I thought completing the selection steps would bring relief. Instead, every stage created a new period of waiting: waiting for a ranking, waiting for an offer, waiting for documents to be accepted, waiting for the portal to understand something I had already done. People told me not to worry unless I received bad news. My brain found the absence of news extremely creative. Now that I am accepted, I still catch myself checking for a problem. I think the process trained me to expect that my place could disappear because of one missed instruction. I am excited to begin. I just wish admissions systems understood that “no action required” is not the same thing as “you are safe to stop thinking about this.”