The Worst Thing

It turns out there is one thing worse than applying to grad school—it’s waiting to hear back from grad schools.

Now that I’m on the other side of application due dates, I must admit, taking a year off to apply to graduate school is a smart idea. I have the attention span of a rather alert guinea pig, and like a cat seem to spend more time sleeping than being conscious. With these odds, I had not a snowball’s chance in hell of applying to grad school during my senior year of college. I was lucky I managed to finish all my work on time, much less do anything extra. Now, doubtlessly some of you can surpass my abilities to focus, but if you spend an hour looking at cat videos on youtube before you start doing any work, you might share a part of my problem.

That being said, there are perks to applying to grad school before you graduate—being too occupied with graduating on time to worry about higher education is chief among them. I’ve considered asking my best friend to block from accessing websites on my own computer so I can’t find more fodder for my living-with-my-parents-forever nightmares. But being an English major, I am prone to the melancholic (no really, a professor told me this once) and quite imaginative, so I really don’t need help in the whole worst case scenarios department.

It doesn’t help that every time I share these fears with someone else, the conversation inevitably goes something like this:

Confidant: Everything will work out! Stop worrying so much.

Self: You’re only telling me what I want to hear, you have no idea how things will work out! Nobody knows how things will work out, stop lulling me into a false sense of hope!

Confidant: …. *changes subject swiftly*

Of course, agreeing with a graduate applicant’s pragmatism will also probably backfire, because having their worst fears confirmed, the glimmer of hope they’ve been tending will dissipate like air from a punctured balloon, and if they haven’t already, they might become a borderline alcoholic.

Actually, being your distraught aspiring grad student friend’s drinking companion might be the best path you can take. Someone needs to make sure they don’t drink themselves into a mortal stupor when the bad news comes. Or alternatively, make sure they don’t off themselves when they overindulge with glee. Either way, I think it’s safe to assume that all the aspiring grad students in the world will be seeking solace in the bottoms of our bottles for the weeks to come.

And I hope none of them get into the programs I want to get in to.

Proof English Majors are Awesome

In the past few days, two facts have become immediately apparent to me. The first of which is that the GRE (better known as the "SAT for grad school," or "the soul crushing monster that broke my heart and broke into my bank account") tops the charts as the stupidest and most nonsensical compulsory task I have ever had the misfortune to endure.

The second fact is much better than the first, and is simply this: English majors are awesome.

I posit this today not because I haven't always known it to be true, but because irrefutable proof has fallen into my lap from above confirming this to be undeniable, Hard Times-esque Fact.

Proof came to me though my friend Rhys. He is not only an English major, but he is also a curator of all tastes, an innovator of fine dining, and a composer of songs about my deep and abiding love for Charmander.*


All of this can only lead to one definitive conclusion-- Rhys is awesome. View the awesomeness below, and I sincerely hope it makes your day as excellent as mine!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSLzsxEdq70




*Seriously, Charmander is the end-all-be-all of starter Pokemon. Don't let the water-starter crowd seduce you with their propaganda about type advantage against Brock. Making it with Charmander is like making it in New York City-- if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. All the important world leaders have chosen Charmander as their starter Pokemon, from Charlemagne, to Queen Elizabeth I, to Martin Luther King Jr. Don't you want to be part of that crowd? I thought so.

Life Plans: I Has Them

Why hello again!

Contrary to popular belief, I have not been eaten by bears, felled by horrible disease, or recently married to an aged multi-millionaire on the verge of death. No, the reason I have not written is because I’m about to embark on the latest, greatest, and most exciting adventure of my twenty-two years to date.

I have decided to go to graduate school.

I will venture forth to the Elysium of the enlightened, the Valhalla of the intelligentsia, the place where even the baristas at Starbucks have master degrees (if only because that first year fellowship loses about $5,000 once those freshmen hit second year status and they still have to eat). It is in this ethereal place I will feather my nest, and ever after, when the telemarketers call for “Ms Erin,” I can snidely correct, “No, it’s Dr. Cotter these days.”

This is the culmination of all my hopes and ambitions.

While on the surface, this proclamation may seem to transport my sordid self from the ranks of the woefully unemployed and under qualified English majors, in reality, this isn’t true at all. Going for a Phd in literature will not teach me the skills I so desperately lack on the job market. No, instead it will train me further in the not-so-useful things which being an English major has made me so good at—and this in turn will render me fit for one and one occupation only: proffessorhood.

When I explained to one of the regulars at the fish market my plans to pursue literature, she looked at me in horror and slipped me a $10, assuring me that I “would probably need this.” My parents seemed pretty onboard with the idea, if only because it spared them the spectacle of me clicking morosely through craigslist day after day, until I plunked down a serious sum of cash on GRE tests. Then they asked me “Wait, why are you going to school for seven years to study books? Can you even get a job after that? You might just end up in the fish market again.”

I am still at the bottom of the barrel.

The only problem with my going-to-grad-school plan is that before one can go to grad school, one must first apply to grad schools. And applying to grad school may be one of the most tumultuous experiences I have known. It’s like letting a school of sharks gnaw on your limbs before you go throw yourself into a tank full of bigger and hungrier sharks. Because grad school will probably not help you recover the money, optimism, or non-greyed hairs that the application process has already taken from you. Doubtlessly, this journey will be filled with frustration, angst, and vast amounts of caffeine. But I am game. I am so game.

Grad school, you better watch the fuck out.