Dreamers of the Golden Dream

I cried again today.  This time, happy tears!

My friend Katie, whom I've written about before, found out today that she has also been admitted to our PhD program!!!!!

I don't believe anyone really understands what Katie has been through these past two months.  She and I both know how hard we each worked to make ourselves competent PhD applicants.  We both know that we applied during an unbelievably competitive year for UMd English PhD admissions.  (So our professors keep telling us.)  We both know what it was like to get an email that said we were on the waitlist.  But only Katie knows what it was like to congratulate me when I found out that I had been admitted... and then to have to wait another month before the decision was made about her application.  Thankfully, they made the right decision.

Two weeks ago, she listened to me grumble and moan for several days about trying to get through the final stretches of my Cather writing project and never once said to me "Stop all this complaining: at least you know you get to continue next year."  Instead, she encouraged me to stick with it.  Yesterday, when she saw me falling apart after my defense, she didn't say, "Get over it, Liz.  You'll have other opportunities to prove yourself."  She sat me down, listened to me vent, and assured me she understood my emotional investment in the project and told me my professors did, too.

Katie's not just a very good English graduate student, though she is certainly that.  She's also a very good friend.  I'm excited and fortunate to have her on this journey with me for the next four years-- on both accounts.

("Dreamers of the Golden Dream" is the first essay in Joan Didion's 1960s collection, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, which I'm reading for class this week.  It's about people who buy into the "California Dream" but find it to be not quite what they expected.  I hope our dream is not quite so delusional as that, but sometimes I'm not so sure.)