Erkan's field diary

Last night at around 10 pm, I got the letter from The Humanities Research Center at Rice University. I had been expecting this letter since Monday as the results would be originally announced  at that day. My application for a dissertation writing fellowship was rejected. As in a typical rejection letter, it was stated that:

The Humanities Research Center has completed reviewing the Dissertation Writing Fellowship applications for academic year 2007-08, and we regret that your proposal was not selected. In its first year, the fellowship program garnered great interest and we could only accept one of every five applications that we received from departments across the Schools of Humanities and Social Sciences. Thank you for providing us a chance to examine your work. I am especially pleased to have been able to take some measure in this way of the quality of graduate level scholarship at Rice University. While it is disappointing not to be able to provide the fellowship, I believe that your work will contribute to a tradition of superior research and learning for which this University is recognized.

blah blah blah 

My father discloses a new bit of information every year and last night when he called me for my birthday I was told I was born around 11 pm on 12 April 1976 at a home in Vakfıkebir, Trabzon. I knew the latter part but i could never learn at what time I was born.  I am not really sure if my dad is right, but at least this is the first time he specifically names it (so i can learn more about my horoscopical situation). Therefore HRC sends me the worst birthday celebration.

My dear readers,

I would like to state that it has been a long time since I gave up trusting selection committees. Academic merit itself is an abstract issue. I have seen shitty proposals that won big fellowships because of their timeliness or because of their owners' networkedness in the academia or something else. Academic merits among the applicants are relatively equal so other factors determine the results. In any case, I could never be in a favorable position, could not have those factors favor me and I always lost in these competitions. So here i am, in my sixth year, I cannot pay the tuition Rice demands any more, no fellowships won, my dissertation writing pace goes slower than an average turtle walks and i have not received a reply message from my advisor for more than two months.

Maybe I have made a great disciplinary mistake. I don't know. I believe in the timeliness and academic merit of my thesis. This was confirmed by my professors whom I worship scholarwise and through this blog I received thousands of positive feedback. Therefore, I take this rejection personal to a minor extent and I dedicate this Slayer song to all selection committees that rejected my applications....

slayer (I hate you) 

I would like to thank my dear friends for their late night consolations yesterday: Çetin, Sinan, Güney. And I would like to thank all other dear friends who celebrated my birthday despite my attempts to hide and not celebrate my birthday...