Day-to-day things are fine... classes going well, some fun weekends, the usual apartment goofiness... but I feel an overarching sense of anxiousness. I sit in class... and I wonder if it'll all be good enough. I just don't know. I'm taking such a roundabout path to try and get into grad school. Medical physics and dosimetry are such specific fields, for one thing... then throw in the fact that I've taken off of school for the past two years to play music, bring in my "eh" GPA, and... I just don't know where it leaves me. I will keep going... I'm freaking out about the GRE less and finally started studying this past weekend (I haven't registered for it yet, but as long as I take it by December I should be good for application deadlines, and I think ~6 weeks will be enough time to study)... and will apply to about 20 programs (10 medical physics, 10 dosimetry) this winter as classes at Manhattan and SUNY wind down. And then I'll have to wait until spring to find out if all this was... well, good enough. I sure hope it will have been...
Frankly, I'm just not sure if I'll get into any of the medical physics programs. My grades are only o.k. and sometimes I feel like "that's that." On a recent upswing I looked a little deeper at the admissions policies for all the programs and started feeling a bit more positive about maybe two of them... argh! I just don't know. It's not going to stop me from applying. And I'm wondering if, in the event of only getting accepted to a dosimetry program, I could complete that, find a job shortly thereafter, work -with- a medical physicist as a dosimetrist does, designing treatment plans, for a little while, then possibly re-apply to the physics programs, with (relevant) work experience under my belt and maybe have a better shot at getting in...?
Part of my doubts stem from my questioning the quality of the classes I'm taking now. They're all pertinent to medical physics/dosimetry, whether cited as pre-reqs on the program websites (chemistry, anatomy and physiology, intro to computer science) or more directly applicable like atomic & nuclear physics and radiation biology, but... there are times it's apparent that SUNY Purchase and Manhattan just aren't Brandeis. I guess I shouldn't name names on a public journal like this but I have one teacher who is a bit of a flake. That and, plain and simple, a course of the same title at Brandeis would be more challenging. So I'm sure I'll do fine in the class but I do wish I was getting more out of it. The physics class is good... I like that there's only three people in it, and I like the professor. The first half of the semester will have been mostly review (modern physics, wave mechanics, etc.), which I do feel funny about sometimes, but honestly, I think it will have been good for me, since it has been so long since I've studied that material. The second half will be particle physics which I haven't studied so, I look forward to that. The radiation bio course has more of a straight-ahead feel... 10-question quizzes, a paper due at some point, those kinds of things... although not extremely difficult, I am getting a lot of out it, as it's arguably the class most pertinent to the field I want to get into. I really like the textbook, for one thing. And I am meeting with the teacher on Wednesday to discuss my application plans. I am planning on asking either her or the physics professor to write my third letter of recommendation come application time. ...I am realizing now that this was something I had been worrying about in months prior, enough so that I was considering not even applying to any of the programs, but I have since locked down two recommendations from Brandeis and am, as stated above, now figuring a third from Manhattan should come pretty easily. So... that's good.
With all of this in mind, I can't help but wonder, at times, what would have happened if I had gone to a different school as an undergraduate. If I had gone to a school like Manhattan, which although good, isn't quite a Brandeis, and had gotten a 3.3 GPA, ...? Then what? A big "what if," admittedly (what one isn't?), but it does make me think. My GRE score wouldn't have changed, fine, but I bet I would've felt a lot better about myself and may have applied to graduate schools right away. Hm. The question is, would I actually have been in better shape admissions-wise? Water over the dam, I guess. We'll see if a 3.3 average over just 6 classes, some of which are first-year ones, will impress anyone. Mom seems to think that my "unique story" and the fact that I may be a bit older than the typical applicant ("adult students are better students"...?!) will set me apart/help my case but, and I could've summed up these four paragraphs with just this phrase, I'm just not sure...
I wanted to write a bit more, on music I've been listening to, and recent weekends, and other stuff, but this is long enough as it is so, stay tuned...
