Dear Meghan: Congratulations! It is our great pleasure to offer you admission to UCLA for the Fall Quarter 2004 in the major listed above.

You bring an impressive array of strengths to your academic endeavors. We know that UCLA will benefit from your intelligence, imagination, and energy and we hope you will choose UCLA for your undergraduate education.

Well that's an exciting and wonderfully worded acceptance letter!!! Awesome! This means I was accepted to all three of the UCs I applied to: San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. Very, very cool. Having a definite opportunity to enter a UC is not a bad backup plan at all.

I'll be sending one of those schools my SIR (Statement of Intent to Register) just to hold a spot for me. Meanwhile, I'm still hoping and believing that EATM will call me up and say, "Come on over!"

In fact, I learned some pretty awesome information about EATM recently. I was talking with another one of the girls from the waiting list, Ashley, and she told me that she has been attending Moorpark and taking some of the animal science classes there (there are a few they allow you to take before you're ever accepted into EATM). Apparently, on the day of the lottery, they posted results in the EATM office. Ashley went over to check it out, and found she's number 5 on the alternate list. I told her, "5 out of 15 isn't bad!"

She said, "Actually, this year, the list is 25 people long. So it's 5 out of 25."

I think my response was something like, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!?!"

Dude. 25 people!!! That is incredible and wonderfully exciting! Now, I'm not halfway through the list; I'm in the top third. AWESOME.

Even better, she said she was basically told by a faculty member to expect to go to EATM this Fall. Another girl told her they always go "at least through #5." Well, if they usually go at least through number five on a fifteen person list, I really don't think it's too far fetched to believe they'd go through number ten on a twenty-five person list.

I have been flipping out ever since I heard this news. I emailed Ricky and told him what was up and he cracked me up by being as excited as I was. He was like, "Thanks for telling me! You rock!!" He also wrote in all caps, "I AM SO EXCITED!!!!" Hehe. Me too, dude.

It's fun to be excited and upbeat about all of this. Remaining optimistic has long been part of my views on life, and that's not changing any time soon. Sometimes I will just think of EATM and my brain will go, "Eeeeee!!!"

Another fun fact I learned from Ashley is that in the behavior class, you don't just need one rat. You need TWO! Just in case one dies or escapes or something, you're supposed to have a backup rat. I've already told Joe we may have two rats added to our little family in the near future. Also, Ashley confirmed for me that you can get the rat from anywhere, and you can keep it after the class if you'd like to. Which I would, of course. Joe didn't seem totally thrilled, but I just told him, "It's for school!" Hee.

I guess that's all the school news I have for now. Things are looking great! Please continue sending good EATM vibes, if you would. I really, really appreciate it!!! More updates as they come...