Grad School: Passion, Terror and Failure

Contributor: Speak Coffee

I refer back to Poets & Writer’s magazine entirely too much, but it’s what I read and what I respect. It arrived in my mailbox on Tuesday and there was this article blasting workshops, or more precisely there was an article blasting workshop instructors that aren’t bastards. The theory being that a bastard running your workshop makes you work harder. You’ll either quit or grow up. The growing up will, of course, make you this though, crafty, hooks ‘em right off the bat, tough writer dude. It might also have something to do with the author of the article thinking himself a bastard to his writing students. He’s helping start a program at Butler if you’re interested in the bastard’s boot camp approach.

It goes on talking up and then talking down the MFA as a place for writing or not writing. And about the illusion workshop creates that someone will want to read your work. Workshop students are, after all, graded on participation not just their writing. And in the real world no one wants to read your writing. You have to make them want to read it.

To succeed in writing you need (according to this joe) to experience passion, failure and terror with your writing. That “talent” isn’t near enough. He’d rather you have “passion.”

For all the time he spends harping on how others don't define "talent" I'm not sure if he ever defines "passion." But I rather think it breaks down into desire and persistence. Aren't I persisting? Isn't my mad dash application push to all your lovely programs which I left law school in hopes of throwing myself into wholehearted proof of my mad desire and persistence?

I know people who, at this point, would want to call it quits. They would make proclamations like “I don’t have to prove myself to anyone,” and other phrases that would get them exactly no where. Okay, so this is the game I have to play. I’m putting on my tough face. This is my tough face: grr. Did ya like that? Because I could do it again. Grrr.

Why am I doing all this? Why am I subjecting myself to the cost and time of grad school? The low income level and high stress. Not to mention the waiting game and the rejection letters. (Got two on Thursday. Some--okay, lots of--rejection is to be expected on the MFA circuit.) Why do all of this? Because more than I want to work a crappy office job that will suck up a majority of my non-sleeping life while writing novels that may or may not make it, I want to spend my life writing and being part of the process of making. I can do that by teaching workshop. People will pay me to be part of the making. And that excites me beyond all other notions.

Yes, I enjoy writing. I enjoy the creation. The development. The pride in finished work. I enjoy moving people, touching them with something I have written. But more than other people liking it and finding value in it, I enjoy the making. I enjoy being inside my own head, pulling out all these stories and sewing them together. I am happy at my keyboard plodding away.

Besides, I’d make a pretty sweet professor. Hartley said so and I believe her.

Grad School: It's hard to be passionate about a man who doesn't call

Contributor: Speak Coffee

Between Thanksgiving and New Year's I applied to six schools. One MA program and five MFAs, all in fiction/prose/creative writing or whatever they chose to call it at that particular school. I've heard back with an acceptance to the MA program. Which is terribly exciting! Don't get me wrong, this means I'm going! My life is not stagnanting at a Starbucks job! I can go and get my degree(s) and go teach and be thrilled to be in my field. My field -- I'm going to have a field! But I haven't heard a thing from the five other programs, and while I've tried to be patient, knowing that you're a fish on the hook is bound to make you a little twitchy.

Grad School?

Why on earth would we ever want to inflict grad school on our selves?

Better yet, why would we ever want to go through the process of applying to grad school? Argh! Make it stop! Make it stop! ... and it hasn't even started yet.

Relationships after college: Sex and the City Girl

Contributor: City Girl

Since this entry is only supposed to cover the dating we have done since leaving the college scene, I will leave that large chunk of drama out of it. However, it is only fair that I touch briefly on my college boyfriend since he did have such a strong effect on my life and the choices I made when we split.

For identity protection purposes I have opted to change the names of those men to be mentioned in this entry. As stated, I will start with my college boy-toy. We'll call him...Latrick. Latrick and I met Freshman year of college, and soon after he flashed me his charismatic grin he was dating me in addition to rest of the females on the college campus (and probably in the tri-state area). He finally decided he was ready to commit, which of course meant things ended two and a half years later when I found out he cheated on me a week before I graduated.

As you can imagine this did not put me in the best place where men are concerned.

The summer after college I stayed in the same town for my first paid acting gigs, and briefly dated a couple of men in the immediate area. For example, a guy who was in one of my shows. And my next door neighbor. (Hey! Don't judge. Boy was fine!)

Then I moved to New York and the torture of trying to date in the big city commenced.

See, it is HARD to meet people in New York. You wouldn't think so, but it is. Everyone is so absorbed in their own lives that they barely take the time to keep from hitting you in the head with their umbrella as they pass by on the street during the morning commute. But I did meet a man or two (decent or of moral ambiguity) and what follows is a brief summation of my dating history since my arrival in the big apple.

