Yesterday was a rough entry, filled with frustrations and self-hatred. Much of it was misdirected, I had a million tabs open, and accidentally had the html editor open in two tabs, but was only writing in the one. I closed the one I was writing in after finishing the post, and then accidentally saved the other one that I had opened, overwriting the first entry. Everything is fine, though. It was an extremely minor setback that I let frustrate me perhaps a little too much, but regardless I'm better now and more excited than ever to update my blog! So, in what is a much better introduction to this diary: I'm Lexi; I'm 21, and a senior in college, graduating this may. The fact that I'm a senior graduating in roughly 1 month has done a number on my mental health recently, filling me with a near constant, and ever-growing dread. I'm being thrust into an uncaring world equipped with a Bachelor's degree and enough work experience to land an entry-level position in a field that I'm not interested in. Thrilling, and daunting that it may be, I would honestly have preferred to have more time in school. This is no doubt due to my original plans, which have been ruthlessly upended. I was supposed to go to grad school; earn my Master's in Applied Behavior Analysis, and be out in 2-years ready to start working as a therapist, saving my spare salary to afford the monsterous tuition necessary to get a PhD. Or, to properly support myself assuming I can get a into a fellowship. So, certain my high GPA and time spent being the teachers pet to dozens of overly enthusiastic professors would land me into my dream grad school, that I quickly applied, leaving all my eggs perched comfortably atop that tower of faintly wobbling cards. Well, the cards fell, and with them were the eggs, which are now staining my floor. Fortunately for me, I was given enough information from the head of the program I applied to relating to my rejection letter that I know where I went wrong: too many people applied to the program. Remember how I mentioned work experience? Well because hundreds of people applied to a program that only accepts dozens, many times the amount expected, the powers that be within the program decided to exclude every applicant that lacked in work or research experience. Oh sure, I had research experience, but not in the right field. I coded models in python that predicted migration patterns, I didn't study how to help autistic people like me, I was hoping grad school would give me those opportunities.
So, I'm at square one. Okay, not quite square one, I'm at square 2. I'll soon have a bachelor's, which will make it much easier for me to land a job during ABA, which will grand me to experience needed to actually be accepted next year. All the same, this puts me a year behind schedule, and that itself is a hard pill to swallow. As it stands, I won't have my Master's for 3 years at minimum, rather than my expected 2, which puts a hold on my plans until I can manage to get accepted. With this experience, I have learned not to apply to just one program. It may have worked for undergrad, but I grossly underestimated the competitiveness of good grad schools. Live and learn, so they say.
Asside from stressing about school, life has been great! I'm in the best and longest relationship of my life, only a month away (almost exactly at the time of writing) from 3-years with the most amazing man I've ever met. May 11th, 2019, at 6:56 PM, I asked him out (if you're curious how I remember the exact time that I asked him out: I asked him out over discord, so I had the timestamp, and used it for a romantic gesture on our first anniversary. We live together though, we just used discord to communicate before we did). I met him in college, in 2018. We were both barely out of high school, and he hated me. I talked a lot in class, and seemed to have an opinion on everything, which he couldn't stand. At the end of our first class together, and one conversation between us, I had figured nothing would come of our would-be friendship, and he was happy to be rid of me. But, come the next semester, we would run into each other again in a philosophy class we shared. In that class, my frequent talking grew on him, and with that, the floodgates were opened. At the end of that semester, we were dating, and now three years later, we're living together, and at least I am happier than I've ever been. That may seem strange considering the self-hatred exhibited in the previous blogpost, but I assure you, I used to be much worse. I'm sure that I'll go into more detail on the day of our anniversary itself, so I'll keep the details limited to what I've said now until then.
and with that, I'll close this diary update. I'm feeling much happier than I was, and have fully forgiven myself for the crime of saving the wrong file. So with that said, I hope you have a great morning, afternoon, evening, or night, and whereever you are, whenever you are, I hope you're happy :)
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