I don’t like people some days.
I, in case you cannot tell from the above sentence, am cranky. Crabby McGrouchypants, that’s me. It, of course, doesn’t help that I am all female and yucky feeling and losing what is arguably the very fluid of life at a rate that might just be, oh, forty gallons a minute. Last night, I felt like I needed to eat an entire cow. I went to the organic butcher at lunch today and bought $40 of beef. Including a roast. Except I wouldn’t want to actually make a roast because I certainly can’t eat a whole roast myself and I wouldn’t want to share it with anyone because everyone in the world sucks.
Oh, not you, of course. Never you.
I’m struggling right now through a ton of graduate school stuff. Right after I wrote this entry, I tried to order official copies of my GRE scores.
GRE only saves scores for five years. I took the test in January of 1998.
Insert frantic appeal to the heavens here.
First of all, the GRE system is complete and utter crap. CRAP I say. It’s a $115 test, and if you take it on computer and get one of your first questions wrong, the next questions will be easier and not worth as many points and you’re just outright screwed. And while you’re taking it, you can see the questions get easier so you KNOW that you just fucked something up and are watching your ability to get into graduate school flutter away with each mouse click. So, right there, that sucks. This is not to say that I did poorly. I did better than I thought I did, but certainly didn’t get the 800s I was going for.
But after all of that, you’d think they would keep the scores for longer than five years. I mean’ five years? I pay $115 to take a test and you’re only going to keep the scores for five years? And it’s not like my test scores went inactive, since I had just ordered official copies in November of last year and they apparently purged my scores two months later. It’s craptastic. That is all. More autocratic bullshit in higher education.
Have I mentioned the thing about people sucking? This includes the ass lords in the collegiate system.
And let me just say this right now. If you are in college and even considering going to graduate school at some time in the future, do NOT transfer to another college before you graduate. Or go to, say, three different schools as an undergrad and then take classes at two OTHER schools as a graduate student. Because you are screwing yourself with the transcripts, my friend. I am applying to six new schools. Each of these schools requires two official copies of my transcripts. I took one three-credit graduate writing workshop at UW- Milwaukee, but I got an A, so I’d like them to include it in my applications. Each official transcript costs $7. Thus, it will cost me $84 to get that just that one grade out to those schools. And then multiply that by four other schools I’ve attended (whose official transcript fees vary between $4-6 a copy). So trust me. The application fees (which range between $45-$90) are bad enough. Save yourself the trouble and stick with one school.
Anyway, NYU and Mizzou require GRE scores, but I convinced the people at Mizzou to allow for a certified copy from one of the schools that do have official copies of my scores. I’m not even running this by NYU, figuring that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. And then I had to track down a school that would send my scores out to a competing school, which, as it turns out, was UW- Milwaukee, so now I don’t feel as bad about taking it up the ass for copies of my transcripts. They saved me the $50 that GRE would have cost me, had they bothered to save any record of my mediocre test-taking ability.
Then I went over my applications on Sunday. I had thought I was being proactive in getting this stuff done, but last time, most of my deadlines were in January. This time, it seems, almost all of the schools have a deadline of December 15th. Thus, a panicked email to one of my undergraduate mentors, who is now in Arkansas, and then I had to overnight him a package containing all of the coversheets for the various programs. Then I called my former advisor, figuring that since she still works for the University of Wisconsin, she would be the easiest to contact. But no. No. The Universe wants me to bleed for graduate school. The Universe wants me to be humbled and crying before it allows me even a tiny morsel of hope. My advisor is on medical leave for the entire semester. And her voicemail recording obliterates her cell phone number. But that I will think about tomorrow. Because right now, I’m still recovering from the great GRE debacle.
GAH!
And then! I spent the evening trying to refine my manuscript. And I am deciding to include the Baby Story, which made its first appearance (and reappearance) here on these pages. But first, I spent hours rewriting it, manipulating the phrasing, toying with the word order, adding paragraphs here and there. Then later, couldn’t find it. The version I made does not exist on my computer. Apparently, I never hit save.
The Universe. I swear. If my drunken mama hadn’t raised me better, I’d totally pop a cap in its ass.
And then (And THEN!), I had school tonight, which let out early, so to get my mind of my graduate school application woes, I decided to cram a little Christmas shopping at the local Lands End inlet. Home of lovely cashmere sweaters. Perchance even a lovely plus sized black v-neck? Perchance? Would it be too much to ask? Especially after last week when I lifted my hands to the heavens and asked ‘Please God! Please! I beg of you! Just a black v-neck cashmere sweater that fits over my bulbous ass! This is all I ask of you and then as You as my witness, I’ll never wear acrylic again!’
And lo, there was on the racks a black cashmere v-neck sweater.
A MEN’S black v-neck cashmere sweater.
I tried it on. That right there should show you how far I was willing to go. And it did indeed fit over my bulbous ass, but the shoulders hung down to my elbows and the v-neck was too short and didn’t tease my d’colletage the way it was supposed to and the entire thing was too long and it was just not the sleek feminine cashmere sweater of my dreams. This is what I get for not praying in bullet points.
But, in other news, there was a minute of joy today. Jake called me during his commute to work. He had passed a tree service truck and he spelled the logo for me ‘A ‘ S ‘ P- L- U-N-D-A-R’
I giggled over that all day. Sometimes it is the little things in life that give the most joy. Ass plunder, my friends. Ass plunder indeed.