First there was the fireman. The fireman and I met waiting for a subway at the time square stop. We lasted about a month. Well, ok, six weeks. Then he went to Washington for an extended stay, told me he would call when he got back, and never did. I'm still convinced he had a wife and five children there, but whatever. I wasn't too involved.

Next there was the artist (not the one formally known as Prince). The artist employed me as his model back when I was still trying to find acting and modeling gigs. I will stand by my belief that he was very talented, and a genuinely sweet and caring guy. He called me his muse and fell for me hard. It was difficult to resist. He was so charming and smart. Plus he had a hot body and a nice apartment. Unfortunately, he was also going through a divorce. Obsession with me to an uncomfortable level soon ensued and I called things off. Then he accused me of using him. (???) Good times. As a side note we had dinner about six months later as "closure" and I feel like we ended things on good terms. Occasionally he still sends me a "how are you doing?" email which I answer with a curt reply and then go on pretending like that mistake never happened.

After that there was the politician's assistant. We'll call him...Mandrew. He's one of the reasons I ended things with the artist. Coincidentally, we also met waiting for a subway (at 4 in the morning I might add...I told you it's hard to meet people in New York!). You would think I had learned my lesson, but no. I'll try anything twice. Anyway, Mandrew gets a fake name because we actually lasted for about 9 months. Of course, we weren't very serious and he made sure it stayed that way. I did fall pretty hard for him though, so you can imagine how much I wanted to karate chop him in the balls after I returned from my three-month theatre training in another state and he told me we should stop seeing each other...because I wasn't the one and never would be. Yes, he said that. I really wanted to throw my drink in his face. Unfortunately, he ended things with me over three dollar beers which just wouldn't have had the same effect as a martini. Why he didn't call things off before I left and instead decided to continue to call and visit me for those three months I will never know.

My most recent mistake was the banker. Good-looking... Brazilian...rich as hell. On our second date he sprung for tickets to a very pricey Broadway show...and then revealed to me that the night we met he had sex with another woman after I left the bar. At the bar. As you can probably imagine, we didn't make it to date three.

So, in summation, I have kind of a bad dating history, especially since coming to New York. Biggest problem being that I am a relationship person trying to survive in an anti-relationship environment. (Although, I really think we are living in an anti-relationship world these days. Does anyone out there still believe in commitment and think that cheating isn't something that is just par for the course? Anyone? Bueller?) I tried to go along with it for a time, but it ended up making me completely miserable. Of course, mixed in with these outstanding entries are a few minor dating experiences such as my brief foray into J-Date. (I am of the strong belief that everyone will be meeting their spouses online within the next decade.)

My post-college dating experiences (which I largely attribute to my last boyfriend making me completely insecure) can probably be summed up in one of two catagories. Either, "it made for a good story," or, "it sounded like a good idea at the time." Dating is exhausting and rejection is painful. The city is a terrible place to try and meet potential partners, and it can often take a person a while to realize they deserve to be treated well, and that they shouldn't settle for casual dating and waiting for the phone to ring when they want so much more than that.

I decided I didn't want any more drama. I decided I wanted a dating experience that was positive and free of stress. I decided I wanted to be with someone I knew well, someone I have fun with, someone I'm comfortable with, someone I can trust.

So now I am dating a good friend of mine...who is also my best friend's ex-boyfriend.

Does this story have a happy ending? I know you are waiting to find out with bated breath.

So am I.

Relationsips after College: Work of a Different Kind

Contributor: Paralith

For me, there has been no dating after college, because I found my current man while I was in college. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly proud of the circumstances under which we met. A few months earlier I had broken up with my previous serious boyfriend, and had more or less been rebounding every since, with none of my escapades leading to good ends. In fact, the night I met my current boyfriend was the same night I started seeing one of his friends. Cringe-worthy, isn't it? Practically everything I did during that period was cringe-worthy, and like I said, I'm not proud of it.

But (cliche as this sounds), things were different when I began to get to know my boyfriend (from this point I'll continue our current habit of referring to each other by screen name, and refer to my boyfriend via one of his typical screen names, Wablo). As is typical with rebounds, my previous flings were all more or less like my ex, except the newness of the relationship caused them to be free of the problems that ultimately caused my break up. Wablo, however, did not fit that pattern, and as I got to know him I realized that in many important ways he was very different from the rest of the cadre of boys that I hung out with.

