Please, don’t let this feeling end.
Last summer I was sitting outside in my old backyard in the gentle, purply-pink twilit air, weaving a wildflower garland and drinking a tall glass of lemonade with my friend Clara. The evening was sweet, our futures felt limitless and I was rambling to her all about applying to MFA programs the coming winter. Clara said to me, “Okay, but don’t get all stressed.” I looked at her, smiled and threw another length of garland over her pretty, pretty head, laughing. She sighed. “No, you will get all stressed, but don’t completely lose your mind, okay?”
I thought: How bad could it be? Once I get the business of recommendations and transcripts and GRE testing out of the way, I revise some of my actually-good writing and make it the shiniest it can be and send it in to these places along with some paperwork, right?
But it’s December now, and I think I’m going crazy. I am, however, enjoying it, in part. I am no longer carefree and outdoorsy; instead I spent night after night cocooned in my dimly-lit, poorly heated bedroom with the glare of my laptop and my own words, my lights to the future. Instead of living now, I am bent on the months and years ahead. I am writing my way there. And I like having this crazy-making project. I like the challenge of writing 30 pages for this school, 50 pages for that one; I yawn and stretch and Buddy Holly Dangercat looks up from where he’s perched behind my deskchair and yells at me. I wander to the kitchen in my flannel pajamas and bear slippers for a cup of tea. It’s sleeting outside and Buddy Holly follows, slinking himself about my legs and just continuing to yell on and on, so I scoop him up and tell him about the future I’m crafting for the both of us: a move to a new town, two years of writing ahead and no one at the helm of this but me and me.
That would be how it is, if it weren’t for the other people involved, that is. That’s where it begins to feel like I’m being genuinely tested. This is where I begin to understand the insane-gleam in the eyes of others I’ve spoken with while they were going through this same process, in years past. Because if it were just up to me, I would be rocking this thing. Instead, it’s also ETS, the testing system in charge of the GRE, an exam a few of the schools I’ve applied to require. The testing end of it is just fine, but the score-reporting department? where there’s actually like, an office with people? That part’s run by orangutans or some other very un-cute primate. Some un-cute primate with creepy anti-social tendencies.
Sample phone-call between Alice and ETS:
Alice: Yeah, hi. I got a letter from Wainscoting College telling me that they still haven’t received my GRE scores. And I actually mailed a score-report request to ETS a month ago, so I’m just calling to see what happened.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Social?
Alice: What? Oh. 999-9999-99.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Okay hold on.
Alice: [Waits. Is standing outside of office in the cold on cellphone because her school-applying process, which takes up Every Single Spare Second outside of work, is not known to her colleagues at Small Pub’. Paces ol’ crappy driveway.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Ma’am?
Alice: Yes? [Stops pacing.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Please hold.
Alice: Oh, okay. [Resumes pacing. 20 seconds pass. Sighs.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Ma’am?
Alice: Yes? [As paces.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Sorry for the hold. They were throwing their excrement at me again. Anyway, we shows no record of having received a score request from you.
Alice: [Stops pacing.]But, um, that’s really weird because I mailed a score request, weeks ago.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: [Pauses.] Sorry. You can fax in a request, and we’ll start processing it now.
Alice: [Sighs.] Okay. What’s the number?...
So I fax the request all on-the-sly-like from my office fax machine, wondering if ETS’ll remove one of the charges once my original mailed request gets found beneath the moldy old banana peels or bamboo shoots under Head Monkey’s desk and is processed accidentally, next April.
A half-hour later, I call back to ask if they received the fax. The enslaved operator puts me on hold again because they keep yanking at her hair and then running away while screeching at the tops of their lungs. “Goddamn it,” she mutters and finally asks me which number I faxed the new request to. I tell her and she says, “Well, that’s all the way across the building, so I can’t tell you if it got here or not.” And she actually tells me to call back *the next day,* because by then, they’ll have it on file, if it arrived.
Which I do and am then told by a third enslaved operator, the Least Sympathetic of All, that they received it, and it will take them APPROXIMATELY 20 DAYS to process before they can mail my scores anywhere. The deadline for Wainscoting College is like, totally in five days. Which I tell him, in a manner that I’m sure comes across as just ever-so-seeeee-lightly petulant and sniveling. And he responds, “Well, we can’t do anything about that,” in a way that makes it crystal clear he’s looking at the clock on the wall over the banana tree across from his cube and thinking, I-get-out-of-this monkey-ruled-hellhole-in-15-minutes. Which I would be, too. But then I went and got angry, anyway, in that way that you do when you just start talking and you can actually feel your voice spiraling out of control in perfect accord with your emotions. Like, if they were a figure-skating couple, your voice and your feelings, they just completed the most beautiful creepily-identical tandem triple-lutzes, ever, and then made identical smashing leaps straight into the glass window and got blinded for life in the exact same way. That’s how it was: this dawning clarity of just how goddamned S.O.L. I was. Which I added at the end of my crazy-person diatribe, in a really cool and likeable way before hanging up like a big old wanker: “Well, I guess I’m just totally S.O.L., aren’t I?” Click. That was so freaking awesome of me.
On the whole, this process is really helping me get out in the world and be a real woman.
