Back in 10th grade, I had this crazy English teacher named Eugene Trimboli. He had an obsession with leather, liked the color purple, would train with the HS wrestling team, and held a longstanding grudge against his parents for naming him Eugene and giving him the initials E.T.

He believed very strongly that more time always equaled better writing. He had this crazy habit of telling us a paper was due on Monday, then on Monday telling us that anyone who had nothing to hand in would be getting zeros and anyone who had a finished paper had another 3days to work on it. This would happen maybe three or four times per paper. It got us into the habit of proofreading and rewriting things. And to this day, his mantra holds true for me: more time=better writing.

I've told a couple people that out of my 6 graduate program applications, the first will probably be the weakest and the last will likely be the strongest. I thought I was lucky that my two top picks were due third and fourth, that the first two applications due were for schools that I only kind of wanted to get into. Sigh. If only my top picks were the last two due.

Turns out, today, reviewing my application materials for the fourth time, I found three more typos (this time in the portfolio section). Well, at least I caught it before the RISD app went out. Here's to hoping that there aren't any more lingering errors. With any luck, the remaining improvements that are bound to happen before I send out the final app will be minor...