That cadre is defined thusly: nerds, geeks, and gamer boys - my self declared dating pool after a brief and mind-numbingly boring stint with a frat boy (from a frat, no less, that had a reputation for being better than most typical ones). Unfortunately, this didn't help my rebound problem, because I was more or less surrounded by a large group of guys who would all be very, very happy to date me. I'm fairly good looking and quite nerdy enough in my own right. I like games, I'm happy to hang out at the campus arcade, and at the time I was even a proficient Magic Card player thanks to my ex's tutelage. I'm a rare breed and they all knew it.

The problem is that a lot of these kinds of guys, though in my opinion being far more interesting than your average sports-loving econ major, can be socially inept, have emotional baggage (oh yes, men have it too! And they try to lay all the blame on us.), and/or don't face a very promising future if their goal is to get a regular paying job at Best Buy and then spend their evenings and weekends playing World of Warcraft. Having my own set of emotional baggage (hey, I never said we don't deserve some of that blame), getting into a relationship with someone with similar problems is just asking for disaster. The kind of disaster that was my previous break up. Personality-wise, I could get along with almost all of these boys quite well - as I did with my ex. I'd learned the hard way that it simply wasn't enough.

But Wablo was very different. He wasn't just smart, he was razor smart. Nor was he socially inept - far from it, actually. He once told me that he would sometimes flirt with three girls at once just to show his friends that he could do it. He was confident, he knew what he wanted, and he had a bright future. He'd had jobs since he was 13, and jobs related to computers since he was 16. At the time I met him he was already working at a job that paid far more than being a desk clerk at the campus arcade - which, surprise surprise, was a favorite of the gamers.

Wablo was the first guy I had met that made me look forward to the future. I could see having a future with him - having a Real Life with him. Of course he was fun and funny (hilarious, really) and caring and loving - but he was also capable, practical, and excited about life. He was the only person who had ever made me feel that way, and he made me feel it long before we actually started dating.

Of course, most relationships feel like peaches and cream when they first begin, and after being together for over three and a half years, we have had our share of fights. Some of them, pretty bad. Some that even put that wonderful future of ours into question. And moments like those were some of the most difficult, most painful ones of my life. And the difficulties of my Lost Year played no small part in them.

It's a whole new world, learning to live in partnership with someone else. That's very different from just dating. That's very different from the experience I had with my ex, which itself was an obstacle we failed to overcome. Living in partnership means learning to overcome your unconscious selfishness, learning to accept the dark moods and moments of your partner's, learning what's worth getting upset over and what isn't, and learning how to just get over it sometimes. I know people everywhere say this all the time, that a relationship requires effort - but it does. What can I say. There's a reason that it's such a common sentiment.

But we have put in the time and effort to learn how to live with each other, and I have to say, I love the results. Everyday life with Wablo is one of my favorite things. Grocery shopping. Cleaning the apartment. Cooking dinner. Visiting friends. Watching movies together. Trying out new restaurants. Figuring out the directions to get to some new place. It might be more of my female domestic nature coming out as I get older (ha! 23, and I'm "older."), but I simply love it. I love working with him on our life together.

Relationships after college: say what?

Contributor: Speak Coffee

"Wait a second, you're how old? ... Nineteen?! ... And your birthday was when?"

Let me just state for the record, that when it suddenly matters to you when someone's birthday was, it doesn't actually matter anymore: he's just plain too young for you.

Since that little run in, I haven't really bothered much with dating since I got out of college. But what I have discovered is that the college dating scene was drastically different from the one I find myself confronted with now.

My college was small. 2,500 students give or take. My class graduated just under 700 students and we remain the largest class ever to attend. So when it came to relationships you didn't actually date. There was no awkward first date, no getting-to-know-you second date, no big hurdle third date. If you were interested in someone the truth of the matter was that you probably already knew them on some social level. Either through classes, clubs or frat parties - there was no 6 degrees of seperation, it was more like 3 degrees to connect everyone to everyone else on campus. So you didn't "date" you "hung out" and then one day you had "the talk" and then changed your Facebook status to "in a relationship with ..." and that was it, you were boyfriend/girlfriend. You were officially expected to be a staple at all of his fraternity's parties and he was a date to your formals and informal dances. You ate several meals together each week, and depending on the situation your sorority sisters stopped expecting to see you at the house after a certain time of night because they knew you'd be over at his place.

Now? I'm expected to make an awkward connection with someone I don't know just so that I can go on an equally awkward date with them. One of my girlfriends recently went on her first "real date." Yes, she'd been taken out places by her college boyfriend but she'd never been taken out to a semi-fancy dinner by a guy who wasn't her boyfriend. This was a guy who was just "interested." She was flabbergasted. She couldn't get her mind around the fact that he wanted to do something this fancy with this much planning involved when they weren't even in a relationship. She was also floored as to what to wear, so three hours prior to pick up I zoomed over to her place for a much needed second opinion. This is what I'm good at; remember, I'm sorority trained.

