An Open Letter to the Universe

He-Man

Masters of the Universe

2702 Battlecat Dr. 

Castle Grayskull, Eternia 49872

Dear He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (who else would be in charge of the universe?); 


I get it.  Life’s tough, get a helmet.  Check.  It’s blue and I stole it from the kid next door.   It's well past 5:00 PM this Friday, and it doesn’t look like you’re going to send me that job offer that I was supposed to hear about at the end of this week.  That’s cool.  Here is a list of reasons why I’m pretty stoked about it;

1.)   I get to stay in my low tax bracket—suck it Uncle Sam!  Looks like you’ll be paying me again this next April!

2.)   I get to stay in my same office, with my same stuff, and same duties, and I don’t have to learn anything new—easy peasy.  I’ve gotten pretty used to this place and I—gulp—maybe even like it, a little.

3.)   The new Department Chair likes Happy Gilmore and asked me how many quotes I could remember.

4.)   The new building I would have had to move into smells like old man cheese.

5.)   I can now refocus on my grad school applications

Man-at-Arms is a man of sage wisdom and laser blasters.

Number 5 here is probably the best reason for being excited about keeping my old post.  Perhaps by the wisdom of Man-at-Arms (if you don’t get that reference then you probably didn’t grow-up as a dude in the 1980’s), I am to stay where I am and redirect my energies on my grad school apps.  Or maybe like Orco’s jokes, (yes, more He-Man references!) it’s all just random. 

In any event, like all of those middle school social studies teachers and everyone else before me, if I got/ took this job now, it would not be the first, but it would be the biggest to date in a series of compromises that might ultimately kill my grad school aspirations.  I would/ did tell myself that it’s just a little extra money doing something I’m more passionate about until I get in.  But in reality it would have been a giant safety net to catch me if I was rejected from grad school again, or worse yet, a cozy alternative to grad school itself.  The last thing I need right now is to waste time worrying about safety nets.

A wise old turtle of a man once told me that giving 100% of yourself doesn’t gaurentee that you’ll achieve your dreams, but it’s the only way that they’ll ever happen.  I don’t have the luxury of cloistering myself inside for a year, working non-stop in crafting amazing grad school applications, but I can dedicate more time to the process.  Getting/ taking this job might have made my immediate life better, but it wouldn’t have done much good for my future, not that not getting the job will help my future any either.  I’ll leave the fortune telling to the professionals.

So to you Mr. He-Man, Prince Adam, 1980’s icon of closeted homosexuality, I say, I get it.  You and the Masters of the Universe are going to keep throwing the kitchen sink at me from now until Castle Grayskull crumbles to the ground.  Good.  I’m used to it.  I drove down to Joplin, MO this past weekend.  That’s real trouble, real hard times, real difficult decisions to be made.  That tornado destroyed thousands of dreams and lives in a matter of minutes whereas mine are simply slipping away at times, and it’s up to me to stop them before they do.  So as a courtesy, I’m letting your know I’m ready, still ready, for whatever you’ve got in store for me.  To quote Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, “It's supposed to be hard.  If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it.  The hard is what makes it great… you look like a little penis with that hat on." 


Bests, 


Your Faithful Punching Bag

Avoid the clap--Jimmy Dougan

Moon Over Parma

…and though such rejection was certainly disappointing, I have learned from it and I am even more determined to get into BLANK with my next application.

That’s a direct quote from the latest working copy of my statement of purpose, and it’s true.  I am even more determined.  I can definitely be classified as one of those guys who wants what he can’t have, so by rejecting me last year, those grad schools have only made themselves even more appealing to me, just like that girl from summer camp who never wanted to walk with me to the café-gym-atorium for dinner.  She was actually a pretty horrible person, but all I could see was the target of my affection, and short shorts.  

I am committed to getting into grad school, but at the same time my vision isn’t completely periscoped.  Just this week I interviewed for a job as an academic counselor at the university where I work—yes, I actually work at a university.  Ironic much?  I have been applying to a few jobs at colleges in a my area since about May, just shortly after I received my final rejection notice, and this has been the first one that I’ve gotten a face-to-face interview for. 

