Wednesday, February 21, 2007

It's a D-minus Day

  • I failed miserably, time and again, at fitting a bi-fold closet door to fit into its place. With only one correct outcome out of so many, failing the first few attempts is probably inevitable. It's the fourth and fifth and sixth times that get to you.
  • I set one side of the bathroom door perfectly, level top to bottom. Then I realized I did a step out of order, and therefore while the front was perfect, the back was fucked up. So I sawed through two hours of work. Then we went home.
  • I got rejected by UW, which probably means I'm not going to graduate school, at least not this year. MIT still has to notify me, but even if I get in there, I won't lie to you, I can't afford it. In some situations it's worth it to take huge debt for an advanced degree, but not when it comes to journalism.

I'm not really that upset about it at the moment, I guess. I almost didn't blog about it because I didn't want any of you to send me conciliatory messages.

I really wanted to attend UW for a number of legitimate reasons, but in retrospect, I was really more attached to the idea of staying in Madison than attending the university any further. In a dreamlike air it seemed great, but I was never that attached to the firm reality of grad work (and if I needed any impetous to steer clear, I needed look no further than my two grad student roommates and their terribly limited personal lives. I long suspected in the back of my mind that we weren't right for each other; Madison Soc is the top-notch national program looking for PhDs to be, not wandering minds. I was sort of hoping that they'd take an interest in me for the sake of diversity, but I was pretty honest in my application and they're the kind of academics who don't appreciate my kind of wit and don't want me around.

Meh. Now I know, and I can start looking for another reason to stay here. Thankfully I'm relaxing, if only slightly, from being a goal-oriented creature; that'll have to be a cushion to keep me from feeling like my time in Madison has been a failure. It's not that I'm not happy day-to-day, only that many of the things I've wanted to do otherwise have crashed and broken, like my face on the fucking sidewalk. Mostly it feels like I'm sitting on top of a mountain of different abilities and thoughts, but that they're never going to turn into anything useful. Traditional careers outlets and such seem either boring as hell or unwilling to take a chance on me.

Fair enough. In the future we'll have devices to entrance committees and employers and love interests can just read the potential in your mind, but for now I guess we have to settle for essays and resumes and other ineffecient meters.

Give and take.

1 comment:

Vanessa Skocz said...

Stick in there Moseman. Just you wait and something amazing will show up right when you didn't think anything else good would turn up. You just have to keep your chin up and realize that it wasn't meant to be but I still have faith in you.