Fire under my butt

I've been sitting on my secondary applications much longer than I care to admit and I have finally found the urgency to get them done. I didn't realize just how long I'd been putting them off until I realized that it's almost September. Yikes!

So I've given myself a deadline of Thursday to get them all submitted. That puts me well beyond the arbitrary two weeks that people suggest but before the "late" crowd, so I've been told. Regardless, there is no way I can get them done any faster at this point (I'm already struggling with writing this much) so there's really no need to stress any more than I already am.

Regret seems to be my modus operandi and the way I choose to live my life, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that that feeling is becoming a major theme in this application cycle. Mostly it's regret at taking so long to fill things out that actually don't take that much time. But a lot of the regret stems from my college years o' fun, which I don't regret at the same time, so I kind of feel like I break even.

Anywhos, on a brighter and more analytical note, I did submit my secondary a couple of weeks ago to the one school I REALLY want to get into. So that one was relatively on time. The main reason why I haven't been quick about the rest of these is because I honestly don't care where I end up, short of the #1 school. So if I don't get into some school because I submitted my secondary 10 days later* than I had originally planned, I won't be too torn up about it since it didn't really have that soft spot in my heart.

Maybe I need to stop being so cocky about this whole application process. I don't know for sure that I'll be getting in anywhere so I should be maximizing my chances at each of the schools to which I'm applying. But for some reason I'm lacking in the motivation department. A rejection or two from a "safety" school would probably help with that, but I don't really want to wish that upon myself just to make me more efficient.

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*Another coping mechanism I'm using is that my committee letter wasn't ready until August 17th, so even if I had submitted secondaries prior to that, my application wouldn't have been considered until then. So I'm really only about 10 days behind at this point, which in the grand scheme of things isn't that bad.

If you can't tell, I can make myself feel better about these types of things by convincing myself it had to be that way. It's a pretty effective coping mechanism.