When I took my current position last July, I knew it was a low-paying job with limited hours and no chance for advancement, but I figured that I’d only be there for a year before I left for grad school.  It was a really great job for paying the rent and giving me time to get my applications together.  Now that I’ve realized that I could potentially be here much longer than a year, I’m starting to think about it little differently.

Hopefully—fingers crossed, holding my lucky rabbit’s foot, punching a leprechaun in the face—I’ll get in this time, but if I don’t, well if I don’t… it’d be nice to make some more money, it’d be nice to not have to worry about health insurance, buy a nicer car, move into a nicer apartment, eat nicer food—okay, I’m lying.  I’d still eat Raman Noodles and Kraft Mac & Cheese.  But seriously, it’d be nice to have more money, if only for a year. 

That's dreamless face of the American social studies teacher.

That kind of gets me excited, but I try to hold myself up here because it seems to be the tale as old as time logic behind the likes of Office Space, Drew Carry, and every social studies teacher you’ve ever had.  None of them actually wanted to stay at their jobs for very long, or even liked their jobs, but they figured they could do it for a little while, make a little money, and then get the hell out of there.  Boom!  40 years later they’re still there—actually, it’d be nice to have that kind of job security now a day—okay I ripped that joke from Office Space, but it still applies!

Seems like it’s the age-old tradition to compromise your dreams for stability.  Genius, talent, and chances for greatness are abandoned in the face of an over-whelming fear of the unknown, and little by little it all slips away.  I figure the cycle looks something like this;

Alright, maybe that's just a tad pessimistic, and maybe it’s different for everyone.  Maybe the difference for me—if there is a difference—is that I’d actually like this job I just interviewed for.  With an MFA in Creative Writing, I’d get to write professionally, sure, but I’d also get to teach and work with students.  That’s a big draw for me.  As an academic counselor I’d also get to work with students, some of the students who need the most assistance and guidance, and make real impacts in their lives.  That ain’t too shabby.  But is that, combined with a bulked up paycheck, enough to derail my dreams?  Dreams always can change… Right now this is just my back up plan, right now… 

Apps

This morning after editing some essays for inclusion into my grad school apps, I scanned the local universities’ job postings and craigslist for positions better than my current one.  While on craigslist I bumped over to the apartment/ housing listings since my house of six will soon be losing some roomies to relationships and new jobs forcing us to move, again, and then concluded with a brief stop at my okcupid profile to see if anyone had been checking me out—yes, I have one and I’m only moderately ashamed of it. 

All in all it was one of my more productive mornings and I felt quite hip taking care of business twenty-first century style, clicking away on my laptop while sipping a latte in my neighborhood coffee shop.  I was a single twenty-something spending my Sunday morning in the way that Friends and its sister sitcoms had taught me that I should in my youth.  But then a very obvious yet curdling realization hit me like discovering spoiled milk in your coffee; I had just spent the last four hours, lounging about, completing applications.  I had just spent the last four years lounging about completing applications. 

These were the guys I was taking life lessons from?

Somehow, perhaps under the guise of facebook profiles and online access to everything, my generation has been tricked into a state of perpetual application.  Everything is an application.  Everything is a test to prove our respective values to someone else.  We apply to jobs.  We apply to grad schools.  Applications for homes, cars, dates, grants, service projects, chances to win all expenses paid trips to Hawaii, they’re all just open wounds to be judged, and we’re addicted to it.  From grad schools to dating, we slap our information up on the Internet, e-mail it out, and hope to God someone thinks it’s worthy of acceptance, and we’re okay with it.  Or so it seems. 

The old Woody Allen line is, “I’d never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member".  That seems to sum up my era’s view of life.   

Anytime that I become dissatisfied with my current situation, I look to apply somewhere else.  This apartment is okay, for now.  After I get into an MFA program, I’ll have to start searching for jobs.  My car is fine, but I’m really looking for something more.  What is more?  What is enough?  What does enough even look like?  It seems like anytime I think I have enough figured out, it’s shape-shifted into something else by the time I get there.  I end up chasing the proverbial carrot at the end of the stick, looking over the fence and marveling at the greener grass, believing that one day I can eat that damn carrot in that greener-ass grass.

