Ever since I titled my last blog post “I don’t wanna wait,” I’ve had the Dawson’s Creek theme song going through my head. You know the one; it’s Sarah McLaughlan or something, “I don’t wanna wait/for our liiiives to be o-vah…” and it played over the opening credits of one of the most ridiculous TV shows of the late 90’s.

The reason I bring up Dawson’s Creek here, though, is because of its star James Van Der Beek’s website jamesvandermemes.com. At jamesvandermemes, the man who was once Dawson has all sorts of .gifs of himself expressing different emotions. The reason I bring this up is because I have some news for you which I believe can only be fully expressed with the help of some jamesvandermemes.

I am sick.

I sent out my resume with a really egregious typo on it–or rather, a description of a past job that ended mid-sentence. Ooh, is that why I haven’t heard back from anyone yet?

This grant application I’m writing is really difficult.

Since I can’t do more about the first two issues than get plenty of sleep, drink lots of fluids, and pray and pray and pray that they don’t read my resume that closely (and apply to about a million more places with an updated, SPELLCHECKED resume), I’m going to talk about the third one: the grant application. My professor told me about a really sweet grant that students who are studying in Germany are eligible for; you get a bunch of money to do research on a topic relating to German culture. Now, because I’m paranoid and kind of creepy, I’m not going to tell you what my proposed topic is (because one of you is totally going to steal it!), but I will tell you that 1) it’s good, 2) there isn’t a lot of research about it, and 3) I have no idea how to persuade some secret committee to give me a couple hundred bucks to learn more about it.

The way one of my professors described it, a grant proposal should do three things: explain what your starting idea is, where you think it will go, and why it’s an important thing to study. Well, okay, I can do that, but how many pages should I take up? And I should probably say something about how I’d spend the money, right? How detailed should that be? And since there isn’t a lot of research on my topic, I don’t really know yet where I’ll need to go or what I’ll need to do (or who I’ll need to see or what museum I’ll need to get into)—I mean, I have a general idea, but gosh, committee, I’m a little flustered right now!

I think it’s just a matter of the sophomore slump + a continuing low-grade fever that’s making me so stressed out, and once I actually start writing the application things will get much better much more quickly. But starting is always the hardest thing to do, and especially in a completely new form of writing (I’ve never applied to a grant before!) it’s daunting. So wish me luck, dear readers!

Julia

P.S. Also wish me a speedy recovery and merciful intern coordinators. Oh man, oh man; I can’t believe I sent out my resume with half a sentence.