professional ambitions.  i knew i hated secretarial and administrative work.

eventually i did go work for my church, and i felt a call to teaching, so i went back to get more education.  i graduated from seminary last spring.  but in the meantime, we had moved, and my church had collapsed and i had been deeply, deeply hurt in the process.  once again i had no network, no connections, and still not much professional ambition.

but i did feel i had ideas, and i had spent 3 of the 4 years in seminary teaching both in the church and in a classroom, so i spent the summer and fall researching and applying for phd programs.  it was always a possibility after my first degree, but i had been immature and unprepared (and, quite frankly, not realizing that i was dealing with the onset of clinical depression) at the time and my grades kind of sucked.

the sucking grades might be part of what crippled me this time around, although i also got some unintentional feedback that implied my statement of purpose essay was mis-focused.  my seminary grades were much better and i had hoped they might balance out, especially being so much more recent.

i thought i had a direction the last several months.  obviously, i was wrong.

i'd like to have a direction.  i've spent most of my adult life just walking through the first door that opened because i thought i needed "something to do," "a job," whatever, without really thinking about the future or a direction or anything like that.  the hard part now is going to be not doing that again, not grasping at the first straw that looks like it will pay the bills.

i just wish i did know what to do.