Graduate School

About a week ago, I finally got accepted to graduate school. I've been greeting the congratulations with pleased and proud smiles, and the thought of tuition and books with the appropriate amount of trepidation. According to all signs, the real work still lies ahead of me. But that's like standing at the bottom of Everest and waiting to begin the climb. I may not be up the mountain yet, but I've put in a lot of work and taken a long trip just to get this far.

I officially started this journey about eighteen months ago. But on another level, I started it in June of 1996, when I took a job which had nothing whatsoever to do with my original field, working under conditions which sometimes bore more resemblance to life in the Army than they did to the rest of corporate America. I look back on my time at the rat lab, at days of despair and exhaustion, at days of getting up at 5 AM and commuting 90 minutes each way on public transportation to a job where getting sh#t on was a literal and frequent occurrence, and I think, whatever it is, it's not going to be that bad.

But there's bad, and there's bad. The sense of resignation you get when you just don't have the energy to rise above it all is one thing. The sense of frustration and outrage you get when you've actually broken the pattern to take real, focused, effective action and you still get denied, is another. It feels like getting bait-and-switched by the universe.

Which brings me to those last eighteen months.

I was living in Tallahassee, Florida at the time, and I realized that my Great Leap Southward had not so much given me the whole new life I was looking for, as cleaned all the junk out of the old one so I could actually make use of the resources I had. But to take hold of them, I would have to move on again-- back to where I came from. Obstacles overcome: pride, inertia, old dreams, financial hardship, moving in a tropical storm.

I started the application process by identifying schools that I wanted to attend and studying for the GRE test. Obstacles overcome: limited research interest in the field I wanted to study, self-confidence issues at applying to three top schools, math anxiety, learning to apply math skills in a whole new way, learning to write a coherent and error-free essay in 30 minutes.

I had to get three sets of three letters of recommendation, and my only option was to get them from my former employers. Yeah, the ones I'd told that I was done with science. I had to visit in person to start re-cultivating one of them, and field all the questions about whether I was in school yet and why I wasn't in Florida. Then I had to follow up repeatedly to make sure my letters got sent. Obstacles overcome: Pride, self-confidence issues, transportation, re-establishing communication, repeated follow-up.

I took the GRE, did well, wrote my admissions essays, and completed my applications. Then I had to wait. Obstacles overcome: financial hardship (several hundred dollars in fees), writing a professional admissions essay (took weeks!) the waiting game.

I got denied by the first two schools, and took it hard. I called the admissions office of one of them, and spent 45 minutes on the phone discussing my application and what I could have done to improve it. Obstacles overcome: discussing my shortcomings, fessing up to the boss about making a 45-minute long-distance call from work, not kicking my best friend out of the house when she said something I didn't want to hear.

I wrote a letter to the third school, with the supplemental information suggested by the admissions advisor I'd called the week before. I waited a long time for the response from that school, then got denied by that one too. Obstacles overcome: discussing my shortcomings again, waiting game again.

I finally applied to the fourth school. They don't have my degree program at all, and I had to apply as a non-degree student. I got in. Obstacles overcome: more pride, resignation, more financial hardship (about $100, but still).

So when you count it all up, I spent about 18 months, a cross-country move, a few thousand dollars, a lot of swallowed pride, a lot of mustered courage, a lot of follow-ups, three denials from graduate schools, and a lot of character-building to get in as a non-degree candidate to my "emergency" school so that I can get enough recent academics to try this all again in six months.

Oh, and one of the things missing from my application, the one that might have turned a denial into an acceptance had I only thought to mention it-- was evidence of sufficient grit.

Somehow I don't think that's going to be a problem for next year.

Citizen Erin

About a month ago, severely angered by certain political events, I sat down at my computer and did something I'd never done before. I wrote letters to my senators.

While I wrote, my heart pounded and my hands got cold. Some of that was the result of trying to channel all that anger and adrenaline into a coherent and focused force. And some of it was just plain fear. Would I get in trouble for overstepping my bounds? Would I be dismissed as a nut job? For some reason, I had the unshakeable idea that the only people who were "allowed" to write letters to Congress were those who either wore Brooks Brothers suits or tinfoil hats. The rest of us in the middle just didn't have any need to do that sort of thing.

Let me just get this on the record: WRONG.

First of all, if the CEOs and the crazies are the only ones writing to Congress, then the only opinions Congress ever hears are those of CEOs and crazies. And we wonder why the government is in the mess it's in...

