Recruitment is Killing Me

I realized this evening that I'm getting way too into this recruitment thing. I'm starting to get all "sorority girl-ish" and I hate it. I hate it when my sorority consumes my life and slightly warps my identity. Or maybe I'm just pissed that I had to stay up until 5 a.m. the other day in order to finish my homework after rounds. Either way, I'm starting to get way too serious about something that is really rather petty and I realize I need to stop. It's one thing to use my sorority to make friends and have a social life, because I know that without it, I would rarely leave my room and would know about 5 people on campus, but it's a whole different story when it starts to swallow me up and make me forget the things that are really important to me. At tonight's recruitment workshop, I collapsed on the couch until Liz gave me a caffeine-laden Coke and an Excedrin for my awful headache, which was very much appreciated and made me feel a whole lot better.

In the midst of tremendous amounts of reading and six hours of recruitment a night, I've been frantically working on ideas for summer research. I hope to stay on campus and do research on English literature. Right now, I'm in the process of writing a research proposal with my advisor. My topic has to do with women in early Gothic novels from about 1764-1820, particularly with women as virtuous heroines trying to escape from evils, whether in supernatural guise or in the form of sadistic men. I've selected about five novels to focus on and am hoping to find some similarities among them. I'm not yet sure what the significance of this will project will be, but I'm working on it. I'm supposed to meet with my advisor today and pitch him a few more ideas, then hopefully write the proposal this weekend so he can read over it this coming week. That way it'll wow all the people on the committee that decides who gets money to do research. I'm really, really excited about this though. It's like I just want to drop everything and do it now just to see what I can find out. I really hope I get a research grant. My advisor said that they give special consideration to people in the humanities because most people that do research are in the sciences, plus he's really excited to direct a project and I don't think he would be so helpful or excited about it if he didn't think I could actually do it. My proposal is due next Monday, so after that, I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed!

But for now, I need some sleep!