For the most part, my life since college has been up in the air. I've bounced from one thing to the next and rarely felt stable enough to even bother with introducing another person into the mix. Various people at law school thought it their mission to get me a boyfriend, to which I answered "When? When on earth would I have time for a guy? I don't even have time to finish my torts reading!" Although, somewhere in there I managed to accidentally pick up a guy I didn't mean to, which I found odd because I know my demeanor was very much "don't mess with me I don't have time and I'm a sarcastic bitch so you'll only get burned anyway." My demeanor was, as always, up front, thorough, and suscinct.

As a senior in college I was well aware of the wave of engagements, and the promise rings or fraternity pins being exchanged across campus. It happened like clockwork: the snow melted, graduation grew near, and chicks started getting lavaliers. So it wasn't without a certain amount of guile that I dated guys younger than myself in order to avoid the "getting serious" thing that happened right before graduation.

In the past few years I've briefly wandered into the world of an online dating/match making site under the theory that if I get my news, my music, my books, clothes and everything else from the internet, why not buy my men there too? And honestly, it is more personal than the bar scene. At least it's conversations sparked by personality not just a hot ass. I've also been told that Generation Y is embracing the whole internet dating thing and discarding the stigma other generations associate with it. We're the people that embraced Facebook and MySpace (okay I have not embraced MySpace because it's stalker-central), we're used to social networking via the internet. But I've yet to really get into it and have become quickly bored with the situation. I never did end up meeting anyone I'd been talking to or emailing.

I really think I'm waiting for my life to settle down. Or at least develope some level of stability. I've always been very firm on the notion that you should know yourself before you get involved with someone, otherwise you'll use the relationship to define yourself and that almost always spirals down into bad juju. Not to mention those people who define themselves or their life by their siginificant other and then suddenly find themselves without said person. Those people don't know who they are when they're single and rush right into the arms of Miss Wrong or Mr. Next without giving thought to why.

I have no issues attending weddings by myself. I see them as great opportunities to catch up with my college friends. Actually, my friends who are in relationships frequently leave the guy at home for those weddings because they know he'll just be bored and she'll feel she needs to entertain him when she'd rather be hanging with the group.

I frequently sputter when I hear that various people have gotten married -- normally because I think they've gotten married too young. If I were my mother, I would be celebrating my fourth wedding anniversary this Spring. My parents are very pleased that I am doing no such thing. They know, if anyone does, that the theory of getting married young and finishing raising each other doesn't translate well into practice.

Because of my frequent soap box speeches on the stupidity of people in relationships (which I have already described today just without the ferver) many people seem to think I'm against marriage or uninterested in relationships. Really, I just think you have to be at ease with yourself and who you are, that you have to be able to live alone and be happy that way, that you have to know yourself before you know you've found the one. It's all the people who don't bother with anything other than the ring and the wedding that bother me.

Relationships: after college

So in a very unscientific way (read: quick google search) I came up with these numbers on current college relationships. Some 13% of recent grads say that college helped them find their spouse.1 However some 63% of female students said that they believed they would find their future spouse while at college.2 There's obviously some discrepency here, but the real truth is that women aren't going to universities to get their M.R.S. (Thankgod!)

Sometimes it feels like there's a "senior scramble" as graduation nears where people who've been dating suddenly get engaged, or people who were casual feel the need to get serious and job hunt in the same market so they can move in together. But as you go to all these weddings you're still sitting with your girlfriends and the truth is that most of you are dating or not dating out in the real world. And it's a helluva lot more different than dating in college was.

Aaaaah!

Contributor: Speak Coffee



Now even commercials are out to make me feel like shit.

College, eh?

Contributor: Speak Coffee

I'm kind of nostalgic about college. I liked my undergrad experience and I think I'm better for it. I liked the classes I took, the professors who taught them, the friends that I made and what I learned about life and about myself.

There was a lot of college that helped me deal with the real world. I spent time learning how to interview but that's not even what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is learning poise. There are so many people my age who lack it. And while I may lack readily employable skills in a field that I like at least I can carry myself with confidence. I am aware of my appearance and presence and the fact that modifying both of those can influence others. Either making them feel more comfortable, more put off or more intimidated.

No, I didn't learn a trade in college. But I don't think I really went there to learn a trade. My small liberal arts school didn't teach trades. Even the computer science major was all theory and background and those students had to learn new programming languages the minute they were employed. But they sat on top of theories my university had taught. It was definitely a college that taught you how to think. Liberal arts schools supposedly are, and this one was no exception. And if that was the goal then I am pleased with the outcome.

