Monday 13 January 2014

The Waiting Game...and Random Dreams!


It's amazing what happens to the brain when we are facing a suspenseful moment.  Today the long-awaited (4 months of waiting to be exact...4 months!!) first round offers from VTAC (Victoria Tertiary Admissions Centre) were available online from 7am my time.  Sure, I was dying to know if I got an offer and to which university so I could start planning the next phase of my life, but so far I had been surprisingly calm.  No point getting worked up as it wouldn't make me know any faster!

Calm, that is, until about 6:30am this morning.  Or perhaps a little before.  Because long after 6:30am, I woke up and checked my clock to see how much time had passed.  It was 6:30am.  D'oh!  I'd only dreamt I'd checked the clock before.  Okay, 30 mins to go... I close my eyes....

Next thing I know, I've got a letter in my hands.  I eagerly open it.  It looks like a uni offer!!  I begin reading... "We are pleased to offer a place to study at our university to..."  Wait...that's not my name!  That's someone else's name!  They've put someone else's offer letter in my envelope!  Oh man... does that mean I got an offer then or not?!

At this point I find myself at the house of some friends.  Well, actually, I've never met these people...but they are a couple whose blog I have been reading recently, so I guess I feel like I kind of know them.  And they were hilarious!  They knew I was stressing in trying to find out, so they came up with so many random funny things to keep the mood light and make me laugh.   For example, they were doing the tango around their living room, with very "serious" faces, whilst continuing to converse with me on the subject.  They let me use their computer to try to log onto the website to see if there's any offers there (which is the actual way of checking offers today), but there were more hold-ups - website down...wrong password...logged in, but can't find anything etc.  I remember their teenage daughter comes in and they're like "Not now, Mari-Anna's trying to find out if she got accepted at uni - quick, say something encouraging!"

Throughout this I wake up several times - each time surprised that the above-mentioned events hadn't actually happened, and that it still wasn't even almost 7!  Man, this 30 minutes is taking forEVER!

Enter Matt Damon.  You know, an old friend of mine.  (I think my brain was running out of ideas to stall me.)  "Mari-Anna!  We're working on this new movie!  You've totally gotta be in it."  Um, I dunno Matt, I mean I kinda got some other plans for this year... "Oh come on!  It's gonna be great, how can you turn it down?  Look at this script!"  Well...um...

With all these distractions compounded, things were getting pretty crazy.  I think my brother even came along, and I'm like "Hey...you know Matt...we were just discussing a new movie."  Grin :D

Well, I don't remember much detail after that, but FINALLY it was past 7am - for real - and...I was too nervous to check after all that drama!  What if there's not an offer for me?  What if something went wrong with the application?  What if I get accepted, but not by the university I wanted?  Do I accept their offer, or wait for round 2 (or 3 or 4)?  What if I was offered a different course?

Finally I mustered up the courage to have a look.  I enter my VTAC ID and PIN.  "Your user ID is incorrect."  D'oh!  Try again, this time without the accidental space in the front, which had eliminated the last number.  Success!  I'm in.  Now what?  Um....oh, messages!  Right.  One new message!  Hold breath.  Click.

"Congratulations! The University of Melbourne is pleased to offer you a place in 2014. An email will be sent to you with information about how to enrol." 

I can't believe it!  I got into my preferred university for the exact course I wanted!

Return to calm, feeling as though a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Life is good :)

2 comments: