Patience Can Be Difficult...

Well...

It has been nearly a month since my last post. A variety of things have happened, including my trip to the URTA NUAI's, which I have mentioned planning for and such.

In my prior post - Regarding Trips, Long And Strange - I showed some pics of my portfolio review set up, both for my first semester and my last here at UAF. Below is a shot of how my station looked in Chicago, at the NUAI's:

The NUAI's were a pretty awesome experience. Stressful...but worthwhile.

As I may have said in other posts, the process at the NUAI's - for design and tech - is that you get an hour to set up your station, then you have to walk away. And for the next two hours or so, recruiters from various graduate programs come and look over your stuff. They have the option of signing up for what are called "jump start interviews" - 10 of them - which happen right away, as soon as the review period is complete, or they can have the URTA computer schedule a time for that afternoon.

In my case, out of the ~40 programs that were there, I got 16 interviews.  Well 17. But the last one was a computer mistake, and the person didn't really want to see me. Still....16. And that included 3 of the 4 folks that I had prearranged chats with. 10 of them were "jump start interviews". With my first 10 interviews being right away it definitely felt as though I was "hitting the ground running...".

The interviews are somewhat of a blur in my mind. After all, each only lasted 15 minutes.

I emailed most/all of the schools once I got back here to thank them, etc.

Then came the additional Skype interview sessions and more follow-up emails. And waiting. And waiting.

The official URTA "we can start making offers today" deadline was last Monday, Feb 22nd.

My inbox has been, sadly, bereft of offers so far. However, out of the schools I saw in Chicago only one has told me a definite "no". The way it was phrased was: "...The design faculty met on Wednesday to review the mountain of information from the URTA candidate.  We promoted a selection of candidates onto our 'long list'.  I am sorry to say that you are not on that list. ..."

Sigh.

Near the end of the week, I got antsy and sent out six follow-up emails, to schools that I either had been emailing/Skyped with or that I felt I had a solid interview with in Chicago. Within ~24 hours I got emails back from two of those schools saying - basically - that they are still in process. One said that they would likely be making decisions by the end of next week. Then this morning I got a response from a third program saying that they want to have a Skype interview with me next week, either Tuesday or Wednesday.

So. For those keeping score, the results are: 16 interviews. 1 rejection. 3 schools who have been in touch, are still in process, and have yet to decide. And then the other schools who either have only responded to my first follow-up email (that I sent out when I got back from Chicago) or who have not responded at all.

Add into the above mix a school that is not URTA affiliated whose application deadline is April 20th and who I have been in touch with late this week and so....yeah. I think I would describe things on the graduate program front as confusing, and anxiety producing, and somewhat hopeful.

Add to all the URTA related stuff the run of Closer here at UAF that I did the scenic design for (images of which will be added to my online scenographic portfolio in due course), finalizing my contract for my upcoming summer stock gig, and attempting to deal with some personal issues regarding budgets and housing and I would have to say that February 2016 has been a busy month.

As the title of this post says: patience can be difficult. And yet there is still more waiting to be done.

More later, as events develop.





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