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At this point in the story, the storylines become more pronounced and I’m telling two distinct stories. One is the story about how I evolve in regards to relationships. It’s about how I really dig in and I “do the work” as they say in my pursuit of finding “my person”. The other story is my journey to Boston. So right here we’re going to diverge, we’re going to go through the same period of time twice starting with my journey to Boston. I’ve written it meshed together and it just gets too confusing.
I go back home and I am more certain than ever that I’m going to move to Boston. That fall I study for the GMAT. I spend all my nights and weekends for months studying for this test. I don’t do anything fun or social for the entire fall. My score from college has expired and I’m over here trying to relearn geometry past thirty. My life is not what I want it to be in the slightest and I have to get out of here. Almost all of the choices I’ve made up to this point were for other people, not for me and that makes this period of life even more miserable. I have found that I’m far more okay if things don’t work out if I made the choice for me but when I make choices for others and they don’t work out…I can’t describe how much more that sucks. I feel so stuck in my circumstances and I’m fighting like hell to get them to change…but they aren’t. I’m stuck waiting for a new life to arrive. I feel like I’m metaphorically trapped in quicksand and I’m trying to un-do all the choices I made and make new ones for myself but it’s way harder to make this drastic u-turn than one would think. When I decide I want to do something. I lock in. I sacrifice. Nothing is getting between me and Boston.
When I say I studied, I mean I STUDIED. I have to admit I’m a nerd and I love school and learning and can I admit…I might enjoy studying. It’s a game to me, a game to see how much I can learn…how much information I can cram into my brain. It’s a bit of mental gymnastics and learning testing strategies. I can be so social but I can also really love keeping to myself at times…especially when it’s in regards to reaching a goal. I can get really disciplined. I really enjoy the art of achieving goals. I enjoy the process even more than I like the victory of achieving goals. I sign up to take the test the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Not how I want to spend my break but I’ve decided to go back to grad school in what most would call the last minute.
If you do this “the right way”, you probably decide to go to grad school over a year ahead of applying. You study for this test and give yourself multiple tries to achieve your highest scores. You vet and research all the programs to make sure they align with your career objectives and you select very carefully the places you want to go. You perhaps find extracurriculars or take classes or volunteer in areas that align with your career goals and what’s important for admission to those schools. You probably visit campuses and admissions. I think I had to have recommendation letters. I think you’re probably supposed to plan this all out very carefully and methodically with plenty of time to prepare. At this point I’m already in my thirties and I’ve already been waiting for a year to move to Boston and quite frankly I don’t feel like I have another year to sit and wait. I’m frantically trying to rebuild my life and to catch up to where I think I’m supposed to be.
Nothing is getting between me and Boston.
This year for Thanksgiving is a light crowd to begin with and then the stomach bug hits. There is only one other person well enough for Thanksgiving with me. We drive around to all the restaurants in town and they all have 3 hour waits and I need to study so I eat a Red Barron pizza on Thanksgiving by myself. It is the worst Thanksgiving ever.
In the weeks leading up to this, I take practice test after practice test and I get a 690 over and over again. Seven hundred is the number that means you have a chance to get into Harvard or MIT or any of those Ivy League programs. I show up at the testing center full of nerves. I walk in to register thinking I’ll take my test in 30 minutes and they let me know that they were locked out of the building that morning due to a miscommunication that the testing center would be open that Saturday even though it’s a holiday weekend. They can’t give me an estimated time to come back. They started the day two hours late and I just have to sit there until it’s my turn. Needless to say, this did not help my nerves. I generally sign up for these tests mid-day because I’m not a morning person. I’d eaten prior to arriving so I’d be ready to go and not hungry. And then I’m forced to sit and wait…
It’s finally my turn to take the test and my nerves get the best of me and for the first time I am certain I’m having panic attacks. Over the prior two years, I’ve been having escalating physical symptoms of anxiety. I am not a medical professional and none of this is medical advice…this is my personal experience with anxiety. Panic attacks are often portrayed in movies and what I think of as anxiety is someone who worries a lot….those may be symptoms or how it manifests for some people…but how it manifested for me was very different. I struggled with physical anxiety symptoms. I was having panic attacks and the person sitting across from me on a date had no idea. We talked about it one time and he told me he couldn’t ever tell anything was wrong. I’m very good at masking my panic attacks but in my experience panic attacks are my personal hell. There is no worse feeling than having no control over your body. No one knows why I’ve had a sudden onset of panic attacks (yet) …I’ve never had one before much less so many panic attacks.
I have never crashed and burned in my life like this. This experience is so detrimental to me because if the entire world burns down around me the one thing that I can hold on to is that I am smart and I am competent and I will figure it out. No matter what I can always find a solution. I’m not confident in most arenas but I am always confident that if all else fails I am smart enough to figure it out. It’s one of the only things that I feel confident in…and this experience destroys the one thing that I’m clinging to for dear life as the rest of my world has collapsed around me…I lose total confidence in myself and a very important piece of my identity. I can’t quite pinpoint where exactly rock bottom of my life was but if I had to guess…rock bottom feels right about here. My brother calls me excitedly to see if I got the 700 and I answer crying because I’ve never scored remotely this poorly on a test. I’m really good at standardized testing.
It’s the first time, I’m opening myself up for full and total rejection in an arena where I’ve only known success.
I can’t retake the test for a few weeks and this is the absolute last chance I have to retake it before the deadline. My terrible scores have already been sent to schools. This is awful. I don’t open a book for the next few weeks. I can’t think about studying for this without massive anxiety. I go to the doctor and I tell him that I’m there for panic attacks. I could write a whole post on the courage it takes to go to a doctor or go to a therapist and ask for help. I have so much to say on this subject and the support network around me that encouraged me to make the appointment. I tried medicine and it didn’t go well. My doctor is great, there just wasn’t enough time to figure out which medication worked best for me before I had to take this test again…I have to walk back into that room where I faced failure three weeks before and nothing has changed. There is no reason why I won’t have a panic attack again.
I call my sister crying a day or two before the next test date and I tell her I can’t do this. She asks if I can get a refund…I cannot. She tells me you don’t have to make a decision until the morning of…just wake up and see how you feel. She tells me I have nothing to lose at this point. Here is another point in time…I want to tell you I am not the hero in my story. I choose to surround myself with really good people….and those people remind me of who I am and what I’m capable of…and then I choose to do the really uncomfortable hard things. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I abandoned my dream of grad school and Boston…right here. It was very tempting to choose that. It was tempting to give up but there’s just something in me which I believe is a survivor mentally that just can’t let me quit. What if I just said I can’t….I can’t sit through another panic attack. I can’t face more failure. I can’t make myself do something I just don’t want to do. What if I let fear define me?
I have a saying I tell myself…. ”It’s okay to be scared….it’s not okay to let fear dictate my actions.” My parents taught me this…they aren’t into sayings like that (laughing emoji) but the premise…I know I learned from them.
I retake the GMAT and I match my score from undergrad. It’s not a 700 but it’s good enough. This completes my applications right before we head into Christmas. I apply to 4 schools in Boston and the ever-so-prestigious Wharton School of Business. I remember watching a segment my Dad had on tv about the Wharton School of Business when I was maybe in high school…so I shoot my shot. In high school I applied to 6 schools for undergrad and then I applied to 5 for my Masters of Accountancy program in college. I applied to some really good schools but I’d say not good enough because I never received a rejection letter. This is the first time I’m testing my limits. It’s the first time, I’m opening myself up for full and total rejection in an arena where I’ve only known success.