Bringing Down the House

This week is move-in week!  Hurray!  Move-in week for college, you ask.  No, I answer, that was two weeks ago.  This is move-in week for the two new house mates of my six-person house.  Six-person house!, you screech.  Do you live in a frat house?  Are you in some kind of special Bio-dome like experiment against your will?  Are you just that poor?  Surely there is a good reason why you would subject yourself to such horrors!

Minus Pauly Shore and Stevie Baldwin, of course

Not really to the first one, I wish to the second, and kind of to the third.  You see, we are living in an unemployable world, and I am an unemployable girl, or a barely employable boy more accurately.  If I really wanted to I could stretch my budget and manage to live in a two-person, or even a single apartment.  But then again, I have become awfully accustomed to this whole eating thing.  Having five housemates definitely takes the chokehold off the wallet and I can actually enjoy myself as opposed to eating Raman Noodles for dinner every night—now Raman is only a Tuesday-Thursday meal!

The other factor is that I like living with other people.  I sincerely do.  When I interned in Chicago for a semester during college, I lived alone in the holiest of hole in the wall apartments.  That part I could get over that pretty easily.  The part that I couldn’t get over was how I woke up each morning, rode the El to my unfulfilling internship, rode the El home, made dinner while watching TV, went to sleep, and then did it all over again the next day without talking to anyone.  Definition of depressing.  I thought to myself back then that if this is the real world, I’m out.  Dunzo.  

Since then I’ve lived with roommates at every juncture, citing my financial situation as my sole excuse when met with skeptical looks.  But honestly, even if I could comfortably afford to live on my own, I wouldn’t, and here are my Top 10 Reasons Why;

      10.) Someone always owns a strainer, you know, for noodles and junk.

9.) The more roommates, the greater the friend base for parties, sports, all day caving expeditions. 

8.)   More movies, books, CD’s—pff, who owns CD’s anymore?  Your room mate is lame.                      

     7.)  If your roommate has a pet, you have a pet without any of the responsibilities, usually.

     6.)  Hilarious sitcom re-enactments; Perfect Strangers, Three’s Company, The Brady Bunch if    you have enough roommates (you may have to use the pets for this one).

     5.)  You don’t have to own/ buy as much stuff.

     4.)  Someone always owns a pair of nail clippers.

     3.) There is someone to come home to.

     2.)  When burglars break in you don’t have to go all Home Alone on them, by yourself.

     1.)  Just think of the greatest times in your life: college, road trips, summer camp.  Now how many people were you living with then? 

I will preface all of this with in order to get the full effect, you really need to be friends with your roommates.  Living with roommates = fun.  Living with tenants = bad freshman roommate experience all over again.  That’s really the only drawback of this lifestyle; as more of my friends continue to subscribe to uni or bi-person residencies, good roommates become harder and harder to find.  I can see the writing on the wall, but the show must go on, right? 

I'm aware that at 26 I should either be living with a girlfriend/ wife/ family, or financially stable enough to live on my own in a place that would attract those things, but none of that really appeals to me right now.  That could change, but in the mean time, why mess with success?  I can only hope that by the time I hit 30, there isn’t as much of a stigma on that as there is now, although the likes of Bert and Ernie really aren't helping my case here.  Maybe think more along the lines of Chandler and Joey--wait, is there a difference?

They're just good friends, right?

Also, how'd I manage to post 2, count 'em, 2 pictures of Chandler and Joey in my blog?

So with an ever so sympathetic frown on your face, you might ask, Doesn’t this mean that you’re just afraid to grow up?  Nope, I resoundingly answer, humans are naturally a social species and I’m just being true to my roots.  So don’t cry for me Argentina, because sometimes I laugh at you behind your back.  

More Observations from the Peanut Gallery, Again: Part Deux, Observe Harder! II

Last week the college that I work for had an all-employee mandatory assembly, mandatory meeting, mandatory casual breakfast to kick off the fall semester.  This is where the prez rattles off all the things that he’d like for the university to accomplish this year, and everyone else whispers “yeah right” into their Styrofoam coffee cups.  It’s apparently tradition.

But little did I know that I would be met with another tradition that day, this one dredged from the depths of middle school lore.  After scooping up my requisite bagel and blueberry-ish muffin along with the department’s administrative assistant, we walked into the banquet hall of tables to find one surrounded by faculty members from our department.  But upon moseying up to them our, “Is this seat taken’s?” were met with vacant stares and feigned conversation.  Shunned from the lunch table?  These are the same people intellegent and/ or old enough to have doctorates, right?  Even after we sat alone at the lame kids table, and some other professors from our department joined us, they quickly jumped ship as soon as they spotted their faculty cohorts.  Forest Gump, eat your heart out.

