My Living Nightmare

I have been living out a nightmare for the last few days. Has anyone had a nightmare that you were accepted to law school, but you are then told by the dean that, because you forgot to do some fiddly little insignificant thing, your admission has been revoked and you’re not going to law school?

I guess things have just been going too freaking well for me then, because THIS IS WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME!!!

I came home from several weeks of traveling to find a letter from the University of Pomorum saying they never received my deposit payment of $250 and assumed that I had made other plans and consequently my admission had been cancelled.

It was after office hours, so I sent an email to the admissions office. I spent the rest of the night in a tearing blind panic, waiting for the admissions office to open the next morning so I could call and explain what happened and try to work it out so that I could be readmitted.

What happened was that I definitely went onto the online system and paid the deposit. In fact I paid the whole deposit of $400 at once rather than waiting to pay incrementally. The Economist was there the whole time I made the payment and recalled my doing it as well because he fed me our bank account numbers. I did it through our online school forum (most schools have something similar). But for some reason, the payment did not go through and I never noticed that the money did not leave my bank account. (This is because only my husband has online access to our banking—which is completely foolish because you should never leave only one person in charge of two peoples’ finances.) Around the same time I also submitted a transcript request. This request too apparently did not ever go through. I never received any confirmation that the payment had gone through, nor did I receive any indication that the payment had failed. I kept receiving things from the Pomorum Law School (PLS) including that request for transcripts. I sent one from undergrad off of the online forum, the one that never went through, and one from my London Master’s University, via paper request. I had no idea whatsoever why the payment had not gone through.

I called the minute the office was open the next morning and explained what happened. The lady seemed to think there was nothing to be done about it! She was so desperately unhelpful and unsympathetic; she did not seem to understand that this was KIND OF IMPORTANT to me.

Finally she said what I could do was write a letter explaining what happened and see if the admissions committee would change their mind. After I got off the phone with her, I called all the IT people at the U of P, billing and admissions, and could produce no evidence that I had attempted to make that payment in the first place. I started working on my letter to the admissions committee and waiting for The Economist to come home from a doctor’s appointment he had that morning. When he got back, I had to explain the situation to him out loud. I think this was probably the lowest moment I have experienced in a long time and I just lost it for a while. Then I pulled myself together, wrote the damn letter and emailed it in. I also consulted the U of P law professor with whom I had spoken some time before. He was very encouraging, saying that he would be very surprised indeed if the committee allowed this sort of mistake to be the basis for rejecting an admitted student. But, he said, he really had no idea how this process worked. He said I should write the letter and hand deliver it to both the admin lady and the Dean of Admissions, along with a check for the full amount of the deposit.

I wrote, frankly, a stellar letter outlining what happened. I emphasized that I thought I had done the necessary action and although I could not explain why the payment had not gone through, in every other respect, I had been planning and intending to attend the PLS in the fall, including moving back to the United States, passing up other opportunities in the UK, submitting transcripts as requested even after the payment was due, and otherwise completely rearranging me and my husband’s lives in order to go to this school. I felt I laid everything out there, made a strong argument and could add nothing else. All I could do was hope the committee believed me.

The Economist and I delivered the letter by hand, almost getting into an accident on the way, we were both so distracted. When I got to the office, I had already put the check into the envelope I was delivering to the Dean of Admissions. I had hoped to be able to talk to him about it—‘bring it to his attention’ as they say—unfortunately he was not in and would not be back until next Monday. So I spoke to the admin lady, who seemed almost angry that I had chosen to hand deliver the letters, and to give a copy to the Dean of Admissions. She did not want me to give him the check either, so I had to take it out of the envelope. I was really worried about not including the check so I tried to sneak it back in, but she caught me. Oh well, I tried. Anyway, I left it in her hands and walked out feeling like the biggest idiot in the world. The problem was that I felt I had not done anything wrong but I couldn’t prove it. I also felt stupid about the fact that, if I was not readmitted, I would just reapply next year, they’d probably accept me, and I’d start the following fall, having wasted another year doing nothing, all because of a stupid mistake I didn’t really make.

After that, The Economist and I didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. We had meant to spend part of the day in our favorite coffee shop, reading and working on things. But we weren’t settled enough in our minds to do that. There were all kinds of things we needed to do to prepare for law school and grad school, but I didn’t want to do any of it until we knew one way or the other what was going to happen. I’m not the kind of person who can just go on faith that the right outcome will just happen.

