After many drafts of a brutal personal statement, paralyzing existential conversations with wise and gently stern professors, a writing sample that put the fear of God in me, and a bottle of good whiskey, I have finished all my applications for graduate study and am awaiting — with goodly amounts of fear and expectation — admission decisions from the programs I have essentially begged to admit me.

Having finished this, I am now gripped by a numbing, determined fear that I won’t actually be that great at grad schooling.

To that effect, I have come up with a list of alternatives, and for those of us agonizing over future jitters, I hope you arrive at some manner of peace. (Because whatever you do, you’ll think of better ways to spend your life than this.)

1) Pretend to be a nurse or other healthcare professional, see how long it takes for the ruse to collapse, accept subsequent prison sentence graciously

2) Write a memoir, entitled “No Crying in My Bath Tonight!” (Alternative titles include “This is What Happens When You Go to Derry and Start Asking Around about the IRA,”  “I Had Potential Once, Too” and “Did You Know Sanitation Strikes are a Thing? And Why All of the Hard Work and Research I Did as an Undergraduate Now Mean Absolutely Nothing”)

3) Thrash around and groan on the floor in despair, call it performance art and command respect from those around me

4) Look into what it would take to make it as an effective, well-regarded Bill Murray impersonator, use this as my go-to party trick

5) Write a children’s book (Ideas for titles include “Pontificate: And other Important P-Words You Should Commit to Memory,” “What You Definitely Should Do Near a Crocodile Enclosure,” “ Oh, the Places You Won’t Go Because it Would Ruin You Financially,” and “Things that are Fun to Shout in Airport Security”)

6) Try not to think too much about my mortality and instead learn how to do practical things with my hands, like birthing calves or shucking oysters

7) Backpack through Europe, “get lost” in Moldova, assume the identity of a long-dead 19th century orphan, take up with a Marxist or something, live tax-free in a cottage in Cardiff somewhere while my family mourns my apparent death stateside

8) Amass a great fortune, give money to no one and instead build a Scrooge McDuck-esque pool full of bearer bonds and expensive silken rugs

9) Crush the patriarchy, divvy up the pieces amongst my friends and withhold the spoils from my enemies

10) Go to grad school, cry a lot, contemplate a better life for myself full of soccer games and Vicodin, continue going to grad school anyway, eventually cry my way to a doctorate, desperately apply for jobs, hopefully one day teach young minds about the beauty of critical thinking and the evils of capitalism

Good luck, you devils.

Maggie O’Leary is the multimedia editor of The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].