~ On Enthusiasm or a Lack Thereof ~

Part of the problem of subscribing to the New Yorker is that there is generally not enough time during a normal week to read it. Yet, as I have investigated monthly alternatives to the New Yorker, such as Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly, I don't feel that they offer me the same sort of stimulation and gratification as the New Yorker.

In other news, last night Josh and I were wondering exactly how many monkeys are contained within a barrel. We were examining some data provided by John Stewart about the level of funness (represented by monkeys and barrels of monkeys) versus the level of danger (represented by daggers and death squad icons) of travelling to various South American countries. The data served to reinforce my desire to spend some time in Chile, but only because there is no fun without danger. *rowr*

"I cannot help but wonder"...why is this whole "applying to graduate school" thing so difficult??? Last night, I went off on a huge tirade against wanker academia pretention, and the result was that I merely became more inflamed on the subject. To summarize, GIVE ME A BREAK! Sheesh! And I don't mean to come off as elitist, but I'm not applying to the Ivy League School of Rocket Science. COME ON...!!! I have made a detailed pro/con list to help me decide which program at which school to focus my application energies. It appears that the brunt of my decision has been made based upon having had an extremely horrid application experience with one school, and a pleasant and uncomplicated application experience with another. And the horrid experience with the one school just doesn't go away. Each and every single dingle wingle day they hand me yet another straw...and I keep saying, "Now, THAT is the last straw!" only to receive another. I continually sigh in exasperation.

Anyhoot, it doesn't matter because I've submitted my final application materials to the one school and am not returning the emails/phonecalls of the other (which is giving me reason to contemplate the concept of burning bridges, but I am way too annoyed and fed up). What's funny now, ha ha ha, is that today I called the graduate school to verify that they have received all of my materials. And they hadn't. They were missing transcripts for two of my three undergraduate schools. Good grief! I then proceeded to have an anxiety attack and verified that the transcripts were sent over a month ago. I can't quite articulate how I was feeling, but I am a very anal retentive person about these sorts of things and I felt so hypertensive. After a time, the person from the graduate school called me to tell me that they had assumed the person attached to each of those two first schools was an international student, so they had forwarded my transcripts to the international student office. The other issue, 'cause there's never just one issue, is that I have a very common name and that needed all kinds of itemized explanations.

Posted by jennifer at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)