I've said it before, my university does not prepare students for the real working world. It prepares them marvelously for graduate school. Which I have applied to (both the failed law attempt and the MFA attempt). Now that I think about it a lot of students from my school go on to be lawyers. I will start a new track this fall on the English & creative writing path. It is after all, what I have been prepared for.

However, I know students who did exactly what I did but knew they wanted to go into business so they worked their connections and the university's connections and got their first jobs doing things they found interesting. I could have done that ... except I wasn't interested.

Now I find that I don't have enough experience to beat out others who want the same positions as me, but I am too well educated to be happy doing menial work. Conundrum!

At least my education allows me to analyze and identify this.

Dear College: Would a Few Swimming Lessons Be that Hard?

Contributor: Paralith

I came across a blog entry today that addressed biology teaching, and a particular section of it seems to go along nicely with what we've been talking about here recently:

First, I'll be forthright in one thing: teaching was not my initial goal, nor was there anything in my training to encourage teaching. Especially if you get into a program with biomedical funding, there's active dissuasion from pursuing teaching: I was a TA for 3 quarters in my first year of graduate school, and then got put on training grants for the next few years and didn't set foot in the classroom again. Then there were the post-docs: no committee work, no teaching, pure research. Teaching is simply not part of the equation. Not my dream. Not even on the radar.

So what happened?

I got the same shock almost every biologist gets. You finish your post-doctoral training, you get an academic job, and they expect you to teach classes as part of your job. You've had no training, your advisors have all been discouraging you from wasting time away from the lab bench, and shazam! Teaching classes is a requirement of employment! Here's the deep end of the pool, splash, learn to paddle right now!

from the blog Pharyngula - complete post found here. The rest of the post is very interesting, particularly to me since I will be in this exact same situation one day (I hope. I mean, not that I hope to be totally unprepared, I hope they change some things by then, but I hope I'll be starting my career in biology. That part. Yea.).

Just more evidence that our country's educational system is not quite up to snuff.

My Educational Experience: Dear College,

Contributor: City Girl

How did you fail me? Let me count the ways.

True, I know how to do Suzuki, Linklater techniques, design a lighting scheme for Carmen, analyze Milton's Sampson Agostines, launch into a comedic/dramatic/modern/or classical monolgue upon request, and draft a scenic plan from four angles (I also learned that drafting vellum is excellent for wrapping your breakables during a move, but that was an added bonus). For that I thank you, truly I do. However, I have a bone to pick with you as well.

Things you did not teach me which I realized (after graduation) may have been a tad helpful: how to land an audition, how to get an agent, what "Backstage" was, what U/RTA is, the specifics of equity, the qualifications for equity, how to become a member of equity, that an apprenticeship is essential, where to find apprenticeships, how to land an apprenticeship, that an MFA in Acting is actually necessary to get anywhere, what graduate schools are the best to apply to, what jobs are appropriate for supporting oneself while auditioning (this goes back to "how to get an audition"), where to go to get a headshot taken, how to know if a photographer is screwing you over, the cheapest way to get a headshot reproduced, what reproductions.com is, oh, and how to survive in the Real World.

Thing is, I know that there are other actors out there who graduated with this knowledge, while I had to stumble along and figure it all out through embarassing trial and error after I moved to NYC with a look on my face like a deer has right before it's mowed down by a semi. Granted, some of this is probably my fault as I am not the most ambitious person. However, I am also not the least, and some of the above topics I didn't even know to ask about. So, yes, I will shoulder some of the blame. However, I will also lay some of the blame on you. In fact, most of the blame. It also didn't help that you assigned me a guidence counselor who was a costume history professor. This was most helpful to an aspiring actor.

In conclusion, I really feel that you failed me, and I am still bitter about it. In fact, I probably will always be bitter about it.

Oh, and please stop calling me. It's only hurting us both and makes me uncomfortable. I think it's time to move on.

Besides, lest you forget, I graduated with a BA in Theatre. It's not like I have any money to give you anyway.

Sincerely,
City Girl

P.S. Thanks for not making me do any math.

P.P.S. I'm still bitter.

College (and High School): I Done Get Meself an Edumacation

Contributor: Paralith

I'm going to twist the prompt a little bit, and talk in general about my education, and not just college. As I mentioned in my post on The Plan, when I was very young, I was quite sure that I wanted to be a zoologist, loved animals, watched nature documentaries for fun, etc. My current career aspirations fit perfectly in line with these childhood interests, but it's only been that way for the past few years. In between third grade and my last year of college I waffled and wavered from this path, and I feel it was, overall, to my detriment.

