the future is horrifying

[some_stars]

Doing research and making phone calls to Montessori schools (and following up by email with the application I already sent in) is too scary, so I'm putting it off by doing the much less urgent research into graduate programs, of which I have narrowed my choices down to seven. You'd think NYC schools of education might coordinate their information sessions--at least a few of the bigger ones might, just out of courtesy, but no. I'd have to spent a month in the city to catch them all, which would sort of defeat the purpose of getting work experience down here so I can have another recommendation in the bag by the end of December when I send in my first applications. I need a teaching assistant job and I need to have been at it (and not failing) for at least three months when I ask my supervisor to write nice things about me. The volunteering will do in a pinch, because it is in fact a job where I teach and wrangle children, but it's not as relevant as an actual classroom setting and there wouldn't be any one person I could go to who could testify to my awesomeness, because most of my work there once the school year starts will be on my own, without any other volunteers or supervisors present.

But even this easier, less threatening because less immediately important, task is just...it is so much information and so many pages and words. It doesn't help that I'm on not my computer, because using my dad's study upstairs is cooler and less cluttered and has a more comfortable chair, but the keyboard is all wrong and the screen is brighter and every few minutes I have to run away and hide in some pillows for a few minutes. It is not fair for my brain to be running at hyper panic speed like this, I took a klonopin and everything and I need to get something done.

Also this is several months premature but if anyone has any advice on what a "statement of purpose" even IS, much less is supposed to look like, I would welcome it. My main question is how much style am I allowed to put in there? Can it be a little bit literary, like a personal essay? Or would that just annoy them? If I can give myself free rein to write it with my own natural voice (like I did with my undergraduate essay) that would help SO much, but maybe wouldn't be professional enough. And how much of it is about self-advertisement, because don't you already communicate those things on the rest of the application? God, there are just so MANY thing to be anxious about right now, I don't even know where to start panicking. Only that I must.

Well, maybe if this tailspin gets bad enough I'll escape by writing some fic. That would be something. (Or working on my original novel idea hahahahahaaaaa no. God, fucking plots.)

Comments

[vass]

Can I suggest that you write it in your own voice and style too, then when that's done you can look at it and decide if you want to change it up, and maybe run it by someone who's been through that process, if you know anyone?

Do you know harriet_vane? She's a teacher in New York, so if you don't have anyone else I could hook you guys up. She teaches high school, not elementary, but that's closer than nothing.