A dream crushed …

UPDATE: The sting is starting to subside. I’m debating whether or not to apply for Fall 2007. But doing so require me to prove that I’m more deserving in ’07 than I was in ’06. And admission still wouldn’t be guaranteed. I’m not convinced it’s worth it.

A couple of folks have suggested that I apply somewhere else. I thought about that before deciding where to apply. But Tech had two super-significant things working in its favor: cost and location.

As an employee, attending would have been free. If I had decided to quit working to attend school full-time, I had the option of a graduate assistantship (tuition waiver + stipend) or comparitively modest in-state tuition.

To go somewhere else would require me to move, and quite probably to pay my own way. I’m just not financially able or willing to do that.

Plus, it would require either a long-distance relationship, or for Sweetie to be away from his kids for two years. I’m not 100% comfortable with those options, either.

I’m still not sure what to do. But I’m going to take the next few months to figure out my priorities and go from there.

Dammit. I wanted to do something with usability. I wanted to find out how people interact with technology — the web in particular, but with technology — and come up with ways to make things easier to use.

I wanted to learn the psychological stuff. I wanted to learn the cognitive processes that people use to determine “easy” from “not easy.”

I wanted to learn the theories, principles and best-practices for software design. I wanted to think about and develop new (to me at least) ways of interacting with the Web via cell phone, computer, and new hoozinwhatses.

Well, all of that was shot to hell when I got my rejection letter from Georgia Tech.

They didn’t give a reason other than “We can’t take everybody.” Of course, that’s a spare-yer-feelings way of saying “Heffa please. You know you weren’t good enough to get into this program.”

And that’s the part that hurts the most. I wanted to go to Tech for three years. Three years. Three years and $150 (GRE + application fee). Tech was the only school I applied to. It was the only school I wanted to go to.

Now I’m kind of up in the air on what to do next.