I'M IN!!

For Christmas I received three career books so I would figure out how to get my life on track. I'm not saying that it was off the track but I was starting to complain that I didn't know where the track was going. The books were meant to coach me to determine a decent strategy of what the next few years would look like.

To tell you the truth, I didn't get through 10% from those books. What happened is I decided to put all my chips onto one number on the roulette. Well maybe the metaphor is not exact but point is I decided I wanted to try to get into Grad School. This idea was never really in the forefront of my brain because simply, before this, I couldn't go. In Canada, in order to get into any kind of Master's program, I needed to have at least a B average which I didn't have. The trend I noticed throughout uni was that I would get decent marks in anything in the Arts and abysmal marks if I swayed too far from the Faculty. I'm simply not good at memorising things and then regurgitating them.

Before I continue my story, one important thing to keep in mind is what kind of situation the world is in right now. Because of the recession and unemployment being higher than before, more people have angled to go back to school. Plus, not only is demand rising for entry into school (hence the competitiveness), schools have lowered the amount of available entry positions because of government restrictions thus making it even more difficult. If you're in school right now, congratulations because it's really competitive out there.

The reason I started to think about going back to school was I somehow came up with the idea that maybe school in Japan would be different. As it turns out, I was partially right. For Japanese applicants to university it is very similar to the way it is in Canada. However, I would be applying as a foreign student and thus my application would be weighed differently. I couldn't find any stipulations that mentioned a minimum average to apply.

The strategy went as such: First, I made a list of all the schools in Japan that offered a program related to the words INTERNATIONAL, FOREIGN or DIPLOMACY. I figured with my international experience and my interest in the world this was right up my alley. Second, I scanned their website looking for any sign that the school had an English program or at least had an English version of their website. As you can probably guess from the list of 100ish in my database I contacted about 30. From the 30 about 10 replied. My e-mail to them was very clear: A) is your stuff in English? B) when does your stuff start? As far as I was concerned if they failed these then there was no point. Third, I narrowed the list down to about four universities and then eventually three. Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Waseda Univeristy in Tokyo and Sophia University in Tokyo.

After my trip to Tokyo last February (which I promise I will write about), I wasn't crazy about going to live there. However, if the school accepted me then, I guess I would relocate. Helene was very against moving to Tokyo and thus all her enthusiasm was placed on Ritsumeikan. What's funny is that, when this whole thing started, I heard about this school and considered it the lowest contender at first glance. Eventually, it became the top choice. All my work with the database was essentially useless.

As soon as I finished my old job and moved into the new place, the plan was to work on these applications and make myself sound so much more awesome then I could possibly be. It turns out, I spent the better part of that month trying to understand what they wanted me to write then actually writing it. Most schools wanted at least 3 essays explaining what you want and why. Plus, they wanted a research proposal. I ran around, read lots of websites (using a stolen signal) and constantly writing and rewriting the application. As you can guess, this was not fun and all kinds of self esteem issues started to come to the surface.

In the end I only applied to two universities, Waseda and Ritsumeikan. At the last moment I had second thoughts on Sophia.

Both May and June were filled with ongoing stress and anxiety. Constant "what if" questions, thinking of alternatives and pretty much being anxious. Mid-May, I got an answer from Waseda saying thanks but no thanks, thus everything came down to the university I originally didn't care about.

I thought the results were suppose to come out on Monday July 21st. My impatience was driving me nuts and on Thursday I cracked and went to the uni to see what the results were. After getting lost trying to get there, |I finally tracked down the right secretary who told me I had to wait till the following day for the results to be released. Angry, I came back first thing the following day ... where I found this piece of paper. I brought it to their attention that an English program should have its announcement paper in English (they laughed). When I saw this paper, I impatiently asked the first person who was walking by to tell me what it said. The girl I chose spoke no English and blah blahed something to me but overall her mood was positive as opposed to being apologetic. Optimistic, I went in to the office and asked them to explain the paper to me.

Turns out I was accepted! I will start uni in September in the International Relations Master's Program at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.
I'm really happy that I can continue to live in my new awesome place. I love it here!! I'm currently trying to get my head in the right zone to do what I need to do. In two weeks I'm going back to Canada to get some books and make a game plan. Its going to be a crazy year.