Second of all-- and this is a whole 'nother rant-- we've all forgotten how to be good stewards of our own lives. We don't take responsibility responsibly. Sometimes we don't take it at all. We pay other people to do it for us, then we assume it's been taken care of and promptly forget about it. This makes sense if, for instance, we're buying an airline ticket to Hawaii. We're not expected to get up in the middle of the flight and check on the pilot or take over if he's having trouble. But it makes less sense if we're paying a student's tuition to flight school and deliberately refuse to hear anything about his actual progress-- especially if we expect him to fly us to Hawaii at the end of the year.

That's the way most of us treat politics. We vote once every couple of years, if that, and pay our taxes, and promptly forget about it. Meanwhile, the object of our votes may be spending our tax money to send himself to Hawaii and lobby for higher tuition at the flight school. He's not obligated to warn us beforehand. It's our job to check. And if we don't like what we see, it's our job to let him know.

Of course, if we do like what we see, we might want to let him know that too. Even if we think that the only people who actually approve of Congress are either rich or crazy.

My Best Friends' Weddings

Years ago, when my good friends Tony and Angela got married, I learned that another good friend, Jonathan, did not like champagne. "That's okay," I assured him, "when my turn comes, I'll make sure you get to toast with a screwdriver!" We both could have used something a bit stronger than champagne by that point: I had tonsils the size of bowling balls, and he was recovering from a broken collarbone. And, as I told Denise later, "Because if I marry him, he can do whatever he wants at his own wedding, and if I marry someone else, he'll need the vodka!"

Ten years later, I find myself reconsidering those words with a sense of irony, because Jonathan is getting married-- and not to me. The same higher mental functions that let me be genuinely happy for him are also making me very, very grateful for my lifelong distaste for orange juice.

Interesting fact about me: most of my close friends are male, many of them are ex-boyfriends, and almost all of those are either married or engaged. By this point in my life, I've been to a fair number of weddings, and I have to say that watching an ex-boyfriend walk down the aisle with another woman is a whole different kind of bittersweet. Sometimes it's been a relief-- like when Aaron got married, and I was secretly grateful that I'd never have to deal with his advances again. Sometimes there's been a sense of rightness to it-- when Crane got married, I couldn't imagine anyone better for him than Anne (she and I have since become good friends). And sometimes, like when Andrew got married, I've wanted to bawl my eyes out-- despite the fact that he and I had broken up while still in high school, and had only recently rebuilt the friendship we should have had in the first place.

Another interesting fact about me: in high school, I was a Civil Air Patrol cadet with a semi-secret superpower. I would date a guy for a few months or a year the way kids do in high school, then we would break up-- and then the guy would get the state's Honor Cadet of the Year award. I seriously went three-for-three in three years-- just ask Andrew. I used to sit around at the banquet tables at the awards ceremonies, joking quietly with the other female cadets about what a fortune I'd make if I could bottle that ability. Looking back at that from an adult perspective, I realize two things: one, I had an uncanny accuracy for choosing rising stars; and two, at that stage of my life, they really were better off without my drama. Growing up seems to have cured that second part quite nicely, thank God. But now that I've learned how to channel all that passion for something constructive, I really wish I still had access to that first part.

At sixteen, it's easy to see the fire in someone's heart, and to know that they'll love us and their dreams with equal ferocity. But somewhere around our mid-twenties, we make of that fire something harder, like steel or glass-- something that will hold polish and an edge. Dreams become ambitions. Love becomes sex with security. Desires become necessities. The ethereal quality goes out of our lives, and any attempt to bring it back makes us look hopelessly naive and juvenile, as though we still sleep with teddy bears and write letters to Santa. Even the internet dating sites, which sell the idea of everlasting love, temper it with the advice that potential matches will be scared away by the mere mention of the word. We learn that anything that blazes forth had better be sex, innovation, or diamonds, because anything else is just a waste of energy. We become so hard and glossy and grounded that we shower Bridezilla and dismiss "happily ever after" as a wedding planner's tactic to get further into our wallets.

That is, until the day we're actually confronted with the impossible. Someone gets engaged or married, someone we knew back when love and dreams underwent nuclear fusion and gave us unlimited, burning energy, and suddenly all the years of glass and steel melt away before a force so hot and bright that we can't look directly at it without tears. Something has called out the fire in us.

The question is not what I would do if I could bottle that ability. The question is why we ever keep it bottled in the first place.

Life on the Edge, Week 2

Eighty-eight dollars.