During all four years of high school I took all of two biology classes, and I'm pretty sure that was the maximum number I could have taken. Every year had sciences of course, but the others were chemistry and physics, which while important fundamentals to the eventual study of biology, interest me far less. These were padded by multiple English and social science type classes, math (another important fundamental that is personally less interesting to me), and the art and writing elective classes of my choice. Oh, and a year of PE, which was and will probably continue to be the most physically fit year of my life.

Long story short, my exposure to the field which I am now pursuing was more or less nil. It doesn't help that biology is a vast field, and any high school class that attempts to cover the basics of ALL of it is inevitably destined to skim the surface. I still liked it, and had the vague premonition-esque feeling that my working career would ultimately depend on it. But I also had the idea that I might prefer to focus a good chunk of my college efforts on writing and art, and perhaps make my career out of those subjects instead. My previous post describes how that idea worked out - or rather, failed to work out.

The practical consequences of this, however, are that I more or less wasted a lot of time and effort that could have been put towards better preparing me for my chosen field. It didn't help that my stupid school doesn't even offer an English minor, so since I didn't want to go all the way with my major, all the English classes I took did squat for my diploma. If I had spent those class credits on biology prerequisite classes instead, I would have finished them earlier and would have had time to take some of those awesome looking upper level bio classes that I never got a chance to take.

Much more relevant to the Real World, however, was my education outside of class. I started working as a research assistant during the last semester of my junior year - and worked alongside freshmen. What a great start that would have been - to be a couple years along in my lab experience, and have more leverage to getting even more and better lab experiences, and probably fluffing up my resume quite nicely. I know for a fact that more experience in more things would have gotten me a job a lot faster. You can ask the employers who turned down my application in the first few months after I graduated. Don't get me wrong, I understand that a strong theoretical understanding is an important foundation to practical work, as well as learning how to think critically and write etc etc. But to actually get your foot in the door, to actually work your way in and advance yourself to the point where you actually get to use all that critical thinking ability, you need real practical experience. No question about it.

I realize that all this ranting and raving my seem somewhat hypocritical when compared to my post on The Plan, where I ranted and raved on the absurdity of being expected to know with certainty what your lifelong career is going to be from the time you're eleven. Trust me, I still think it's absurd, but I most certainly can't argue with the benefits of preparedness. If you can get a good idea of your interests a little earlier than the rest, then why not? And if schools and teachers are going to promote this trend, then they need to help students find their interests. They need to give students exposure to the possibilities. And I honestly feel that I did not get the right exposure. Hell, I probably didn't get the right exposure until I took a certain upper-level biology class during my junior year - and surprise surprise, it was shortly after that when I realized what I really want to do with my life.

I know it's not just me, either. Educational standards in the US are starting to slip behind that of other countries, particularly in the maths and sciences. I'll be honest and say I'm not sure what all the answers are, I'm not sure how to go about accomplishing some change, but change there needs to be. If there had been an option in my high school to take some more in-depth biology classes, I know I would have taken it in a heartbeat. But there was no such option. In college, if there had been some really interesting freshmen seminars that gave you exposure to more advanced topics without having to work through all the pre-req classes first, I most certainly would have taken them.

Additionally, as City Girl and Speak Coffee and I have had no choice but to learn, there is a lot about the Real World that our fancy college educations didn't prepare us for. Interviewing, networking, fighting to get your foot in that door. As Speak Coffee likes to say, employers out there expect vanilla, while your average liberal arts college likes to require their students to be well rounded flavor parades. Personally, I think partaking in many flavors is a good thing too - but employers don't agree. And we didn't expect that. I thought the transition into actual employment was going to be a smooth one. Nine jobless months taught me otherwise. I thought my lab experience at the university put me ahead of the game - only to learn that I wasn't ahead of the game enough. "Ah, so you can do DNA extraction and PCR? Wonderful! Well what about cell or tissue culture? No? Any experience with live animals? No? What about quantitative RT-PCR? Immunohistochemistry? Electron microscopy? None of that either, eh? Hmm, a year and a half in labs. That's all, huh." I thank my lucky stars for the job I had today; it was an accidental fluke that I even applied for it, and even luckier that my employer was more than willing to teach me much of what I needed to know on the job. Most others are not so cooperative.

I will certainly take a good chunk of the blame for my Lost Year blundering, as I know I had many of my own personal issues that held me back. But neither did my education prepare me as well as it could have, in many ways. For all the cost and all the time, some of the hardest and most important lessons I had to learn on my own. And maybe that's just the way it is - but I can't help but feel like it shouldn't have to be.

