Adventures in applications

Sorry for the lack of new material to talk about and digest. I hit a near apoplectic fit this morning as I organized Johannah's OSU Honor's and Scholar's application materials. Suddenly a date she and I had missed loomed larger than a sniper's rifle: February 1, midnight.

How the heck had I missed that?

She had to leave for school and I immediately popped open the window of my browser to see if we could sneak in under the wire. The wording of the letter with all the information left me under the impression that the deadline was for priority consideration, not a drop-dead date.

Fortunately for her, her essay that she'd written for Notre Dame perfectly suited the length and content of the question for this Honor's Program essay question. I typed it in and clicked on submit.

Loading, loading, loading.... not going through. My heart started to race.

I stopped the page from loading, and clicked submit again: Bingo. Right through. However, the confirmation message was less than convincing. It told me that the submission had been successful, but that the deadline was past and that it might not get the attention it deserved.

Huh.

So I went into "hyper ventillation, kick the dog and hurl sharp objects" mode. Then I called the school. The front desk gal happily informed me that we were screwed, like this: "Sorry Ma'am. You missed it. No, there's no alternative. Nothing you can do. We have no power to help you and your application will not be looked at."

At this, the thunk of my head on my countertop was felt in the next county.

Pulling myself together, I then clicked around the website and called same girl, same attitude again. Tried to disguise my voice. To no avail. Our ensuing conversation went something like this:

Front desk, no power gal: I told you. There's nothing you can do. They told us that midnight was the deadline and the website would be taken down.

Desperate and embarassing mother: The website was not down and it said the application went through. That's what I'm trying to understand.

Front desk, no power gal: The app couldn't have gone through. But if it did, perhaps they are going to look at it.

Desperate and embarassing mother: So perhaps it went through? Who could I talk to, to find out?

Front desk, no power gal: No one because it didn't go through. They told us that none would go through after midnight.

Desperate and embarassing mother: Thinks to self: WTF?

I won't bore you with the circular nature of that conversation. She was "nice" but totally unhelpful. I left a message for the head of the humanites portion of the program (to which J was applying) instead, hoping to contact someone higher up the food chain.

I then whined to called Jon in angst. He told me to take it straight to the top: to email the director of the whole Honor's and Scholar's program and to offer to drive Johannah up to the school today, if need be, to fix it.

I did email. And literally five minutes later, the phone rang. OSU's Honor's and Scholars program director was on the phone with me, reassuring me and trying to sort out what happened. She actually promised to call me back after she personally dug through the data base to see if Johannah's app had made it through.

I sent her the submission accepted webpage message via email and she wrote right back saying "Count your blessings. Looks like her app will have gotten through."

Then just a few hours later, the humanities director called and told me that she had listened to my message, had personally checked the database, found the app and had printed it out. Looked good.

Wow! These OSU staff are amazing. Can you imagine how many panicked mothers they will deal with today? Yet they replied to messages and emails almost immediately, offered sympathy and reassurances and solved my problem (they didn't just pass it off to someone else). Oh, except "no power girl."

So that's why there is no new interesting blog today. My heart rate is still coming down. I shortened my lifespan by about six months in ten minutes.

In other news: what I wanted to do was to introduce Carrie's new blog! She's one of the most frequent commenters to my blog so I hope you'll all hop over to hers and give her a big welcome to the blogosphere. :)