What If…?

I’ve just been hit by a wave of fear — what if I don’t get into anything next year?

The background is that, thanks to the IB, I got almost a year’s worth of credits. Coupled with a few courses over the summer, I will be well and ready to enter third year in September. I’ve started working on majors applications, and that’s what has set me off in this panic.

What if I don’t get into English Honours? I think I’d be pretty miserable for quite a bit because I want this so much. I want the smaller classes, I want the specialisation. I’ve been so much happier ever since I upped my number of English classes from one to three each term. It’s exactly what I need.

Worse, what if I get rejected from English Honours and the English Major? Then I will be English-less! For some reason I never seriously doubted that I’d be English-less, but now that I am trying to think of a really smart, creative way of saying “I love literature more than anything else and I will die without it” within 50 words, and failing, I am feeling sick to the stomach.

Because I don’t want to do anything else. I mean, I want to do lots of things, but English has always been the centre of my world. I think I’d be so upset I’d start looking for some other school that would accept me for my English-philia.

Undying love aside, there is nothing else that I’m even eligible for. All my other courses will be at 200-level next term, not 300/400. I’m doing all these extra summer classes just so I can be eligible for English Hons. In other words, I’m risking being completely major-less all for English!

I’m also applying for Creative Writing, but there’s no guarantee I’ll get in. Besides, even if I do, I might not like the workshop environment and want to drop out altogether. I don’t enjoy Anth as much as I expected, I have a hankering after Sociology but no credits in it to speak of, and —

I think I’d better buy a tub of ice-cream tonight.