That's how much my not-eating-out initiative saved me last week. I know this, because that was the balance left in my bank account when I checked on Day 10. By some strange coincidence, this was the exact amount of money I was going to have available to get through the coming whirlwind. Five events in four days. A bridal shower, dinner-and-a-movie, Mothers' Day, and a day trip to a graduation. I figured I could just-- just-- make it, if nothing went wrong and no unexpected expenses occurred. You know, like trying to color my hair and having the bottle go flying out of my hand mid-squirt, spraying colorant on the nice white tiles on its short trajectory into the toilet bowl. Or having the heels on my only pair of dress shoes wear completely through in mid-week. Or having my mom invite five other people to her Mothers' Day breakfast without telling me.

I didn't plan for those? Silly me. So that'll be ten dollars for another box of hair color, a week of wearing nothing but pants so that I can wear my boots instead of dress shoes, and four dollars in ATM fees so that I can pay my brother-in-law for my mother's and my breakfasts after he puts them on his AmEx.

Frugality, good. Desperation, bad. But somehow I got through it.

For the bridal shower, the theme was "Things the couple will need on their honeymoon." Having no idea where they were going, I bought them a journal with one of those magnetic-clasp covers, and decorated the first page with descriptions of all the things they might need: everything from "Passion!" and "More Rum!" to "kindness" and "Advil". I wrapped it in leftover Christmas paper (plain silver-on-silver stripe) with a big blue-and-silver bow. They fed me dinner and drinks at the shower. Total cost-- I won't post that here, in case one of them visits this site! But it was quite doable.

I feel a bit guilty even describing Friday's dinner-and-a-movie as an event, since I already knew going into it that he would be paying for everything. We ate a lot of sushi, saw SpiderMan 3, and generally had a great time. Total cost-- none to me, but a big hug and a hat tip for a good friend's generosity.

Saturday was a two-fer. First came the Mothers' Day breakfast, which I had expected to put on my ATM card as I had no cash. Then came my sister, her husband, his sister, and my two nieces. Followed shortly by the need for cash in hand. Followed shortly thereafter by the realization that I really should bring my own "little sister" something when I went down for her graduation on Sunday. Again with the journal, again with the Christmas paper-- only this time, I didn't write in the journal first, and I used the paper with the stars on it. Total cost-- about thirty bucks.

For my next trick, I spent about eight bucks at Trader Joe's to get another bottle of cheap red wine and some fruit to make sangria for the next party. I had been worried about how to transport it, but after my best friend helpfully poured us each a glass of Cran-Raspberry juice, I had only to wash out the jug and voila! (Note to the reader-- if you do this, put the jug in the trunk and not in the driver's compartment, because it will count as an "open container". Just FYI.) Total cost for the day-- about 40 bucks, which left about 20 in the bank for Sunday's meals on the road. For both of us.

Enter divine intervention. Denise also came up slightly flush, so between the two of us, we had about sixty dollars to get through Saturday's dinner and Sunday's road trip. I can't say it was the healthiest food I've ever eaten, but I did managed to get a salad involved during lunch on the trip back. When we got home Sunday night, I found my determination to cook dinner thwarted by a lack of clean pans, a lack of space in the kitchen, and a waiting period to get to the sink or the spice cupboard. We ended up going out to dinner after all. Total cost-- well, let's put it this way. I ended the evening with about three dollars and change in my purse, and this morning, I found out that I was exactly sixteen cents overdrawn.

I took the three dollars and change, and had lunch at McDonald's.

An Afternoon's Perspective Shot

A few weeks ago, I had conversations with two different people about what's going on with my mom.

The first one was with a man I had known as a boy in grade school. We sat on his front porch while he held his baby daughter in his lap, and he asked me how I was doing. I told him I thought I'd completely lost the ability to panic. If it wasn't leaking plutonium, I said, it wasn't a problem-- and if it was leaking plutonium, I knew who to call. He said, basically, that he thought I had my head on pretty straight.

The second conversation was with my best friend Denise, who I've known "only" since college. We sat in her car while she drove westward in rush hour traffic and I told her how stressed I was getting. Just because I'm not panicking doesn't mean I'm not stressing. She said, basically, that if I tried to mortgage my future to take care of my mom's present, she was going to kick my ass.

Now-- on one hand, having a cancer patient in the family will stretch your resources to the breaking point and beyond. You will run out of money. You will run out of time. You may run out of the room screaming as you finally lose your temper and pull everyone else down with you. No one gets out for free. But on the other hand, I'm doing the best I can to marshall my current resources properly. I'm working to get out of debt. I'm eating more healthfully and exercising more often. I average 8 hrs of sleep a night. My friends and my employers are both in the loop and both quite supportive. And when I think of my future-future, that place where I hope to be in a couple of years, it looks the same from today as it did from six months ago, only without my mom in it. I'll cry a river when the time comes, but I'm not ready to do it yet. So if I'm being so responsible, why did she make the comment? Because, just like everybody else, I tend to prioritize the "urgent" over the "important".

