Bulbagarden Forums - Blogs - Ranger Report by Hitomi

Guys I have a serious question. [about grad school]

Hitomi — Fri, 25 May 2012 01:23:07 GMT

So back in February I applied to graduate school at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. I had my letters of recommendation, completed application, GRE scores (I took them in November), everything. Back in December, I had contacted my undergraduate university to have them send my transcript to IUPUI and a couple of other schools. This was before I realized that my undergraduate adviser hadn't given me a grade for my internship (which I had completed and had my portfolio turned in by mid September) until two weeks after I had sent the application. So on April 11, I got an email from IUPUI saying that they had received my application and it was complete and all that but my transcript didn't have my degree on it so could I send them another one?

Now, five weeks later, I still haven't heard anything back. At all. School starts in August and I need to know like yesterday if I got into the public history program. (If not, I have to apply for the non-degree seeking program, take a few grad classes, and try again for the spring semester, and I'd like to do that sooner rather than later.)

So my question is this: about how long do grad schools take to inform students of their admissions status? I've heard that the longer it is before you get a letter, the more likely it is that you're going to be rejected, so should I be worried? And is it a good idea to contact the office and ask them what the delay is or should I just wait and see? I'm getting so stressed about this and I don't really know what to do. I mean, my adviser and my professors are more than confident I'll get into the program (~3.7/4.0 GPA, internship experience, decent GRE scores in anything not having to do with concentric circles and geometry in general which doesn't matter because historians don't believe in mathematics, adviser being BFFs with the director of public history at IUPUI, undergraduate teaching assistantships) but why has it taken them this long to reach a decision...? ;_;

On a totally different note, this picture is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Going camping this week!

Hitomi — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:26:30 GMT

It's spring break for my little brother and sister, so I'm taking them to the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to go camping.

Be back Thursday night.

Hopefully y'all don't miss me too much. I'll try to not get eaten by a bear or fall off a cliff or anything.

I am officially a college graduate!

Hitomi — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 22:29:46 GMT

I have joined the... er... realm of the scholarly... or something. I don't know, I stopped listening as soon as the university president started talking. It was something like that.

I graduated cum laude too. :D

But jeez, college graduation ceremonies are painfully boring.

Grad school, here I come...

For my brother's birthday...

Hitomi — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:06:28 GMT

...I bought him Skyward Sword. Also two Butterfingers.

That makes me an awesome sister, right?

~~I totally didn't buy it so I could play it when he was done or anything~~

sigh

Hitomi — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:12:15 GMT

I took the GRE this morning (the test you have to take to get into grad school) and I don't think I did very well. After the test, the computer gave me two raw scores for my Analytical and Quantitative reasoning skills and I scored woefully low. Like, I'm positive I did better than it said I did on it. So, I don't know, I'm really worried about it. I'm not very good at taking standardized tests, and I don't think they give an accurate representation of an individual's skills. What good is it going to do a historian to know how to measure the angles of an imbedded trapezoid in a circle, anyway? I'm banking on my written essays to be scored high so the schools I sent my scores to see that just because I suck at geometry and precalculus (which I haven't even taken in nearly six years) doesn' t mean I'm totally useless.

Guess I'll have to hope that my dream school will ignore the GRE scores and focus more on the things I've achieved that actually measure my skills. Like the fact that I won two awards at my undergraduate university for a paper I wrote on George Rogers Clark (Outstanding Undergraduate Submission in US History and Overall Best Paper at the conference I presented it to), my 3.7/4.0 GPA, my internship and teaching assistantship experience, and the fact that most of my professors think I'm God's greatest gift to the history department (in the form of letters of recommendation, anyway).

Has anyone taken the GRE, out of curiosity? I know most users here are still in high school/college, but I just wanted to know how much the GRE score affects your potential for getting into good programs.

Damn it, North Dakota.

Hitomi — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:33:55 GMT

Why is it forty degrees, it's June.

That being said, working for the National Park Service is badass. The people here rock my world. I just wish visitors would stop assuming I know how to get to Yellowstone. Or what the weather's like there.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to. Allow me to sporadically lurk for a while longer.

Hitomi gets to be a REAL ranger this summer

Hitomi — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:27:21 GMT

Not that anyone cares, but I got an internship this summer at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota! I get to be a real park ranger! (...or a park ranger intern.)

Also, I am turning 22 this August and I only just got my driver's license today. (After only one try, even!)