General Feelings on Your College Experience

We've been digging up some feelings on the "so what now?" front that seem to play directly into the "that was college?" mentality. I'm going to offer this prompt as a way for us to expand, vent and rant on it as we see fit. Nostolgia is allowed as well.

It Puts the "B" in Bitch of the Week

Contributor: City Girl

I speak of the Bachelor's degree, of course. That piece of paper you shell out thousands of dollars for and spend four years (or more, sometimes less if you're my roommate) working towards, writing papers on such topics as "the role of cross dressing in Jacobean drama" (which is clearly going to help you survive in The Real World [the place, not the show]) only to realize that during that whole long process you never really learned how to land a job. Clearly I also never learned how to avoid writing run-on sentences. It could just be that my personal BA was in Theater, which can land you careers in the gamut of waiting tables all the way to high end retail (my own, personal journey to hell). But noting that I am not the only post-college graduate adrift in a sea of WTF-ness (as we at The Lost Year like to say) I am going to jump to the conclusion that in the current day Real World the once well-respected BA now means approximately jack. True, I was raised to know that I was going to college. It was never really a question in my upbringing, and for that I consider myself lucky. I'm not delusional enough to think that earning a college degree does not make a difference in life, and those of us who have the familial support and the drive to obtain one are fortunate indeed, but I am also not delusional enough to think that having a BA means The Real World (the place, not the show) is going to receive you with open arms and give you the keys to your office or give you the lead in a Broadway show. True, you have to work non-stop for what you really want, but when did holding a BA cease to have the power that it once did? Sometime between my parents' generation and mine, I guess. Now they (the parentals) want me to go for my MA (I'm not against it, I enjoy being well educated) but the truth is that work experience is beginning to mean more and more and earning degrees is beginning to mean less and less.

Was that enough rambling and parenthesis for you??? I know MY head hurts.

The above was essentially my thought process on Friday as I was working my temp job for a PR firm that had recently been bought out. They had to severely downsize and lost a lot of their space, so they had box after box after box of files that had to be recorded, organized, and archived. And then moved. Note: I am just a tiny person. I am not built for heavy lifting, and my back was aching by the end of the day.

Oh goody, a day of hell that requires no more brain power than how to hold a pen and write down a file name, plus the challenge of alphabetizing, all in the name of $100 to add to the $75 my internship is giving me per week. Don't get me wrong, I love my internship. I'm very happy I have made the switch to PR, and I am learning a lot. But none of it...NONE of it...is anything that my four years of college prepared me for. I know so much useless information, but at the end of this internship I will be thanking my lucky stars if I land a job that's paying me $23 grand a year plus health insurance.

I can blame myself for not having the drive or motivation to a) go to better than a state school, b) go to a career counselor who could teach me how to find a real job, or c) pick a better path (we're back to THAT again) from the get-go, so come college graduation I would know what jobs to pursue...but I would rather lay the blame on our effed up educational system.

Moral of the story, a BA (especially if it's not in exactly the field you plan on working in for the rest of your life) pretty much means you're qualified to answer phones, ring a cash register, or say "tall or grande?"...sad but true.

Bitch of the Week: ticking clock

Contributor: Speak Coffee

Ticking clock, ticking clock, ticking clock.

Actually, it's the rhythmic ticking of the expanding heating duct above my head. But it's varied creakings and thumpings only feed my anxiety by building up the pressure then slowing down until I find I'm holding my breath, not letting it out until a certain number of ticks have passed by.

I'm waiting on the ticks. And at the same time I'm watching, terrified, as they pass me by.

Tick, tick, tick.

Today I received in the mail my "free" copy of a chapbook of poetry for a contest I entered a year ago. This is a copy of the winning chapbook, not my own manuscript. It was something of a let down. About 50 pages, 4x4" and cheaply bound. I understood what "chapbook" meant, but still ... I'm not terribly sad that it isn't my name on the cover of this sad litttle thing. At the same time, it is one more opportunity that I reached for. And I feel good about that. But it's one more that's over. And now I have this sinking feeling, this question of what's next? are you ready for the next thing because you need to be ready, ready NOW!

Tick, tick ...

Ever feel like you're wasting your life away? Well, duh, I think most of us get that sooner or later. But the emotion is presenting itself pretty strong this week. Yes, Paralith said I'm the one who still takes writing "seriously" but who is taking me seriously? What am I doing to convince them that they need to? Why aren't I on the next thing by now?