"Can't sit here.  Seat's taken.  I got my PhD at Columbia, where'd you get yours?"

And that’s pretty much the relationship between college faculty and staff, at least at my college.  Be it me, the administrative assistant, the custodian, even the adjunct professors (part time profs); all are met with the same disdain of a 7^th grad pecking order.  If you don’t have a higher degree and aren’t at least on the tenure track, get used to eating your fish sticks in the corner of the cafeteria.
And I really want to sit with these guys.  I want to be one of the cool kids.  I want to talk with them, chat their ears off about just how they got to where they are so maybe I can too. Maybe get some great application tips--who knows?  Whatever they've got, I want it.  That--and the health insurance--is a big reason why I took this job in the first place.  But this gap in communication is compounded by another obstacle, also social.

Peppering a little Chompsky into the convo = intellectual 

For example, if I wanted to I could always brush up on my advanced Communication theory—I think I minored in Comm in college, but hey, who didn’t, right?  However outside of class, Noam Chompsky's comm theories are on their conversational radars about as much as the location of the closest Goodwill is.  Even the administrative assistant can occasionally chew the fat with them and she’s a full year younger than me.  The reason is—survey says—she’s married, has two kids, and owns her house.  Ding, ding, ding ding! 

Just about everyone in the department is at least ten years my senior, and usually 20, 30, or 40 years my senior.  That makes having a real conversation tough, but more than that, and for the most part, they all have spouses, kids, mortgages, tax brackets, home equity, social security options, all that jazz, thus, social rocketing them into a totally foreign cultural stratosphere from my own. 

I mean, what can I offer to this morning coffee-maker conversation?  “Hmm, so you decided to move in order to be located within a better school district to accommodate your daughter’s needs, huh?  Hmm, interesting, interesting stuff.  Well, last night two of my roommates came back from the bar and one just missed puking in the fridge, which is good for our home equity, right?"  Is that what home equity means?  For the love of God, what is home equity!  I don’t know!  I just don’t know!

Whoosh!  I'm a professor now!

Somewhere, somehow, at sometime, these profs made a jump from where I am to where they are, which involved more than just additional schooling.  It’s like they vanished into the Field of Dreams cornfield, and reappeared ten years later as different people.  I can’t imagine they were all like this at my age.  Is it wrong to assume that I won’t be like them at their age?

I think what can be taken away from all of this is the following;

• You better have a kid or know what the hell home equity is if you want to sit with the cool kids at lunch
• Don’t use Styrofoam, it kills mother earth, and hurts her home equity, right?   Bah!   

Observations from the Peanut Gallery

Working in the Communication Department of a major university has its benefits for someone like me applying to grad school.  It’s apples and oranges of course, comparing applying to MFA programs in Creative Writing to applying to MA programs in Communication—GRE scores to memoirs, college transcripts to personal essays--but I have found a few take aways.

The biggest of which involves the acceptance process.  Now for Creative Writing MFA programs there are, supposedly, boards composed of faculty members scrutinizing over every writing sample and application.  In my department, we have only one, Director of Graduate Studies, and she rules the roost.  Maybe we too have our own board of shadowy figures doing their own scrutinizing, but from what I can see, it’s all her.  She’s the Alpha, the Omega, the Tri Lams and the Omega Mus.  She makes the calls.  And after seeing two classes-worth of her selections, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they resemble her in philosophy, mannerisms, sometimes in even in appearance.  She and her female minions of the program are kind of an amalgamation of Kathy and Delores Umbridge—sweet and kind on the outside, holding back the neurotic chaos that lies in wait on the inside that’s unleashed when their perfectly laid plans go awry.  The few men who are in the program are all variations of the boy-next-door and not too hard on the eyes either—um, I mean I love chicks! 

Bingo.

So though it seems obvious, painfully obvious, I think I can attest that acceptance into grad school really depends on who’s doing the picking.  Differing from college applications where you’re justly boiled down your high school transcript and SAT scores, it seems that grad schools want to, well, like you as a person too.  They’ll be working with you, not just lecturing at you.  Needing to be liked can mean many things, but it seems like a make-or-break component of the grad school application, and like winning the lottery, one that’s nearly impossible to predict. 

Play up the Johnny Schoolboy routine, and they’re looking for the rebellious ne'er-do-well whose risky ideas are just crazy, maybe too crazy, to make a mark in the program.  It’s too hard to call, and I’m still only running with this “they have to like you” theory.  I mean I’m sure there are grad schools out there that just plain hate their accepted applicants, or their rejected applicants for that matter.  It just might be that good old fashion bribery is still the way to go.