I wish I didn't inherit my mom's driving anxiety. I would have gotten it as a teenager like all the other teens. :<

Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds has come to an end. [Also, Hitomi is smart. Or something.]

Hitomi — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:07:56 GMT

I'm bummed. Now what am I supposed to look forward to on Wednesdays? :[

I guess at least they came as close as possible (for Yu-Gi-Oh, anyway) to making Yusei x Aki a canon pairing. That made me so happy I can't even express it.

"Aki... there's no one in the world with a smile better than yours."
"You're the one who put that smile on my face, Yusei."

There's a lot of speculation that they kissed during the last scene. I think I'd like to believe they did as well.

In other news, I won an award for writing the "Outstanding paper for the Student History Conference" at my university. And I got $175 for this paper. (It was about George Rogers Clark. If you don't know who that is, I'm not surprised in the least.) Yeeeeeahhhh! I'm also an "Outstanding Senior" for my high GPA. I got an official looking pen. Laaaame, the Outstanding Juniors got official looking mugs. =/

(Man are my professors going to miss me when I'm gone. :3)

It's apparently a "Snowpocalypse" or...something.

Hitomi — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:15:53 GMT

So there's this massive storm currently hovering over the Midwest right now, pelting us with freezing rain. It mostly feels like tiny shards of ice are repeatedly hitting you in the hands/face/boobs/whatever. Because that's pretty much what it is. Anyway, it gets better. (If you wait around a few minutes you'll see the picture I want to share with you.)

The Weather Channel predicts a storm of epic proportions that will affect roughly a third of the population of the country and to prepare for some sort of snowpocalypse or something. Shortly thereafter, my university sent out a notification that told us to basically make sure we had plenty of food storage, batteries, candles, and blankets in case we all find ourselves trapped in a horrific Day After Tomorrow scenario where we all freeze to death. Well okay, I'm mostly paraphrasing. IT STILL GETS BETTER!

So I had to go to Wal-Mart because I'm out of milk and I will cry if I don't get my Honey Bunches of Oats for breakfast (plus I'm sort of out of any kind of meat). Not fully realizing I was walking into a Y2K scenario or something I entered Wal-Mart, and mass panic ensued. Fortunately, they had milk (but not a lot of it). BUT (and here is the picture!)

In case you can't tell, that's the bread isle.

No bread, no eggs, no bottled water, scarce D batteries, low cereal, no fruit snacks, low on crackers, and for some reason, no boneless/skinless chicken breasts. Which is a real shame, since I really needed some chicken breasts.

People really need to calm down.

Furthermore, apparently every school in the state of Indiana is closed tomorrow... except my school. (But it doesn't seem to value the safety of its students when it comes to things like this, so I shouldn't be too surprised, considering school has been cancelled exactly once in the past ten years due to inclement weather.)

Wo is me.

B'awww. ),:

Hitomi — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:07:59 GMT

Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs was not at Walmart today. Nor was it at Toys 'R Us. They don't expect a shipment until Wednesday evening despite the fact that the release date was today.

...well, I guess this is God's way of telling me to do my reading for my test on Wednesday instead of playing Pokemon.

Still a bummer. I want to play this game so much.

Today is Red's birthday

Hitomi — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:37:18 GMT

I think it's pretty groovy to share a birthday with Red. :D

Also, a couple of my dear friends drew me a picture of me as a Pokemon trainer (with my favorite Pokemon!) for my birthday.

That's pretty much a cartoonized version of what I look like irl. Even the clothing, which was probably intentional, as I love that workout suit. :3

And my dad didn't even call to wish me a happy birthday. I guess it's pretty easy to tell how important I am to him. But honestly, every time he calls, Mom gets upset, so I'm very glad he didn't call.

My brother almost died yesterday.

Hitomi — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:44:42 GMT

On the highway on the way to his girlfriend's house, going 60 MPH, my 17-year-old brother's front tire blew out, sending him spinning off the road into a forklift on a farm. The car was completely crushed - particularly on the drivers' side - and the woman who called 911 (the owner of the farm) told the dispatcher that she was sure the driver was dead.

She was pretty surprised when he climbed out of the car on his own and started digging through it for his bag.

He's covered in gashes on his entire left side, has tiny glass shards in his wounds, and he has bruises where his seatbelt was, but he has no broken bones. The paramedics say that 1) if his window hadn't been down (he has no AC in the car) and 2) if he hadn't been wearing his seatbelt, he would be dead.

