Friday, April 08, 2005

Honorable Mention; Worth Mentioning?

[ This is a follow-up to Teddy "Not Top 4.904%" Bear ]

So I received the NSF fellowship rejection e-mail today. (emphasis added)
Your application for a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship has been evaluated. Although the Foundation is unable to offer you a fellowship, it is my pleasure to inform you that you have been accorded an Honorable Mention. Unless you have previously requested otherwise, your name will be included in the Honorable Mention List, which will be posted at https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/.

So I received an honorable mention. I suppose that's good, right? Right?

So I think if I would have applied before my first year of grad school, I would have had much better chances. That's what everyone else was saying then. I guess I took that for granted. I feel bad. I feel like I've let all my references down. Ya' know?

Alright, so all you people who have been searching for "NSF" and "NDSEG" all week and keep linking here from your searches, well, now you can feel better about yourself. Yes, another loser. Another reason for you to feel better than yourself. Take that feeling and a ten spot and you'll be able to get a You-Pick-2 at your local Panera. Freaks.
 

5 comments:

Ted Pavlic said...

Sure enough, it happened. I've had hits. People searching for "NSF fellowship."

For fun, I decided to see what other blogs they hit with that search. Turns out there are a lot of people with my similar sentiments.

This one is particularly interesting. It's a reflection on the "Honorable Mention" which may not be so honorable... or worth mentioning.

However, maybe so many apply to NSF that it is. Heck, so many people apply to NSF grants that it simply doesn't mean anything to be refused for one anymore, right? Maybe it's the same thing with the fellowship...

Moving on...

Ted Pavlic said...

Yes, I realize that I'm a bit hypocritical for following the search of the same people I was making fun of... but I'm only human. Hell, I'm only an honorable mention, so maybe I'm less than human. (pity me)

Jenn Onofrio said...

That's cool; so, you think I could get one? An honorable mention, I mean?

Ted Pavlic said...

Yep. Even more people coming to this page from NSF searches. Looks like this guy actually won the fellowship.

Schools Mike has Heard Back From

As expected, he's going into CS. This is particularly biting to me personally, but I'm moving on... It's not worth going into... But I figured I'd leave a link here to one of the winners, if people were interested.

Mike also has a nice post on how he gets into all the hard schools and gets rejected from all the easy schools, or something. Mike needs to be hit across the mouth with an oar.

Ted Pavlic said...

So I thought that this link was pretty funny.

On another note, I've noticed some other entries of people who have said that they've applied three times, and finally they've received it. Maybe you can apply more than twice? Maybe they applied as undergrads twice? It just doesn't make sense...