But isn’t that the American Dream?  To run around like a mad man, working too hard, too long, abusing yourself and looking to the horizon, so that you can one day find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?  I’m only twenty-six and not very far along my rainbow, but it makes me wonder just how long that rainbow might be?  Does it ever end?  How many clichés can I cram into one blog post?  Answer: a baker’s dozen. 

Sweep the leg, just sweep the leg...

Ambition is a good thing.  It stormed the shores of Normandy and turned Danielson into the Karate Kid.  But I think it must be horrible to never be able to reach true satisfaction in life.  There has to be a time when we can stop, a time when we can be satisfied to let ourselves stop, right?  I hope so.  Applying to everything is frick’n exhausting.  The first step might be pausing long enough to figure out what the end might look like.

Or is it simply that we know what the ends looks like and are afraid that the destination will never match the journey?

Dear Santa, I Love Your Book

One of the most tedious and disheartening aspects of preparing those dreaded statements of purpose is researching grad schools' respective faculties.  Tedious like a fox.  Disheartening like a pet fish.  Necessary like a honey badger.  Obviously, you want to do this for yourself, first and foremost, but programs also want you to see that;

1.) You care enough about the program to which you’re applying to research its faculty.  And on your end, you don’t want to TA for Dr. Acula without knowing beforehand, right?  (Scrubs reference, deal with it, jerkwads!)

2.) Your academic aspirations and style line up with someone else’s in the faculty.  What if you’re Dr. Acula and no one in the program can teach you how to harvest blood, or how to write a musical about harvesting blood?  That’s a bad match for both you and the program.


3.) And finally, nobody hates flattery

 

But really, come on.  Come on!  Maybe there’s one prof out there who you can honestly say you want to study under (for me, her name is Jeanne Marie Laskas and she writes in a way I can only hope to do some day), but after that, in all sincerity, does anyone really care?  Does anyone really know?  If most applicants are like me, I’m guessing they’ll probably give a school’s faculty the benefit of the doubt if the school’s flipping the bill for them.  It’s all about prioritizing when you’re poor. 

I’m not sure how it works for other applications, but when I applied to Creative Writing MFA programs last year, I scanned a program’s website for creative non fiction faculty, looked up their respective works on Amazon, found the one that most closely resembled my own writing, read a couple pages of his work, and then made some snap judgments of him in my statement.  Pretty standard I imagine.  I’m sure it's the same for theoretical physics applicants who look up the hot theoretical physicists of a program to say they’ve always wanted to work with those guys.  It’s just a matter of sincerity; fake that and you’ve got it made. 

Ms Frizzle or the guy who discovered the physics of the civil war beard?  Tough call physicists.  Tough call.

Dr. Silas McBeardmyer

It gets hard on the soul, however, when you continually prattle on about how big a dream it would be to work with some professor about whom you know just enough to be able to scribble down a sentence or two.  It’s how the game is played, but knowing so doesn’t make it any easier.  In most cases, you don’t even know what kind of person Dr. Acula is; what he cares about; how he treats his students; by God, does he even think that The Jerk is funny?  Just what kind of person is this guy for whom you have supposedly the utmost respect? 

Such deception to the program(s) to which you’re applying and to yourself is a necessary evil for an applicant's dreams, unfortunately.  But every once in a while you might uncover something vaguely human and even recognizable in someone.

Didn't think I'd double-up Lumbergs, did you now?

While researching one MFA program’s faculty today, I cyber-strolled over to a prof’s personal website where I discovered a personal blog.  A blog, you say.  A blog, I say.  And not just any blog dear reader, but the very same Google-run Blogspot blog that I have, with the same books-in-the-background template, no less!  I was glad to learn that I did in fact select the most professorial and grad schooly blog template Blogspot had to offer—score!  And maybe this is a little subjective, but I think mine is the superior blog.  I mean, he didn’t even have one picture of Bill Lundgren.  Not one!  Now I have TWO!  Who’s laughing now arbitrary grad school professor?  Who’s laughing now?... oh wait, still you…  

Start Couch Mining for Quarters, It's Application Time!

