In

We've been checking the mailbox with a religious regularity to see if there's any news from The Program. Especially after I had the interview and was told that decisions were being made by that Friday (which was 1 December). While gratifying to receive Christmas cards and not so gratifying to get bills, the mailbox was a black hole of disappointment. What in world could be taking them so long to get the letters of rejection or acceptance out?

So, Monday I headed into the Pharmacology (class from hell), and another woman who applied for the same program asked if I had heard anything. Nope. Nothing. "Why, have you?" I asked, paranoia seeping in. "Yup," she told me, "I got an email."

"An email?"

"Yes, an email. I've been waitlisted. I'm 13 on the list."

I didn't get an email. I asked the other woman who applied and she too got an email-- 20th on the waitlist. I didn't get a damn email. Or maybe I did? Because it suddenly dawned on me that I gave my alternate "permanent" email address to this school. And I check that email sporadically at best. I held out until the end of class and then hightailed it over to the computer lab, found Partner, told her the story, and we signed into my other email. Nothing was there, but there was one message in my junk mail box, telling me to reactivate my old email monniker (since this was school I had attended as an undergrad.) The email looked suspiciously like I had been accepted, but perhaps I was also on the waitlist? If I did get an email, then it seems it went into the junkmail, and since that is automatically deleted every five days, I had no way of knowing.

We decided to drive home and see if there was anything in the regular mail--- and there wasn't. So I called the admissions department, told the (very young sounding) girl who took my call my whole tale of woe.

"I'm on tenterhooks," I told her.

"I can't help you," she replied.

She transferred me to the school I had applied to, and no one there could help either. Apparently the woman who would be able help was out of the office. "She should be back tomorrow," I was told.

Thwarted. I don't like being thwarted.

I called again this morning to get no love at all. As soon as the I heard the purr of the mail truck, I was out the door to the mailboxes like a flash. Or okay, not so much like a flash these days, but if it's possible to waddle like a flash down the driveway in the drizzle, still in my pajamas, then that's what I did. And there was a little with a little gold M in the upper corner, and "admissions" somewhere on the envelope. It was a small envelope. I wasn't feeling so good about it. A small letter. Don't you remember the conventional wisdom that if you were accepted to a program, it was a big letter chock full o' important information about the school and the upcoming year? Well, I remember that, so the small envelope...

We tore it open standing in the road. It congratulated me. On my admission.

I'm floored. I never really ever thought I'd get into this program, but I did. And I start next September. And then one year from that time, I'll have a second bachelors degree. In nursing. And then, imagine, a degree that one can actually use to get a job. That pays.

I was pretty excited for about five minutes, but now I think I'm mostly scared shitless.

They let me in. Our lives are changing in huge ways.