The point is, please, please, please, please wear your seatbelt. Some bruises are well worth not flying through a window onto the pavement.

It's been a quick year...

Hitomi — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:02:54 GMT

I can't believe how quick this year went by. A year ago today, a good friend of mine from high school was killed in a car accident. You just never want to see something like that on the morning news. I never thought something like that would happen to someone I loved and cherished. I guess no one does, though.

Recently, someone posted to this friend's facebook wall about how nice the weather was that day and how they used to go swimming together on days like that when they were younger... I almost cried. Her whole wall is covered in posts like that - her mother posted something on Mother's Day about how she was sad that she didn't have her little girl to celebrate Mother's Day with. I DID cry that time.

But then, I realized that all the memories I have of her were happy or funny - we used to try and avoid an annoying girl in the lunchroom, we screwed up an AP Chem lab and ended up pouring 50 mL of sodium hydroxide all over my arms, she used to mooch gum off me after lunch. I loved having her as a locker neighbor. I still owe her a pack of gum from graduation, now that I think about it...

I miss her terribly. But you know, I'm glad I have these memories of her. They make me smile.

How did these people even get into college??

Hitomi — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:01:04 GMT

So, the other day, I was walking to class and I overheard a conversation behind me where a girl was whining about how she had to read "the whole entire Constitution!" and how unfair it was. As I was attempting to process how it was unfair that she was being required to read the Law of her own country, she then piped in with this gem:

"I mean, I don't have time to sit and read some document that a bunch of guys wrote where all they did was whine about all the mean things Britain did to them."

I really, really wanted to tell her that maybe, just maybe, she should read the Constitution.

And then today, some kid in the class I'm a teaching assistant in interrupted the professor's lecture on the end of WWII/start of the Cold War to ask:

"Excuse me, but this Eisenhower. He was the president before Truman, yes?"

I wonder frequently how some people got into college in the first place, let alone the same university I got into. It just makes me feel really, really stupid.

I AM SUPER TACO 8D

Hitomi — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:37:49 GMT

Hello all. This isn't a Christmas blog because my Christmases are never interesting enough to blog about. It is, rather, me listing my frustrations with obnoxious Japanese fangirls(boys)/self-proclaimed "otakus." There are thousands of them all over the internet, and generally whenever I come across one I usually ignore them.

Now, I know that I have my fair share of obnoxious fangirl moments, but I mean the types of fangirls who seem to think that they know everything about Japanese culture just because they watch Ouran and are taking Japanese 101 through a mediocre college program and get insulted/flame you every time you say anything that remotely sounds insulting about Japan in any way.

Okay, so here's my problem. My roommate and I have been good friends for about two years now. I met her my freshman year when I was walking down the hall in my dorm, her door was open, and I stopped because she was playing Kingdom Hearts. We became good friends and ultimately roommates. But then she started taking Japanese class and then she became awful to be around. She became that "UBER OTAKU!" that I described above. She started hanging out with Japanese exchange students and comes back late at night and wakes me up and then gushes about how "the Japanese girls thought that because I said 'Sou desu ne!' I was SO KAWAII because they thought it was SO KAWAII that I know Japanese!" (Exact quote. Not kidding.) This happens all the time. ALL THE TIME. NEVER MIND THAT "SOU DESU NE" IS LIKE THE MOST BASIC PHRASE THAT EVERYONE LEARNS ON THEIR FIRST DAY OF JAPANESE 101.

Ugh.

I don't mean to sound like I'm pissed that she is hanging out with Japanese kids. I honestly don't care. She's entitled to have other friends than me (and right now, I'm GLAD she does because it means she's in the room less). I just don't want to hear her talking about how "SUGOI" all of her friends are because they're Japanese and complain about how she doesn't have enough time to finish her schoolwork because she's too busy watching Sailor Moon with her new besties. Also I'm frustrated that she was accepted to go to Japan not because I want to go (I certainly do not) but because I feel like she's being rewarded for her C average, 12-credit hour, 8 hours of work a week while I'm struggling to get an internship when I bust my butt for a 3.9 GPA while working 20 hours a week with 15 credit hours.

Now I just don't know how to deal with her. I want to slap her every time she starts using fangirl Japanese and tell her to get a reality check.

I feel like this blog sounded like I was whining. I guess I was. But I needed to say it because I just don't have the heart to tell her. And what little bit I do tell her, she ignores.

On a different note, it snowed today.

Hitomi out.