This week I e-mailed a few letters to the MFA programs that I applied to/ was rejected from last year, asking what I need to include in my reapplications and what I do not.  Some grad schools will keep your college transcripts, letters of recommendations, GRE scores, even your formal application on file for up to a year after your initial application, which is great because submitting all of those things is costly for a kid who buys Raman Noodles in bulk—mmm, the 30 pack just tastes better!  It’s always interesting how the systems in place keep the moderately destitute more moderately destitute, and by interesting I mean incredible, and by incredible, I mean incredibly crappy.  Universities aren’t getting rich off of application dollars, but I guess it’s enough to keep some from applying, and to keep those applying, mining their couches for quarters.

Every bit helps.

 Everyone knows that grad students have zip cash, but what seems to go unnoticed is that those applying to grad school also have zip cash—that’s why they’re applying to grad school in the first place, duh.  Sure, every once in while there is some financially stable executive wanting to upgrade their degree or a middle-aged housewife/ husband bored out of their mind who apply with extra funds to spare, but they’re the exceptions to the rule, and they suck. 

According to some rough numbers I just crunched in my head for a made-up survey, the average cost to apply to just one grad school is approximately $250.  That’s factoring in the actual application, GRE exams, mailing costs.  And while the cost of the GRE exam would get divided by the more schools that you apply to, you would also need to account for the supplemental costs of submitting multiple GRE score costs ($20/ school over your initial four schools), additional transcripts, and that’s not even mentioning the bribes you're already paying for your letters of recommendation—they might say they’re happy to do it for you, but they’re really just after those new tweed jackets.

Point is, applying to grad school is expensive, so if sending a few well placed letters can fray that cost, it’s well worth it.  Especially, if you’re like the 87% of most grad school applicants who are in low-paying crap jobs, designed to make ends meet, pay off college loans, and generate a little money for when you actually get into grad school and are truly moderately destitute (these numbers were also taken from the same made-up survey).

Oh Garfield, you just get it.

 Also mad ups to Steve for enlightening me to this comic strip documenting the woes of life in grad school; www.phdcomics.com.  It’s no Garfield, but it’s still pretty funny.  I’d probably think it was even funnier if I were actually in grad school—not that I’m bitter, much.  It seems like there’s a good amount of media out there accounting for those in-school experiences and struggles, but I still haven’t found much depicting that pre-struggle period, the one before you get in.  Unless, of course, you classify that Saved By the Bell season when they’re working at the beach for the summer prior to college as pre struggle media—I just call it good TV.  So aren’t you glad to know you’re reading a blog that is on the cutting edge?  Let me try that again.  Aren’t you glad Cheetos are 2 for 1 at the gas station today?  Yeah, yeah you are.

The Plan that Knew Too Much

Upon speaking with a former creative writing professor this week, I was asked if I still wanted his job.  Did I still want to be a professor of creative writing?  Did I still want to put in 2-3 more years of schooling just for the chance to work at a small Midwestern liberal arts college where I’d hope to be lucky to get a book published some day?  Yes, yes I did.  Still an easy question even after four years and nine rejections, and I’m thankful for that.  I also was kindly reminded that I have yet to begin this whole reapplication business—details. 

I’ll need to unearth my application plan—reinvent it into a master plan for acceptance, the likes of which not even the Muppets have seen!  The likes of which rival even the strategery surrounding The Annexation of Puerto Rico (if you don’t get this reference, rent Little Giants immediately from your local video rental—it might just change your life). 

I need a plan that is the brain child of these two movies.  Should I call John Madden?

Well, maybe I’ll just start off with the basics and go from there.  I don’t know about every application to every program, but I can at least tell you what I need to start getting together in order to apply to most Creative Writing MFA programs, and I bet a lot it is universal;

Undergraduate Transcripts –

            This is one of the easier pieces to collect.  Usually a call to your college’s Registrar will do the trick.  Mailing transcripts to graduate programs is old hat for Registrars and they’ll probably do it for free—just give them the addresses that want your transcripts to be sent to.  However, if you’re like me and applying to a buttload of schools, they might require an additional fee for providing more than 5-6 transcripts.  And if you’re also paranoid like me, you might ask them to mail the transcripts directly to you so that you can assemble everything needed for your application and mail it all out together.  This might be more costly and more effort on your part, but it pays dividends if you’re a worrier.

