an exercise in humility

I am currently applying for graduate programs in sociology. Actually, I'm about finished, with only two due dates ahead of me and my active roles all completed. I am applying to nine Ph.D. sociology programs and have already received notice that I have been accepted into one program (as I haven't heard from any others, that makes it 1 for 1, I guess).

When I came down here to Mexico it was for several reasons, but one was that I wanted to practice trusting God, if that makes sense. I wanted to leave my comfortable and under-control life and let God lead me with cultural struggles, raising money, unsureness about the future. Looking back on my journal through the past year I can see that I have grown in how I trust God, but I still don't trust him completely, as these applications have shown. I was a little bundle of intrusive worries - worries that would subside as I focused on my work or my friends, but which surfaced with pinches of awareness in how I still had to finish this and send that off and oh no! I don't think I changed that information before I attached it to the email!

Currently, as I have finished my part, these worries surface when the online status updater lacks my GRE scores or my transcript. What in tarnation? That should have been there since October. I have to stop and tell God again that I want him to be in control. I place this application in his hands. There's not much I can do, but I want to practice trusting.

I also have to practice humility. I didn't start off needing to, as I didn't have much confidence in being accepted (I thought I had weak research experience.) There was a huge difference once I heard from the first school, though. It began with a grateful acknowledgement that now I have an open door to receive a Ph.D. But before long I was thinking "ah, this personal statement is fine. It's already gotten me into grad school," and expecting to hear positively from all of my other schools as well. Is there such a thing as gluttony of schools? I can only attend one at a time, but I want to be accepted into all of them.

Oddly, I think often of the people with whom I attended high school, thinking how I will increase in their estimation. People for whose opinion I have cared little, but over whom I still desire superiority. Odd the workings of our human nature, hm?

Isaiah 26: 12 - Lord you establish peace for us. All that we have accomplished, you have done for us.




I shall also have to be careful in my social life, for, as Jane Austen says "A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can." (Northanger Abbey)