Saturday, December 20, 2003

Dear readers, please pardon the ranting, but i've reached the part of the application process where my mental state has changed from 'stressed' to 'scared'. That's just one level below 'shit-scared', which I expect to be upgraded to pretty soon.

Was up until 5 last night working on HBS essay 2. thought i did a good job, but woke up this morning and re-read it and ... needs much more work. I am now beginning to question what exactly makes a good b-school essay. Is it the content - your experience, leadership etc. Or is it the way it is presented, the writing skills, grammar etc. I don't believe this is a contest for the Pulitzer, so I am assuming as long as a minimum threshold of writing competency is reached, the content matter of the essay is what really matters. But this is very hard to judge. Case in point - my efforts last night. I had two ways of saying the same thing. Now which one do I choose ? One is more personal but sounds very layman-like when I read it. The other is more business-writing-like but doesn't capture the passions behind the actions. And 600 words is way too less. Going off to brunch now and am going to work on it a little more there. The caffeine should help.

I've been in this kinda-scared-type of state before. And it can be either a very good place to be or a disaster. The simplest way to deal with it is to do nothing and face the consequences later. Or suck it up and work my way thru the first hurdles, and then there is this incredible adrenaline rush that brings out the creative side of me. I am hoping it is going to be the latter this time around too.

On the application front, I realized that I had to get transcripts for a couple of non-credit courses that I have taken at an extension school the past year. Faxed the request. Also waiting for my grad school transcripts. And scheduled a Kellogg interview in february. My main recommender is going to work on my recos this weekend - i think those should turn out well, got in touch with another student at one of the schools i'm apping and he's very helpful. Got to crank it up with my second recommender. he hasn't even started working on these. my third Stanford recommender is all set, needs some prep. My HBS third recommeder is a black hole right now. The guy I wanted to use is on vacation, not back until the 2nd of Jan. No idea wtf is going on there. May have to fall back to using a peer recommender. Not a good idea, but better than having only 2 recos. And a couple of people are willing to proof-read my essays - if only I can get any done in time.

Stretch goal to self - HBS essays done by tonight.
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