GRE Scores –

            Ah the GRE, the exam that tests everything that you’ve learned in high school after you’re graduated from college.  Seriously, the math is the exact same crap that’s on the SAT and now it’s been even longer since you learned it in High School!  The 2011 edition may be different, but way back in 2010 there were no calculators allowed, dang nab it!  You best re-learn that long division.  The vocab section is actually pretty legit.  I studied word lists for months, but still saw plenty of words I had never come across before.  Learn roots, suffixes, prefixes well, and then supplement your studying with reading, anything.  

            After you get done actually taking the test (you take it on a computer) you’ll immediately be prompted to enter which schools you want your scores to be sent to (up to four).  Any more than four, and you guessed it, it’s a $20/ school fee that you can request later–yay higher learning! 

Letters of Recommendation –

            Most programs require (3) letters of recommendation.  Who you ask to write those letters depends on what kind of program you’re applying to, but a safe bet is to get one from an academic source (a professor, an advisor, someone who taught you in college and who knows your work well in regards of the subject matter that you’re applying to grad school for; i.e. don’t ask a math prof to write you a rec letter for an English program).  Another should be from a professional source, like a manager of a counseling center if you’re applying for a social work program for instance.  The third can really come from anywhere as long as he/ she knows you and can boast about you.

            The important thing is that each of your recommenders knows you and your work well and will speak highly of you.  In my opinion, a letter from a nobody co-worker who knows you well is better than the generic “grad letter” that a big-shot professor might copy, paste, and send out for all of his students.  Then again, I’ve been rejected from grad school, so maybe just do whatever you want. 

            That does bring up a good point; keep solid connections to college professors and former employers because you never know when you might need them again.  If it’s been a while and you’ve since lost those connections, I’d start sending out a bunch of “hey, remember me?” e-mails and see what catches.  Recipients just may be understanding and agree to write a letter, though it won’t be as good as a letter from someone who remembers you and your work well.

Curriculum Vitea – 

            Some programs might ask for one of these, which is just a Latin way to say your resume with your education information at the top.  The way that I understand it, these are primarily used for those applying for professorships, or you know, jobs that you’d have to have more than just an undergraduate degree for.  Pump up your undergraduate experience as much as possible, including as many awards and honors as you can think of.

Personal Statement –

            Also sometimes known as a Letter of Intent, this is at the crux of all the sucks about applying to grad school.  The Personal Statement is essentially an open ended prompt where you get to say just why you’re special enough to attend a particular grad school.  It can be overwhelming.  And when you’re overwhelmed, you tend to ramble, which is a very bad thing to do in a personal statement.  Statements should be 1-2 pages in length and hit these main points;

• Who you are—this is your chance to make your application personal, and if you’re not applying to a creative writing program, probably your only chance.  Make it memorable but not overly sentimental. 
• What you want to get out of the program—grad schools don’t want wishy-washy folks who are just applying because they don’t know what else to do with their lives.  They want focused, driven students with tangible goals, and plans to achieve those goals, which brings us to…
• What will you do for the program—again wishy-washers aren’t going to do much more than take up space for a program.  Those with plans to bring in the “Three R’s”—research, revenue, and results, coined it—are very attractive.  Basically these two things together need to address how can the program help you, to help it.
• How prepared you are—This one is just re-emphasizing, again, that this is not a decision that you’ve made on whim, though why people would go through this hell on just a whim is beyond me.  List any classes, service, jobs you’ve had and how they’ll help you succeed in the grad program you’re applying to.
• Why this school—Of course you’re applying to more than one school, and each school knows this, but they also want to be flattered and told just why they’re so great.  They also want to make sure you’re a good fit for their specific program.  All programs are not the same, so be sure to read programs’ specifics before deciding to apply, for you and for them.

