Waitlisted

I got a letter in the mail from OU on Monday.  It felt too thin to be an acceptance letter and too thick to be a rejection letter.  Upon opening it I discovered that I have been waitlisted for the Physician Assistant program.  Let me explain.  This will only be the third year for this program in Tulsa and because they are in the accreditation process they are only allowed to accept 24 students each year.  I was not one of those 24.  However, should someone decline to accept their invitation into the program, an invitation would be extended to someone on the waitlist.  They will not tell us where we are on the waitlist.  I could be the very first person, the last person, or somewhere in the middle.  I also don't know how many people are on the waitlist.  I do know that once an invitation has been extended, one has ten days to accept or decline.

I have no idea how to feel about this.  I mean on the one hand, I'm disappointed that I wasn't selected.  On the other, there were 240 applicants, 103 of which were interviewed and to even make the waitlist is pretty awesome.  It also means I am still in limbo though.  This is probably the hardest part for us.  We have to still plan like I am starting school in June, but we also have to come up with a solid backup plan.  That's where things get tricky.

The options we are considering as backup plans are:

a)  wait and apply again next year.  This pushes all our plans (another child or two and a bigger house) back a full year, which stinks.

b)  apply for nursing school next year.  If I did this, I would graduate about the same time as was originally planned and be an RN.  Then, if I wanted to, I could go back to school later and become a Nurse Practitioner (similar to PA) or pursue a number of other Masters or certification options available to nurses.

c)  we could have another child now and wait yet another year for school.  This means money and space would be tight for awhile, but I wouldn't have to put the next child in daycare until they were a year old and I'd never have to put the girls in full-time daycare.

So much to pray about, so many details to consider, and the waiting game continues.  "Not According to Plan" seems such an appropriate title for my blog right now.