Tis the Season

It’s that time of year again; it’s time to prepare for new classes, it’s time to find new housing and new room mates, it’s time to start the music, it’s time to light the lights—yes, it’s time for all of it, that is if you’re a student, or if you work at a university and live in a six-person house.  The lifestyles are remarkably similar.

"This is the best writing I've ever read!  Really?  Which book of Twilight is this now? Ah hahaha".  (Hey check out the Muppet's new collaboration with OK GO on the Muppet Show theme song; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiMZa8flyYY&feature=topvideos_music) 

Students have to prepare to learn in class; I have to prepare to teach them, or at least put up with them, which is a teaching moment in itself.  Students have to cram into crappy campus/ slumlord housing because they have no money; I have a little bit more than no money, but only enough to cram into a slightly uncrappier house, not that I would want it any other way.  Both me and the students are forced to relinquish the peace and ease of summer in exchange for a chaotic four month sprint to Christmas break.  And both of us are only here to try to spot something better on the horizon.

What do you do with a BA in English?  Not grad school...

And that leads to the biggest difference between me and Schooly McBackpack, which is that Schooly still has all kinds of crazy potential and opportunities going on for him while mine are dwindling.  I’ll never graduate as a valedictorian, or get an awesome internship that launches my career.  I’ll never sit in the quad, and think ‘oh my God’, I’m totally gonna to go far— is there a better musical than Avenue Q for encapsulating post college life?  Maybe the Wizard of Oz?  Anyway, that’s probably why I resent those dream crappers so much: infinitely more possibilities and hope, same life style.  Fairness police, please?

Video proof that at one time, someone throught we were great

Last May I helped staff the department’s Awards Ceremony for graduating seniors.  Your typical veggie trays on top of crepe paper, parent taking a zillion pictures event.  As Excellence in Achievement and Achieving Excellence Awards were passed out one after another, I thought about all of my undergrad awards that I had proudly slapped on resumes and applications after graduating, and just how worthless I discovered they really were.  And though most of these bright-eyed, bushy tailers have probably found that same harsh reality by now, what really gets me is that just a few of them, just a few, have grabbed amazing jobs and gotten into grad school on their first tries.  They remain blissfully ignorant as their lives continue to swim along under the faulty notion of, Hard Work = Success, all the time.  Fools, I hate them all!

Love West Virginian Style

I’ve seen Stand By Me, The Wrong Guys, heck, I’ve even seen Now and Then where Rosie O'Donnell plays grown up Christina Ricci--sorry Christina, looks like your 40's aren't going to be kind to you.  Point is, the whole reconnecting with childhood friends years later to discover just how much things have changed while just how much they’ve also stayed the same story is played—like seriously played.  Ever see Hollywood’s latest reheat of this, Grown Ups?  No?  There, proof that everyone is pretty much sick of this well tread schtick, and Kevin James.  Kevin, just stop.  Just stop it already.  Please.  I know you read this blog…

wishes he was Fred Flintstone, because Fred was in good movies.

When I drove twelve hours to West Virginia last week for a couple of days of mountaintop Tom-Foolery with some of my best buds from high school, it wasn’t exactly movie worthy.  And by that I mean it wasn’t trite and melodramatic.  The most drama probably occurred when one guy was woken up by six, drunken serenaders at 3 in the morning, or maybe when one of those drunken serenaders tried to start a fire on the cabin floor after everyone else had passed out gone to sleep.  Yeah, we’re awesome.   Maybe that’s because even though we’ve all been scrambled across half the country (New York to Kansas City) we still stay in pretty good contact with each other.  It’s hard, very hard, but in the age of facebook and fantasy football, it’s possible.  We make it work.  You got to want to make it work.

No great revelations or discoveries occurred; most of my high school friends are in stable relationships, or engaged, or married, or married with children, but I knew about all of that beforehand.  Houses, careers, families, lots of Honda Civics—all very different from my current life style, but all very old news to me too.  I did, however, get a little perspective.  Now I have to be careful here because a lot of these guys read this blog—can you have journalistic integrity whilst blogging? 

I spent most of my time growing up weighing and measuring myself against these dudes.  If one got his driver’s permit, I knew it was time to start asking Dad for the car keys.  If one sent in his first college application, I knew it was time to put down Golden Eye long enough to fill one out myself.  If one started dating—eh, who am I kidding?  Dating was few and far between for us in high school, but you get the picture.

But now these same guys who I ran neck-and-neck with in high school have drastically veered off from the course that I’m currently running, which leaves me with two conclusions; either they’re way off track, or I am.  I’ve spent a lot of time considering both.