We went to my future grocery store to look around and see if the things we’ve gotten used to eating in Britain were available in the US. Then we went to The Economist’s grandma’s house to drop off some Baileys Truffles we bought in Ireland for her husband who is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy for the second time. That put things sharply in perspective. TE and I are young, healthy and we have each other through thick and thin. I knew then that I could handle the worst case scenario of having the wait until next year. It would be awful, but there are worse things in this world and talking to TE’s saint-like grandma made me realize that.

We were supposed to leave the next day to visit my brother-in-law, a 5-hour drive away, and we briefly considered not going in case the PLS needed me for anything but we decided since the Dean of Admissions was gone until Monday, we couldn’t expect to hear anything (and the admin lady said next week was the earliest we could expect to hear anything) so we decided to go anyway and try to enjoy ourselves.

It was unbelievably painful to have to explain the situation to everyone we encountered who asked about my plans or when I started at school. I felt anxious all the time. I tried to think about it as little as possible.

On the drive down, we were relayed a message via TE’s family that the admin lady had called, but again it was out of office hours, so I had to wait over an agonizingly anxious night to call.

In the morning I did call. She told me that the IT people had confirmed that I had signed onto the forum system on the date I said I did and that I was being readmitted.

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After the last four years, and especially the last one year, I did not need this one more roller coaster ride. I was not even as relieved to be readmitted as I thought I should be because I always felt I had done nothing wrong in the first place. And it completely killed any thrill I had felt about being back home because of the pulse-quickening anxiety I felt every time I thought about it.

If I believed in an intelligent omniscient and omnipotent creator, I’d say that creator wanted to make me to really, really, REALLY appreciate my acceptance to law school.

I know there are more lessons here but I need some time to process this.

Also, I know for sure that I've been admitted because I now have a $12,000 university bill.

Oxbridge Collegiate System

Did I ever explain this whole Oxbridge college thing? Let me tell you something about that.

Oxford and Cambridge Universities use a collegiate system. That is, there are two distinct parts of the 'university' as a whole. First, there are academic departments called faculties--faculty of law, of economics, etc etc etc. The faculties are responsible for delivering lectures and administering exams. That is their job, exclusively. Second, there are a collection (around 30 at each university) of colleges. A college can roughly be thought of as a combination of an American-style dorm and a Hogwart's-style house. Each student is a member of a college and all their university activities outside of lectures and exams take place in college. They live in college, do sports with their college, have social events, student government and all those types of things with their college mates.

Also, and this is the most important aspect, each college will have several fellows in each subject who are employed in the faculties of the university. They are members of the college in which they are fellows and are responsible for being what in the US we would call TAs (teaching assistants). The faculties handle lectures and the colleges handle small group sections, which my university called discussions. Other American universities call them seminars, tutorials, small group, or whatever. Obviously in lecture there can be hundreds of students. In order to discuss the subject and answer questions, you have a discussion section of around 30 students. In the Oxbridge collegiate system, because the numbers are so small and because each college employs several fellows, undergraduates will have these discussion sections (with an eminent expert in each field of study) in groups of two or three. Sometimes one-on-one. If you are a fan of learning and discussing what you're learning with someone with so much knowledge to impart, you understand what an amazing system this is. This is what separates Oxbridge from everywhere else in the world.

It's also one of the reasons I want to go there.

I did my master's degree at another well-regarded British university (let's call it my Master's University) and unfortunately had a disappointing experience in some ways. Most importantly I was disappointed in the commitment level of the other students. They didn't seem genuinely interested in the subject and it diminished the academic experience for me. I like learning, I loved the subject I was studying (mostly). It frustrates me to be in classes with people who fail to prepare for discussion, who have no enthusiasm for the subject at hand. I suspect that since Oxbridge are such aspirational institutions I would be with students who are more keen and I would really appreciate that.

Gunner in the making.

UK Applications Update

I was having drinks with a friend of mine who read law at King's College London and was on my master's course at my Master's University. She has been a great resource for all my random questions while trying to figure out the British applications process. She also tends to forcefully argue her advice despite my objections... Thus I have been convinced that I should also apply to several other UK law schools including, surprise, King's College London. I have subsequent to the initial conversation been convinced that this is a good idea. In addition to Oxford and Cambridge, I'm applying to University College London, King's College London and the London School of Economics. So instead of two solid rejection letters, I'll get perhaps one acceptance and a handful of rejections. Or just a gigantic steaming pile of rejections.