Last summer I was sitting outside in my old backyard in the gentle, purply-pink twilit air, weaving a wildflower garland and drinking a tall glass of lemonade with my friend Clara. The evening was sweet, our futures felt limitless and I was rambling to her all about applying to MFA programs the coming winter. Clara said to me, “Okay, but don’t get all stressed.” I looked at her, smiled and threw another length of garland over her pretty, pretty head, laughing. She sighed. “No, you will get all stressed, but don’t completely lose your mind, okay?”
I thought: How bad could it be? Once I get the business of recommendations and transcripts and GRE testing out of the way, I revise some of my actually-good writing and make it the shiniest it can be and send it in to these places along with some paperwork, right?
But it’s December now, and I think I’m going crazy. I am, however, enjoying it, in part. I am no longer carefree and outdoorsy; instead I spent night after night cocooned in my dimly-lit, poorly heated bedroom with the glare of my laptop and my own words, my lights to the future. Instead of living now, I am bent on the months and years ahead. I am writing my way there. And I like having this crazy-making project. I like the challenge of writing 30 pages for this school, 50 pages for that one; I yawn and stretch and Buddy Holly Dangercat looks up from where he’s perched behind my deskchair and yells at me. I wander to the kitchen in my flannel pajamas and bear slippers for a cup of tea. It’s sleeting outside and Buddy Holly follows, slinking himself about my legs and just continuing to yell on and on, so I scoop him up and tell him about the future I’m crafting for the both of us: a move to a new town, two years of writing ahead and no one at the helm of this but me and me.
That would be how it is, if it weren’t for the other people involved, that is. That’s where it begins to feel like I’m being genuinely tested. This is where I begin to understand the insane-gleam in the eyes of others I’ve spoken with while they were going through this same process, in years past. Because if it were just up to me, I would be rocking this thing. Instead, it’s also ETS, the testing system in charge of the GRE, an exam a few of the schools I’ve applied to require. The testing end of it is just fine, but the score-reporting department? where there’s actually like, an office with people? That part’s run by orangutans or some other very un-cute primate. Some un-cute primate with creepy anti-social tendencies.
Sample phone-call between Alice and ETS:
Alice: Yeah, hi. I got a letter from Wainscoting College telling me that they still haven’t received my GRE scores. And I actually mailed a score-report request to ETS a month ago, so I’m just calling to see what happened.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Social?
Alice: What? Oh. 999-9999-99.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Okay hold on.
Alice: [Waits. Is standing outside of office in the cold on cellphone because her school-applying process, which takes up Every Single Spare Second outside of work, is not known to her colleagues at Small Pub’. Paces ol’ crappy driveway.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Ma’am?
Alice: Yes? [Stops pacing.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Please hold.
Alice: Oh, okay. [Resumes pacing. 20 seconds pass. Sighs.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Ma’am?
Alice: Yes? [As paces.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Sorry for the hold. They were throwing their excrement at me again. Anyway, we shows no record of having received a score request from you.
Alice: [Stops pacing.]But, um, that’s really weird because I mailed a score request, weeks ago.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: [Pauses.] Sorry. You can fax in a request, and we’ll start processing it now.
Alice: [Sighs.] Okay. What’s the number?...
So I fax the request all on-the-sly-like from my office fax machine, wondering if ETS’ll remove one of the charges once my original mailed request gets found beneath the moldy old banana peels or bamboo shoots under Head Monkey’s desk and is processed accidentally, next April.
A half-hour later, I call back to ask if they received the fax. The enslaved operator puts me on hold again because they keep yanking at her hair and then running away while screeching at the tops of their lungs. “Goddamn it,” she mutters and finally asks me which number I faxed the new request to. I tell her and she says, “Well, that’s all the way across the building, so I can’t tell you if it got here or not.” And she actually tells me to call back *the next day,* because by then, they’ll have it on file, if it arrived.
Which I do and am then told by a third enslaved operator, the Least Sympathetic of All, that they received it, and it will take them APPROXIMATELY 20 DAYS to process before they can mail my scores anywhere. The deadline for Wainscoting College is like, totally in five days. Which I tell him, in a manner that I’m sure comes across as just ever-so-seeeee-lightly petulant and sniveling. And he responds, “Well, we can’t do anything about that,” in a way that makes it crystal clear he’s looking at the clock on the wall over the banana tree across from his cube and thinking, I-get-out-of-this monkey-ruled-hellhole-in-15-minutes. Which I would be, too. But then I went and got angry, anyway, in that way that you do when you just start talking and you can actually feel your voice spiraling out of control in perfect accord with your emotions. Like, if they were a figure-skating couple, your voice and your feelings, they just completed the most beautiful creepily-identical tandem triple-lutzes, ever, and then made identical smashing leaps straight into the glass window and got blinded for life in the exact same way. That’s how it was: this dawning clarity of just how goddamned S.O.L. I was. Which I added at the end of my crazy-person diatribe, in a really cool and likeable way before hanging up like a big old wanker: “Well, I guess I’m just totally S.O.L., aren’t I?” Click. That was so freaking awesome of me.
On the whole, this process is really helping me get out in the world and be a real woman.
Labels: academia, slaving away
posted by Alice at 5:23 PM
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