Birthday Fallout

I may be a frail old lady with one foot in the grave, but damn, is my car insurance ever cheap these days! So when do I get my discount super-early dinner at Denny's?

You kids get off my lawn!



(N.B. - It's 11:30 at night and I've spent the past several hours drinking coffee and struggling to write a statement of purpose. It's possible that I'm a bit punchy.)

With My Freeze Ray I Will Stop--

So much to do.

I have to write my essay/writing sample (hmm... that came out "smaple" the first time I typed it - sounds like an abomination of a candy.)/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, and having changed focus rather impressively a couple of weeks ago means I also need to do a lot of reading for it. Anyone want to go over semiotics with me? I'm struggling to remember much beyond the basics.

The writing sample has to be done in the next week or two so that it, along with my statement of purpose (also unwritten) can be handed off to my recommenders, since I'm asking for letters from people from whom I've only taken one class. Supporting materials, in this instance, are key. (An aside: I just adore the helpful people who tell me how the would never possibly consent to write a letter of recommendation after such a short acquaintance, and no school worth its salt will even look at such a letter. You're so helpful. Some of us have been out of school a while, and can't afford the $1,200/quarter that no financial aid will cover to take several years' worth of classes with the same person, not to mention the time that we have to squeeze in around the edges of our jobs. But thanks for that, sneering 22-year-old grad student.)

So, after the writing sample goes to my dear readers for review, I whack out a statement of purpose, do rewrites on both, and drop off recommendation forms just in time to take the GRE Subject Test on October 18. And I'm still appallingly ignorant when it comes to American literature and anything past WWI. So that ought to be a hoot. I'm cramming names and dates; we'll see how much good it does me. I've taken the practice test and done okay, but I could stand to improve.

Once the test is over with, I start filling out applications, and I have no idea how much time that will take. Everything is due at various points in December, and from there it's three months of waiting around for replies, as I understand it.

Oh, and somewhere in there I'm supposed to be orchestrating a book group, and going to Oregon Flock & Fiber, and dealing with the hagim, and having a kick-ass, zombified Halloween, and seeing my sister when she's out here, and there's these two guys, one big and one little, who keep hanging around wanting something...

And just think: if I hadn't decided on this school business, I could be knitting right now.

My Pants? They Are Smart.

My smartitude has been certified by an officially-recognized and accredited testing agency. By which I mean, the GRE is in critical condition, because I kinda kicked its ass.

Never have to do that again, then.

This is Just an Update

Not crap, it turns out.

Whew!

It's interesting that I'm having so much trouble judging the quality of my writing this time around; I remember knowing the difference between a good essay and a lousy one when I was an undergrad. I'm not sure whether it's just lack of perspective because I have so much more riding on this (I'll be asking all of these professors for letters of recommendation), or whether I've actually lost the ability to evaluate my writing; I'm sincerely hoping it's the former.

This Is Just to Say

I have written a paper
on William Carlos Williams
and Kenneth Koch

it may be crap
modernism confuses me
I prefer the nineteenth century
so wild
and so organic

An Update, Of Sorts

Hello, blog, how've you been? Perhaps I should be changing your name to "Abandonment Issues," then?

I've been keeping mum on the blog, partly because of my regularly-scheduled winter hibernation, but mostly because some Big Stuff is up in the air, and I'm feeling superstitious about talking before it's all a done deal.

On the other hand, I'm a blabbermouth, and I don't want to wait that long.

So...

I've decided to go back to school for a PhD. (Yes, I'm aware that it's not that simple; I still have to convince an admissions committee that I'm not a complete moron. However, I have no doubt of my ability to get in somewhere, the question is whether I can get in where I want to. Wherever that is.)

The biggest problem right now is getting letters of recommendation: I've been out of school for a while now, and I've lost touch with my old professors. Even if I got back in contact, the odds that they would remember me well enough to write a solid recommendation are pretty slim, especially since all of my old school papers have disappeared.

The thing to do, it seemed to me, was to get new professors, and be extra impressive and charming. So that's what I'm doing. On top of a full-time job and a toddler, I'm now taking a class on my lunch break.

This quarter I'm taking Jewish-German Writers, which has mostly served to remind me how much I hate working with literature in translation. I never know whether the things I think I'm seeing in the text are actually there, and it drives me nuts. good to know, but it's going to be slow going finding what I want to study if I just chip away at the possibilities one class at a time*. So, that narrows it to literature in English, and I don't much care for the medieval period, so ... (carry the 2... divide by eleventeen...) that's one continent and one large-island-cluster-with-imperial-tendencies over the course of 500 years or so.

I may need to get a bit more specific.

As for the class, it's going pretty well. At first I was intimidated, and everyone on campus seemed very, very young. Then it occurred to me that if I'm an old lady, I must have intelligent things to say, and these darn kids should listen up and be grateful, dammit! Then I got my first quiz back with "Outstanding!!" written on it, and I admit I got a little cocky. Second quiz? Also an A. And then it came time to write the midterm. Bear in mind, this was my first real piece of academic writing in *mumblety* years, so perhaps I'm allowed some leeway, but I was also overconfident about it, and didn't give it as much attention as I should have. I got it back on Monday with a B+, which was disappointing, since I know I could have done better.

So I forge on. There's a final to write, after all, and I'm starting to remember how this whole thing works. At least I know that the appropriate parts of my brain haven't atrophied.

There's a lot more to talk about, but if I don't post this now, it will languish in my draft folder with all the others, so I'll come back to discuss more in a future post.

* Actually, I have some ideas of what I want to focus on, but I'm not saying just yet. I have to retain some aura of mystery, after all.