So it's been over two months since I turned in my application for graduate school and, silly me, I had just assumed that everything was OK and I'd be hearing back from them soon. Ha ha ha! I'm so naïve.

This week I went up to my department's office, electrical engineering, to see what the scoop was. (I ought to add here that I only went at Christian's insistence that I ought to check on things…. thanks sweetie.) The secretary told me that they were still waiting for the admissions office to send over my application. You know, the one I turned in over two months earlier. She said she'd call over and try to find out what happened to it.

Let's go back a few months now, shall we? On February 14th, one day before the application deadline, I went up to my department's office with my letter of intent, application, and application fee. They told me, "we'll take the letter, but the graduate school handles the application and money." So I went over to the graduate school. "Oh no, we don't handle the applications here, take that down to admissions." So I went down to admissions and finally found someone who would take my application.

So when the secretary told me that she'd be calling over to try to find my application, I decided that I wasn't going to trust her this time. I went over myself to find out what was up. Admissions said, "Well, we don't really keep that information here, why don't you try the graduate office." The graduate office said, "Well, it says here your application was processed on February 17th, why don't you go down to admissions and ask your admissions advisor." So back to admissions I go where the secretary keeps trying to tell me it's not their problem until I finally convince him to let me go back and see the person the graduate school told me to talk to. There she tells me all about how they've decentralized graduate school admissions and students are supposed to give their applications directly to their departments, and then after the departments have made all the necessary copies and done all the necessary paperwork, they send them to admissions. But at least she gives me my application, which has a nice "Feb 14 2003" stamp on it, thank goodness. So I hoof it back to my department's office to give it to them. There I tell the secretary what the admissions advisor had told me. "Oh no," she says, "It would be silly and take longer for us to take the applications directly. They're supposed to be sent to admissions first, and then they send them to us."

Ach! I don't know who is wrong, but I hope one of them calls the other one and gets it worked out before some other poor schmoe gets their application messed up. One who isn't around to go here and there and get it worked out.

The secretary said that the admissions committee is going to meet again and that they should consider me like if everything had been done correctly in the first place. I sure hope so. I'll be very upset if some stupid bureaucratic mix up is the only thing that prevents me from getting in.

My parents and brother Cullam are going to be up here tomorrow for a math tournament Cullam is competing in. It should be fun to have them around for the day.

Remember how last entry I told about how Bracken got out the yard and we just couldn't see him jumping the fence? Well, earlier this week I woke up in the morning and Bracken wasn't there. I looked all over and couldn't find him. The gate was securely closed, but there was no sign of him. I started to get worried and drove all over the neighborhood calling his name, but there was no sign of him anywhere. Frantic, I called Christian, who told me he had taken Bracken with him on a sound job. Phew! Thanks goodness we don't have a little jail breaker after all! (Hopefully.)