Chapter Three: In which I prepare for Harvard Divinity School and endeavor to live in the present

I was going to Harvard, so now I needed to prepare. I started by making a list of all the things I would need to do in the next six months to prepare and was swiftly overwhelmed. The list looked like this.

Harvard Long-Term To-Do List

• Secure housing
• Plan road trip
• De-junk apartment
• Pack up stuff we won't be taking
• Finish scrapbooks (four BYU scrapbooks and print rest of UK photos)
• Create GoFundMe page :/
• Tell family and friends
• Take acceptance photos
• Make a book list, including work of future professors
• Sell furniture and car by end of July?
• Acquire more freelance clients
• Find work (here and there)
• Budget

I called my family. After the phone calls had all been made and the skype sessions completed, I decided to tell everyone else. This included taking all the necessary pictures of my acceptance and excitement, and posting to Facebook. Check, check!
I also, nervously, began a GoFundMe campaign in order to mitigate some of the cost of attending graduate school at Harvard Divinity. Asking for money is always hard, especially when you're afraid of receiving any of three responses: a) you should work your way through school, that's what I did when I was your age (Yes, I am planning on it and am looking for work right now. It still won't cover it all.), b) have you looked into other financial aid options (and when you've said yes and detailed everything you've done, they don't help or talk to you about it again), and c) don't you think it is irresponsible to go to such an expensive school when you can't afford it and the schooling itself is, frankly, extra? Also, what is Spencer going to do out there, doesn't he need to go to graduate school? (No response . . . and no one can afford school anymore.) But, I posted the campaign anyway. And though I did get all of these responses to some extent or another, I also got a lot of support, which both stunned me and left me feeling very loved.

And then I made a book list. This is something that I'm really really good at. :) I began by writing down a few books each for four Harvard professors whose work I found particularly interesting. Then I compiled a list of other religious texts I'd been wanting to read for a while anyway. Then I wrote an additional list of any books on feminist issues or women's studies that I felt I should read since that is my secondary focus. (It helped that I was already a part of Emma Watson's "Our Shared Shelf" on Goodreads.) By the time I was done, I had a list of 40 to 50 books that pertained to religion, women's studies, or culture and literature.

So I set to reading. I read and I read and I read. My normal day took on a pseudo-structure looking something like this.

1. Wake up and exercise.
2. Look for housing for a few hours on the LDS Boston housing page, Harvard's on-campus housing page, Harvard's off-campus housing page, the housing Facebook page, Craigslist, and other random sites you find. 
3. Look for work in Provo for an hour or two, then shift to looking for work on Harvard Campus or in the nearby area for an hour or two.
4. Take a break and read 50 to 100 pages.
5. Oh yeah, eat and get ready for the day, and, if I'm lucky, go outside for a walk to the library.
6. Read some more.
7. Scrapbook!
8. Do something nice with Spencer or friends because I'm a human being and must act like one at some point.

My day-to-day would vary a bit. If I acquired a book, then three or four hours of my day went toward editing it till I was finished. Sometimes looking for housing turned into calling on prospective places or setting up an appointment with the landlord and my wonderful friend Erika, who would go look at places for me. Sometimes looking for work turned into a day spent on revamping my resume and cover letter to address the intricacies of the job I was applying for. And sometimes I couldn't take being turned down for another apartment again just because I couldn't fly out to meet the landlord and tour it myself (I mean, who can fly out to Boston 20 times in one summer?), so I would read the book I was on that day instead.

By the end of the summer, I had finished five scrapbooks and begun a sixth, edited four freelance projects (three of which were full books), read 17 books relating to Harvard prep and 42 books total for the year (lots and lots of light Japanese manga reading with the occasional novel to keep my sane), contacted dozens of landlords, applied to a slew of jobs, planned an eight-day road trip that would take 50 hours of driving (including sight-seeing along the way), taken dozens of filled boxes to the DI, etc, etc, etc. And! I even ate and socialized and lived a little. :)

So, in a moment of transparency, I will admit that preparing for school has been one of the most stressful things I've ever done. Being unemployed, except for the few freelance projects or random jobs Spencer and I have gotten has made things especially difficult. But by the same token, I was able to use all that time in reading, scrapbooking, planning, and applying for housing and work. Being rejected for apartment after apartment and then repeatedly having to explain to people that we were simply going to move forward in faith, even if that meant moving out with no place to go, was stressful and upsetting. But by the same token, Spencer and I were given the opportunity to walk by faith, an opportunity that requires a lot of trust but often yields a lot of miracles. Not knowing if we'd find work, not knowing if we'd be able to afford moving out to Boston or paying rent, or school in general, not knowing if my preparations would make me prepared enough, not knowing much of anything was, to say the least, stressful. And though the stress certainly had its repercussions, things eventually fell into place.

The hardest part of preparing for a future event like attending graduate school is living in the present. It's easy to say, "I wish we were just in Boston already," or feel like your living in limbo, waiting for the future to happen. But, as Spencer pointed out to me, while preparing is absolutely necessary, living is too. And as I look back over this "Harvard Prep" summer, we've had a lot of wonderful experiences that help balance everything out. We've played games, watched anime, and had adventures with friends. We've attended family reunions, seen Jason get baptized, and watched my Aunt and Uncle's kids for a week with great success! We've explored Canyonlands National Park with my siblings Brittney and Tanner and my wonderful friend Anne. We've begun playing through Final Fantasy VII together and attended a Scottish Festival. I donated my hair! And I've performed as an Irish dancer and written Brittney and Anne, who are now LDS missionaries, all summer.

So that is what preparing for school and endeavoring to live in the meantime looks like in my life. And while doing both is quite a balancing act, I think that overall Spencer and I did pretty well.