The answer that I’ve come to isn’t something that struck me like lightning atop a mountain while singing Kumbaya around the fire, nor is it something that’s done developing.  It’s a slow, gradual, eeking realization that I can’t even say has fully dawned on me yet, but I can at least recognize it as something that will someday.

When you’re passionate about something, when you love something, you go after it with everything you’ve got.  A career, a degree, a relationship, a romantic relationship, a life style—whatever you love, you sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed and change what needs to be changed in order to get it.  I've certainly done that for my chance at grad school.  But it’s still weird for me to think that the same people who for so long shared the same desires and were pointed in the same direction, can seemingly peel off on so many completely different paths, but I guess that’s pretty human, to change, to progress. 

I don’t think growing up is necessarily inevitable, but change definitely is.  The way to maintain true friendships in the face of this inevitability is to accept those changes in your friends and support them in their decisions, as they should you.  I think I’ve spent too long resisting these changes in my friends, wondering whether they mean it’s time for me to change too, when the only thing I need to do is support my friends in them.  That’s all.  Support them in their changes and let understanding come in time.  Let’s see Kevin James make a movie about that.  Wait, what was The Zookeeper about?  Oh, no one saw that?  Nevermind.

...Oh, There Goes Gravity

Isn’t this blog supposed to be about applying to grad school?  Um, yes it is I simultaneously ask and answer myself.  Then what’s all this crap about job searching, and being poor, and feelings and junk?  Well self, for one I believe that all of those things are tied into the application life style and need to be addressed as much as the composition of statements of purpose.  And two, applying to grad school is a long and incredibly tedious process with not a whole heck of a lot to write about in a weekly blog, so get off my back, self! 

Truth is if you do your homework on selecting schools—researching, writing e-mails to program heads, etc.—the next steps are just making a plan and implementing it.  As this is my second wave of applications, much of that initial homework stage was completed last year and I’m not doing or talking about it much now.  I should probably look around for others schools that I didn’t apply to/ was rejected from last year—remember the definition of insanity?—but aside from being a glutton for punishment, I do have my reasons for returning to those that have hurt me so. 

who has two thumbs and can't get into grad school?

If you’re specifically applying to MFA programs in Creative Writing like me, then you need to grab a copy of The MFA Creative Writing Handbook by Tom Kealey.  It's your Bible.  You just don't know it yet.  Aside from giving you boss tips on applying to programs—like this guy over here does—it also gives you phat tips on deciding which grad schools to apply to based on your personal needs.  The reason that I’m reapplying to many, if not all, of the same schools that rejected me a scant few months ago is because of these points that old Tommy boy sites as most important to consider when selecting which grad schools to apply to;

1.)   Location—this might seem the most trivial component of applying to grad schools, but Kealey says it should be #1.  City or country, near or far from home, mountains or flatlands?  I don’t know about being the very first consideration, but I don’t think you can do well or be happy somewhere you hate.

2.)   Faculty/ Program—if you’re applying to a creative writing and environment program and you drive a Hummer, that may not be the program for you.  Research programs that you feel that you’ll fit into well.  I don’t think that always means finding faculty with similar styles., practices as you—diversity leads to new ideas—but it definitely doesn’t hurt.

3.)   Cost—this should probably be #1.  If you can’t get past this one, nothing else matters.  In my case, I started by researching schools that offered full rides and teaching assistantship stipends and went from there.  NYU and Columbia are great, I bet, but they never passed the financial aid test and I never even bothered to research them.
4.) Post Grad Opportunities - Will you get published while in school?  Is there a student literary magazine to do so?  What about finding agents, publishing contacts, teaching gigs afterwards.  All things I never considered whist strolling through my undergrad education that are now imperative to do.
5.) Creative Writing-y Stuff - visiting writers, library access, student reading, class size (actually, this is important to consider for any grad school).  There are a lot of little, yet vital, aspects of a creative writing program to mull over for aspiring MFA students, but too much to write here.

There are some more points on Tomo's hit parade, but I think these are some of the most crucial and general points when selecting which grad schools to apply to.   But if you don’t have any preferences on location, faculty, and have crap-tons of money, then you suck.  Don’t bring your impartial zombie-robotness into grad school.  Save the room for someone else, please?  

I'm a Bad Blogger--Bad Blogger!

So it turns out that when you're camping in West Virginia for a week, there's a not a whole lot of time or access to write and post a blog.  Who knew?  This could not have been anticipated.   There are lots of important things to do, profound matters to contemplate with thoughtful people, and fires to try to make on the living room floor of the cabin when everyone else has gone to sleep.  Anyway, just sit tight and I'll try to get something up lickity-split like.