2025 Can Suck It

2025 has been the year of waiting-to-hear-back-about-graduate-applications. Also the year of interviewing and visiting schools, contacting potential apartments, and filling out scholarship applications. To say it’s been nerve-wracking and exhausting would be the understatment of the year.

Of course, it’s also been the year of a new old administation. The year of defunding science and education. The year of we-can’t-afford-to-take-you-on or we’d-love-to-have-you-but-have-no-funding.

Which makes it the year I won’t be starting my PhD program. And a year of mourning if I’m being fully honest. And I probably should be.

I thought getting in would be the hard part. Maybe in previous years that would have been the case. Not in 2025.

I suppose the end of this year will also involve submitting a few more applications. I think I’ve got that much in me. It’s certainly not how I hoped I’d end the year.

I’d like to take solace in knowing that I’m not alone in my struggles. Or by the fact that so many people are glad I’m not leaving in a few months, but I’m not there yet. At best, I can breathe–and sleep–and little easier knowing that the wait is over, for now at least. But there’s still the dumpster fire surrounding us, so it’s not that I can breathe that easy.

Oy, 2025. What are you doing to us?!