Sticking with writing is easy for me because it is the one thing that I am good at that doesn't feel like work. I just dump out my mind onto the page and many a day it doesn't even seem like I am in control. *Pointing to today's story as exhibit A.*

I'm turning out 1,000-4,000 words of new fiction every day now. Which is great. Except it is spread over several projects and makes me feel like I'm slowing down the process. That's why I'm hearing the ticking clock bearing down on me. I need to finish some sort of small tangible goal ASAP. Actually, I need to send out three short stories to literary journals. I've decided that is my "tangible" goal for the weekend and I'm procrastinating on it in order to write this post.

Tick ...

Shall we even get into the whole job hunting thing? I think not. I'm making myself nervous enough as it is.

Then there's the "relationship" thing. So there's this "Millionaire Matchmaker" show on Bravo. Which is great to watch because it makes me feel good about all the guys I've dated not being as in need of help as these really rich but genuinely clueless guys. However, the matchmaker-lady spouted off something about "Are you really committed to this idea of falling in love? Because if you don't want it, it's not going to happen. ... Once you open yourself up to the idea the universe rearranges itself."

Part of me was like hey, yeah! What a great way to think about the world! That all it takes is you being truly committed to an idea! This is already a large part of my I will make it! I am a writer! mantra, but when I applied it to myself and a relationship ... nope. Not gonna happen. Still scared shitless.

Bitch of the Week: A Little Self Bitching

Contributor: Paralith

This isn't as angry an entry as my last Bitch of the Week, but I think this still kind of fits. What I'm bitching about today is myself.

Speak Coffee wrote in her writing blog about our days in high school when she, City Girl, and I would all write stories and share them with each other every day as we wrote. Speak Coffee is the only one of us who has continued to follow writing seriously.

For a long time, I wanted to follow writing seriously too. For a while, I also thought I might want to pursue art seriously too. In fact, I chose the colleges I would apply to based on the variety of options they offered - art, writing, and science.

My efforts at art had started to die long before I went to college. My last semester of high school, I spent one period as an assistant to the art teacher I'd had for two previous classes. She told me she'd be happy to help me develop some pieces for a portfolio during that semester, if I wanted to apply to art school at some point in the future. But I wasted that whole semester, and made no efforts to make any pieces, even as I watched several of my friends do exactly that (including Speak Coffee, if I remember correctly!) When I went to college, I made a few attempts to enroll in a class or two at the art school, but it was difficult enough where I gave up after a year.

I'm not sure what exactly was going through my mind at that time; I had always enjoyed art, ever since I was little, and when I applied myself, I could be pretty good. The only thing I can blame, really, is laziness. Simply not enough motivation.

I held on to writing a little tighter. I declared myself a double major in English and Biology, largely to ensure that I could apply to my school's advanced senior year writing program at the end of my junior year. I took two creative writing classes, and took care to screen my potential teachers to that I would be able to write science fiction and fantasy stories. I had discovered that my large university's writing program largely frowned upon "genre fiction," a term I had never heard prior to that point. It was something I railed against with relish, and claimed that I would show them all with my writing that genre fiction could stand up with traditional fiction.

But for the whole year between my last creative writing class and the application deadline for the writing program, I did not revise and complete my primary piece as I had planned. I said I would, but I didn't. The deadline came and went, and I did nothing.

I really did love writing - I loved my stories that I wrote. And the piece I had planned to apply to the program with had been well received by my classmates - many of them specifically told me that they didn't usually like fantasy, but they liked my story. One of them called my dorm room that night she first read my story to tell me how much she liked it. What more encouragement could I have asked for? But somehow, day by day, I let time go by without working on my story like I should have. Clearly, I didn't love writing enough. I dropped my English major and went for straight biology.

Even after graduating from college, during my Lost Year, my boyfriend tried to encourage me to spend my ample free time (while I was "working" on getting a job) working on that story again. He talked about finding a literary agent to help me out. He tried to help me work out some serious world-building issues I had with the story. But again, I continued to let days go by in which I didn't work on it - I watched TV, played video games, surfed the internet. Needless to say, my boyfriend was pretty disappointed in me.

Looking back on this sordid history is one of the things that helped jar me out of the worst part of my Lost Year. I was and am still ashamed of myself and my laziness, and my seeming inability to do what's good for myself. I did the same thing during my Lost Year when it came to getting a job, taking the GRE, applying to grad school. I realized I was letting my whole life go down the toilet, and that I had to change.

I hope, one day, to go back to that story, or to writing in general. I've managed to get my motivation in science, now I just have to work that into the rest of my life. It hasn't been easy, but I'm trying.

Bitch of the Week, The Second

It's been more than a week, so I'm sure we must all have something aggravating on our minds by now. I know I do. To the bitching!