Just to clarify: "urgent" is when you're sprinting for the bus because you don't want to be an hour late getting home. "Important" is when you decide that the lost hour is not worth sprinting across four lanes of oncoming traffic. Urgent things are usually one-time expenditures of time and resources; there is some pressing need to do them right now. Important things are usually long-term commitments that require constant care and vigilance, but don't normally create a feeling of immediate need. We neglect them because either we figure that they're big enough to take care of themselves for a day or a year at a time without our input, or we assume that they're too big for our puny efforts to make any difference at all. And down we go in the Hellevator.

In my particular case, I think Denise was talking about money. My immediate financial goals are fairly modest: I want to save up to pay in-state tuition for the fall semester and to get a good used car. Both of these things are out of my current price range. Both of these are things I've managed to get along well for over a decade without having. So it's easy enough to say, "Well, I sure can't buy a car with thirty bucks, so if that's all I've got, I might as well give it to my mom." At which point, Denise would most assuredly kick my ass.

You see, for all my comment about, "...and if it is leaking plutonium, I know who to call," that assumes that I know it's leaking plutonium. And when it comes to ourselves, we often don't. That feeling of urgency can override even our best attempts at self-governance, in the same way that a magician's patter can distract us from catching his sleight-of-hand.

And even with help, it's still a slow process. Thirty bucks this paycheck and thirty bucks next pay check don't add up very quickly. At that rate, it would take me 43 months to earn one semester's tuition, and another 86 months to pay cash for a thoroughly modest used car. That's a total of 10 years, 9 months, for those keeping score. It seems a bit like rush-hour traffic sometimes-- lots of stop-and-go while facing other people's rear ends and making very little progress. But at least, it seems I have good companions for the trip.

How I Stopped Buying Food and Survived for Six Whole Days

For years now, I've called May "The Month of No Money." An average May involves two Mothers Days, three birthdays, an anniversary, an annual luncheon, and at least two unscheduled events. And they all seem to happen in pairs. Usually during short-money weeks.

This year is no exception. I found myself having to fund a couple's shower, a visit from an out-of-town friend, a birthday party, two Mothers Days, and a day trip--all the same week!-- out of the same paycheck that had already covered my rent, gym dues, two weeks' worth of groceries, and two credit card payments. Thank God I'd already paid for that luncheon. I took one look at the paltry sum left over-- a sum that ordinarily wouldn't be enough to get me through a week without events-- and realized that the time had come to implement drastic measures. Such as not buying any more food.

No crumble cake at Starbucks because I overslept. No lunches from the sandwich place because my co-workers were putting in an order. No bags of salad greens or jar of artichokes or can of smoked oysters on the way home to make a quick dinner. I'd just put two weeks' worth of groceries in the house; surely they could last a whole two weeks.

Well, yes, but I wasn't quite sure that I could.

It wasn't my tummy that was rumbling; it was my sense of entitlement. Understand that I was in no danger of starving, or even of having to eat anything I didn't like, since I'd bought all the food in the first place. But I was in danger of having to settle for something that didn't move me right at that very moment, like cooked frozen veggies when I really wanted a salad, or of having to eat the same thing for dinner several nights in a row because I still had four servings left. Or of disrupting my whole weekend by not buying Saturday breakfast out when my best friend Denise and I both conveniently ran out of time to eat breakfast at home.

But I did all those things anyway. I ate my cooked broccoli with bleu cheese dressing and got something like five encores out of the Italian sausage soup. I called up Denise and reminded her not only to eat breakfast before she came over, but to check her fridge for lunch food so I'd know if I should bring anything over. When I went to the luncheon, I didn't buy a drink at the bar. When Denise came over for dinner on Sunday night, I served her leftover baked chicken with a complete lack of self-consciousness. For probably the first time since college, I was managing to live day-to-day without spending money.

I'm not saying I went completely without cheating. I started last Tuesday with $40 in my pocket, and spent over half of it that very day on-- you guessed it-- meals out. I've bought three bottles of water at the gym (though I finally got wise and saved the last one to refill for next time). When I overslept last Friday, I bought a lox-and-bagel sandwich and a bottle of iced tea with the last of my ready cash. The other days, I've been breakfasting on the granola bars and Pop Tarts we keep in the break room at work. But for five-and-a-half days out of the last seven, I haven't bought any extra food. And I haven't broken out my ATM card even once since the grocery run.

