The 18 Stages Of Realizing You’re Going To Grad School

1. Experiencing an overwhelming amount of shock and joy after learning you actually got in!

2. Going from pure happiness to full on panic mode and asking yourself countless times, “What did I just get myself into?”

3. Questioning if you really want to put yourself through the emotional rollercoaster that is college life once again.

4. Cringing at the thought of having to go back to buying text books.

5. Remembering how ridiculously expensive parking passes are.

6. Thinking of all the syllabi you are going to receive and all the headaches they come with.

7. Wondering how you are going to fit in work, school, and sleep back into your life.

8. Wondering how you ever juggled all of your priorities as an undergrad in the first place and being completely impressed with yourself.

9. Feeling a glimpse of hope when you realize grad school is way shorter than undergrad programs, see you never General Ed.!

10. Shattering any hope, you had that grad school was a good idea when you realize you won’t be having a social life anymore.

11. Even worse than kissing your social like goodbye realizing you might as well cancel your Netflix subscription because you won’t be binge watching anything anytime soon.

12. Feeling overwhelmed thinking about how your pile of loans is about to grow a few inches.

13. Reminding yourself that it will all be worth it in the long run.

14. Remembering that getting into grad school is a step closer to your goals.

15. Wanting to give yourself a pat in the back for following through on that long and stressful grad application.

16. Telling yourself, “I told you that grad application fee would be worth it in the end!”

17. Looking past your meltdown and going right back to feeling happy.

18. Setting your grad school graduation countdown, reloading your Starbucks card and reminding yourself, you got this!