Application Process-Space Galaxy Quest Super Ride

This is the best way I can explain the PC application process....
An analogy (oddly enough) that came to me while in the car going to pick-up my grandmother for a “good-bye” dinner.

Imagine being in an Amusement Park. You’re wondering through the park, people are everywhere, the sun is out, and it’s warm, kids are running around, people are laughing, everyone's happy. It's a beautiful day.

You finally make your way to Future World, where they have the most realistic space ride ever created. This was the whole reason you came to the park in the first place, to experience the new and utterly amazing Space Galaxy Quest Super Ride (the one that everyone has been raving about). The outside architecture of the building resembles a mission control headquarters, something taken right out of the movie Armageddon (the movie about preventing the asteroid from hitting the earth). Just about everyone loves that movie, and as you can imagine everyone loves this ride. As you make your way through the entrance you start to feel your adrenaline pumping, your heart rate rising, hands start to sweat, everyone around you starts speaking louder out of excitement. The inspirational music pumping through the speakers in the background helps set the mood.

You feel great! Exuberant! Excited by the fact that you are finally going to get to experience the ride everyone has been talking about. You walk through a few mock displays; an engine room, an astronaut medical test facility, and flight suit simulation-all adding to the atmosphere and setting the tone for the space flight you are about to embark on.

Your brisk walk through the "cattle shoots" designed to usher you onto the ride comes to abrupt halt. Your first impression is that the wait can't be that bad. Feeling that you have already gotten through most of the "cattle shoot" without having to stop once, you are still feeling real good about the wait. As you wait in line, the two kids from the family in-front of you are fighting about who will get to be pilot during there space exploration ride. Playing along and enticing the imaginations of friends you start to divide positions as well; the engineer, the pilot, the navigator. The line inches, you wait, you inch up further, you wait longer, it moves a little further, and you wait little longer.

After waiting in-line for 30 minutes your feet start to ache from standing, but you try not to think about it. After 45 minutes, you start to feel the novelty of the ride erode as the pain from standing in-line starts to move into your calves and hamstrings. You start to think about all the other things you could be doing with the time you are wasting waiting in-line. After an hour your hamstrings start to pull on your lower back, you begin to think about how it’s very probable that you will lose sanity if you hear that inspirational song on re-peat one more time. As you get closer to the end of the line you start to see TV monitors every few feet informing participants about safety precautions. This of course is a good thing, but after the ninth and tenth time on repeat you start to become annoyed at the overfriendly female actor pretending to be a "Flight Safety Specialist." The grin you had walking into the ride entrance has transformed into an emotionless stare. You are no longer excited you’re eager, eager to get it over with. You think about how maybe you should have just gotten some ice cream and waited for everybody on the bench out-front. At least there you'd have the sun and fresh air.

Your doubts disappear quickly, as you finally turn the corner and see the line splits. You can see all kinds of commotion ahead. Any other thoughts you had become obsolete, and you start to feel excitement again. Its load, fog and strobe lights flash every few minutes. As you inch closer a gentleman dressed in a flight suit shouts for the next group. You move forward. He tells you to pay attention; you watch a brief introduction on a flat screen monitor. A giant sliding door opens behind him. You walk into a dark room. The door closes behind you and the large group that followed. The ride finally begins.