In the beginning, there was a definite feeling of pressure. It wasn't the holding-my-breath-for-two-weeks kind of feeling that I usually get during a money crunch; I knew I wasn't going to overdraw my bank account. It was more like the kind of pressure that comes with trying to break a bad habit. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what I was doing. But the more I did it, the easier it got. One short week later-- allowing for the Sunday luncheon and the two meals I haven't eaten yet-- I've had six homemade dinners, five homemade lunches, and four homemade breakfasts (six, if you count the break room supplies). I calculate that I've saved at least $80, or possibly more depending on how long those groceries last. And that was really the whole point. It wasn't about learning to eat better or to manage my time more wisely, though they've both been valuable side effects. It was about learning to control my spending. And I think I have laid a small but very solid foundation for that-- even if I do have occasional flashbacks to my broke college days.

And if I survive the next six days-- the ones with all the events in them-- I just might have enough resources to survive the remaining two birthdays, another party for a different out-of-town friend, Memorial Day festivities, a couple of other unplanned events, and the airline tickets for that friend's wedding in June. But that's another paycheck.

An Open Letter to Our Candidates

Dear Candidate,

Thank you for taking the time to find out which issues are important to me as a voter. You’ll find I’m quite low-maintenance, as I don’t demand all the latest trendy features from my elected officials. I’ve come to understand that “entitlement” is government-speak for “white elephant”, a beast that will not only ruin me, but trample all over my boundaries and my neighbors and leave a big mess of manure in its wake—and I simply can’t afford the expense.

For instance, I don’t want socialized medicine. If I wanted to wait five years for an operation, I would opt out of my health plan and invest the difference. That way, when my doctor tells me that the government will no longer cover the procedure because not enough people need it, I can pay the airfare to another country where doctors are still allowed to heal people, and have it done there.

I don’t need a tax break for driving a hybrid car. If I didn’t deserve one during all those years of riding public transportation and walking everywhere, I can’t in good conscience take one for expanding my carbon footprint. Please rest assured that when I do get a car, I will do the responsible thing and choose a 100% post-consumer recycled car that has as many good years left in it as a new hybrid, only without the environmental impact of a new manufacture. The reduced cost and smaller property taxes will be more than sufficient to cover any tax break I might have received. And if I do it just right, I’ll even be able to give a local small business a boost.

I’m not looking for additional restrictions against religion in public places. Frankly, I’m bracing for the day when the Declaration of Independence gets removed from classrooms for that phrase about being “endowed by their Creator.” That’s if the “all men are created equal” doesn’t get it yanked first for lack of inclusive language.

You’ll be relieved to note that I don’t expect you to champion mandatory prayer in public schools either. It is my own responsibility to bring up my children in the faith, and if they grow up to be godless heathens, I have no one to blame but myself. For that matter, I don’t expect further government oversight of my retirement fund or the fast-food industry, either. I understand that overconsumption now causes problems later, and the government is not expected to rescue me from my own lack of good judgment if I choose to ignore the warnings.

Speaking of warnings, I personally see no reason why I should have to make a choice between having freedom and having an atmosphere. Both are necessary and we all know it, so kindly stop with the fear-mongering already. That also goes for the zero-tolerance policies. Taking away teenagers’ nail clippers is not going to prevent a school shooting, and firing foul-mouthed commentators is not going to clean up the Billboard Top Ten.

Setting aside all of these hot-button issues should give you the resources you need to concentrate on the things that are really important, such as making sure that our police, emergency services, and military personnel are fully empowered to do the jobs for which they were hired. Trust me, if my house catches on fire or someone tries to break in, I’m not going to be worried about the additional tax burden for calling 911. And while we’re on the subject of those three little numbers, what ever happened to “United We Stand”? If we took all the energy and passion wasted on partisan infighting and directed it toward fighting the terrorists, we’d already be done with the war in Iraq.

Oh—and when you do get to that part about defending the Constitution, please remember that the First Amendment applies to both parties equally and that the Second Amendment has not gone conveniently missing.

I understand that citizenship carries certain inherent responsibilities, and I am prepared to exercise mine. This includes staying abreast of the issues, keeping track of your voting record, and making sure that you know my needs as a constituent. Consider it my thanks for your generous offer to represent me.

Sincerely,

Erin_Coda, Instigator
Somewhere, Virginia