and the verdict is…

NO WHERE! That’s right ladies, and gentlemen, you heard it here first: Jake and Danica are going no where for graduate school! Let’s get a big round of applause…

To be totally honest, I was not this calm when I first found out, but I wasn’t as freaked out as I thought I would be, either. The week before our dreams of grad school for Fall 2013 died, a brother in our ward gave a talk about backup plans. He told two stories: one about a man who had a “set” job, and didn’t worry about having a Plan B because Plan A was working out so well (sound familiar?), and another story about a man who was constantly working on Plan B despite Plan A working well. In both stories, the men get laid off, and their Plan A’s crash and burn, but for the second man, it’s not such a big deal. Sure, he’s bummed, but he’s got Plan B, so rather than being ‘laid off,’ it’s more like a mini-vacation and then back to work at a new place. The first man was super stressed and had to scramble around to make up a Plan B. Long story short: we got the hint. What are we going to do if neither of us get into school anywhere?

It wasn’t like we hadn’t had the conversation before; we had just not taken it seriously. I mean, we’re both smart people. One of us was bound to get into a school somewhere, right? Wrong. We spent time talking about what we wanted to do if we didn’t get in anywhere. We made a list of places we’d like to move, and decided to do some research. That was Sunday night. Monday morning, the university of Oregon “regretfully” sent their e-mails. Vanderbilt followed suit on Wednesday (Although, Vanderbilt made it sound really nice. I mean listen to this: “We received a significant number of graduate applications this year; thus, we are faced with the unpleasant task of turning down a number of well-qualified applicants.” Nice, right? It makes it sound like I would have made it in if they just had more places available.) We spent Friday doing research, and narrowing our choices.

So here are the lucky applicants. I wonder who will get the regretful letters!
-Nashville, TN
-Pocatello, ID
-Reading, PA
-Portland, ME
-Colorado Springs, CO
-Logan, UT
-Lewiston, ID

Like I said, no grad school for 2013, but here’s the thing: it’s not like the grad schools are going anywhere, right? And I bet some of them even take January applicants. So, Plan B? Narrow our list further. Apply to schools with January application dates—if there are none, we’ve got a plan for that, too. Line up jobs in which ever place we choose to move. Move. Write. Publish our books. Make big bucks, and then rub it in the faces of the Creative Writing programs that wouldn’t take us! reapply for grad school, because we both like school and would like to further our education.