I can tell without looking at the clock that it’s Monday already
Attention, high schoolers* everywhere: The post below is a phenomenal example of what can happen when you start without a clear sense of purpose, a common mistake students make on their SAT essays.
I got a new couch today (thanks to my mom, who drove all the way down here to sit around my apartment all afternoon while I was out teaching and let the delivery people in). It’s big and red and fabulous. I also got a $500 coffee table with a piddly little scratch across the top for 99 bucks. Dump at the dump at the dump dump dump!
Sammy approves of both couch and table, though my mom says he cracked his head mightily on the latter while trying to leap onto the former and sat around dazed for a minute or two. Poor thing. He’s not so good with the leaping and the looking beforehand. The repeated blunt trauma to the head probably doesn’t help, either—it’s a vicious cycle.
I got home around 5:30 and did absolutely nothing with great vim and vigor for the next five hours, then suddenly fell into a wretched mood. Sometimes I get really scared, and I just want someone to hold me and tell me it’ll be ok…but there’s only Sammy. Half the time he doesn’t even understand that I’m sad and trots off to go chew his bone in another room. I thought dogs were supposed to be good readers of emotion—what part of “sobbing heap” don’t you understand?! Kidding. I love my puppy. He’s awesome.
Anyway, I distracted myself by researching grad schools, in the hope that it would give me some clue as to what I want to major in. It turns out that most of the programs I looked at only required a Bachelor’s in something, with maybe some advanced coursework in your graduate field of study. So, really, my undergrad major doesn’t matter for poo. I have mixed feelings on this—it’s nice to be able to keep my options open, but I’d also like a little guidance.
This is my first serious foray into grad school research, so I don’t know how to tell the high-caliber programs from the shoddy. One thing that seems apparent is that the best programs (some of those at Rice, for instance) make no mention at all of a recommended GPA or test scores. At the other end of the spectrum, if you have a 3.0 and a 470 (that’s 50th percentile) on the GRE Verbal, the Linguistics department at UT-Arlington will AUTOMATICALLY ADMIT you. Um, no thanks.
Right now I’m only looking at schools nearby–within maybe six hours of here. That includes a good part of Texas (Dallas or Austin, but not Lubbock or El Paso) and Louisiana (New Orleans, Baton Rouge).
Of course, I’m probably not going anywhere for another two years (I might be able to graduate in a year if I only did a Math major, but what’s the fun in that?), so this is all still wild speculation. When I withdrew from Mudd, I think I subconsciously assumed that I’d never make it to grad school, but now that I think about it…why the hell not? I’ve been dreaming of grad school ever since I found out such a thing existed. Sure, things have turned out a little differently than I thought they would when I was in high school, but even if I can’t get into the *best* programs any more, there must still be some worthwhile schools that’ll take me.
I’ll be a Ph.D. someday, just you wait. In Physics. Or Linguistics. Or Classics. Or Mathematics. Or something else. Or all of the above.
I’m going to stay in school forever and it’s going to be wonderful. And then I will be very, very poor and it will be less wonderful. And then I’ll die. Or maybe I’ll die before then. Either way, all of this is meaningless. Which is horrible. See? The obsession. It’s everywhere—as soon as I think about my future, BAM! I’m reminded of my impending death and the emptiness of existence.
Blah blah blah. Whine whine whine. Complaint about the late hour and how I always do this. Emote emote emote. Pity pity pity. Look at me, I’m becoming a nihilist. Everyone loves a nihilist—always so upbeat and optimistic, spreading good cheer and butterfly sprinkles wherever she goes. More whining. Sammy just farted, and I can smell it all the way across the room. Damn, that’s rank. What did you eat, dog?
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* No, I’m not so vain as to think high schoolers read this, much less come here looking for test-prep tips. I’m being facetious. Did you know that an obsolete meaning of facetious is “gay and witty”? I’m not sure how that differs from “characterized by pleasantry and levity,” but who am I to challenge the illustrious Messrs. Merriam and Webster?
April 24th, 2006 at 10:59 am
random thoughts and comments on your death obsession follows…
you had speculated in a much earlier post that perhaps some of the meaninglessness you feel around/various obsessions with dying/mortality etc come from a lack of a faith tradition, and then you dismissed it.
not that you necessarilly have to have any kind of faith background, b/c certainly there are lots of agnostics and such that get thru life just fine without this problem, and then there are Jews, who, to my limited understanding, have no official theology of an afterlife. They believe in God, go to organized services, draw social and legal traditions out of their scriptures, and then believe that you die, and well, that’s it, and they get thru life fine… so… *ramble ramble ramble in short i dont think the lack of any kind of faith life is dispositive of the issue at hand. folks that do the church thing fear death just as much, just maybe not so much when they’re young, and really more so when they age to a point where it does become an issue of , oh, well, yeah, some day i guess im gonna die. but my grandmother went to mass every day, and i assure you in the last two years of her life she certainly thought about and was afraid of what was after, and that’s purely human.
in short i have no idea quite what you’ll need to do to address it. I mean, I can tell you I dont give it a lot of thought (not in the reckless “i am invincible” thought process of a teen); just that I’m 23 and I don’t expect to have the issue come up for another 60 or 70 years. I also have law to keep me busy, so i dunno.. i ramble, digress, … blah. sorry, not much help :-/
April 24th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
About grad school: I think every school essentially has a minimum GPA requirement. I usually found it hard to actually find this information though. Looking back, I think it would have been good to e-mail the admissions people in the beginning and just ask a lot of questions (deadlines, fees, forms, addresses, requirements, etc).
About death: I cannot say that I really worry about my own death, but I do worry about my mother. I make her IM me every night just so that I know she is okay. I do not know why I do not worry about it. Part of it may be that I am a Christian (not a specific type because my family never went to church … I just believe what I believe). Part of it may be that I don’t think of it as something that I have control of, so I don’t see the point in worrying. Part of it may be that I have a lot of other, more immediate things to worry about and distract myself with.
April 25th, 2006 at 3:07 am
As y’all have pointed out, I don’t think faith is either necessary or sufficient for living without a constant fear of death, but I do think it helps. Tremendously. An afterlife would be *great*. This might sound silly, but one of the biggest reasons I’m afraid to die is that I’ll miss out on the future. I won’t get to see what happens in 2100, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
Distraction is probably the best thing for it. I’m in a bit of a slump about the whole going-to-school and getting-stuff-done thing right now, so I have lots of time to think. Yick.