Application Forms—

            The actual application is pretty straightforward and easy.  It just takes some time.  These are pretty standard and ask for things like your full name, address, social security number, etc.  Every once in while there will be an essay question like, “how do you feel like you’ll acclimate and improve the Example State University community?”  They’re usually pretty generic and fairly open ended, but they are also usually short (about a page) and are primarily designed just to make sure you’re an intelligent writer.  Don’t half ass them though.

Writing Sample—

            All right, this only pertains to those applying to Creative Writing MFA programs.  If you’re one of these people, you still have to complete all of the above listed components of the application, but your writing sample equates to about 90% or more of the total value of your application.  Drop out of college, fall asleep during your GRE’s, pay three hobos to write your letters of recommendation and then get one of them to fill out your application between black-outs, but if you’re writing sample is amazing, then that’s all that matters.  Work on that writing sample.

For my reapplication, I’ll need to address how I’ve improved since my last application and why I’m an even better fit than ever before—that’s the million dollar question.  I would LOVE to just resubmit everything I did last time, but if it didn’t cut it last time, I can’t count on it doing it this time.  I’ll need to determine what I can to do better, and then attempt to do so—dum, dum dum!

Say Anything, seriously

My friend, who was also recently barred from the Land of Grad School, showed me a letter he received from a program a few days ago.  After being told that, “although your qualifications met the criteria for acceptance to Example State University, unfortunately, we cannot accept you at this time,” he had the audacity to write back to them and ask (in nicer terms), “What the Hell!?” 

Bill Lumberg should write/ orate rejection letters.

We get it.  Competition is high, higher than high has ever been before.  So how hard is to say, “You just weren’t good enough, and here’s why...”  Such explanation would certainly sting to say the least, but at least we would be able to wrap our heads around it.  This Zen-corporate soft-speak that is polite to the point of saying nothing, is no help. 

Here is one of my favorite rejection letters (can you have a favorite rejection letter?)  I like it so much because I can truly imagine its conception.  I can picture some belabored copier in some florescent tinted office pumping out hundreds of these clones to be distributed across the country to each applicant who simply, “cannot be accepted at this time”.  Its signature, just the recycled copy of some muckity-muck’s hand who doesn't remember my name.

Now, you might ask why would I even apply to Douche U?  Everyone knows they’re just a party school with an English department that’s seriously lagging, but you can’t be too choosey when it comes to applying for full rides and teaching stipends.  More importantly, why was I rejected from DU?  What can I improve upon?  Can you tell from this letter?  Apparently, somewhere between my “GRE scores, GPA, [and] quality of writing samples”, I didn’t meet the “criteria for the committee’s judgments,” so that’s pretty clear.  Either that or my “goals and plans [did NOT] fit with the program’s”.  My goals were to go to grad school to learn to write and teach—what goals should I have had to apply to a Creative Writing MFA program? 

This letter tells me nothing!  Nothing, I tells ya, nothing!  After all of the cajoling and gentle encouragement by universities to have prospective students apply and up their programs’ submission numbers, this letter ultimately represents the quickest, easiest, and least personal way to fish and cut bait.  Its three paragraphs certainly do not warrant the hundreds upon thousands of collective hours that all of the applicants like myself invested in their applications to schools like Douche U.

So my friend here—you remember my friend, from the first paragraph?—right, so my pal politely wrote back to Example State requesting some ways that he could improve his application.  A reasonable inquiry.  To his surprise, someone actually returned his letter and offered some advice.  Getting past the politeness pudding slopped onto the page, it stated that he needed to essentially return to college for a year and take the undergraduate courses that were supposedly “suggested” for consideration into this particular program.

In grad school's eyes, I am NOT complete.

Ouch.  Harsh.  Not want he wanted to hear, but at least it’s something.  At least it’s a goal to work towards.  It’s a ridiculous goal, one that would put my friend further into massive debt, and I doubt he’ll consider.  He’ll probably just try to find some backdoor way in because he’s not an eccentric millionaire or son of an eccentric millionaire, but again, at least the letter actually said something.  A novel concept for a graduate program, and even more novel of one for a Creative Writing program.  I guess before I can get some real answers I have some letter writing to do, or at least some trench coat wearing, boom box hoisting, and 1987 Buick Cutlass Supreme standing in front of to do.