Transfer Applications - Part One

So right on par with my advising from Ms. Urbizu and Dr. Lyons, I'm getting a jump on my transfer applications, namely the Common App and supplements.  A friend at the coffee shop commented I was starting to glaze over, at that point I had been there for 7 hours running on dollar store microwave chow mein and a tall green tea lemonade, a specialty of my barista, Dan.

Extremely long story short, When I started writing this blog back a year ago, visiting New York and Columbia were daydreams. A GPA and academic record possibly worthy of admission, were laughable afterthoughts. 

Not anymore.

Today they are realistic goals.  Achievable, very real goals with very real tangible results at the end of them.  I don't speak simply of the degrees or the job offers they may foreshadow, but of projects I will start...and finish.  Research I will do. Roles I'll play. Papers I'll write. Arguments I'll make. Change I'll inspire.
Tears of joy I'll cry when I do it.  The pride I will feel in 10 or 20 years, when a student of mine comes to understand a concept I've taught, because I had such a world class education.

The Honest Question

  This place, whatever this place is, is lonely...very, very lonely.  So much needs to be said if honesty's what we're aiming for.  Fuck the clever videos and song lyrics.  I want the life I've never had back. I guess you could say I live in fear of screwing up, it's one observation.  Really, though, it's so much more logical than that.  Life and a somewhat pathetic belief in fate, has made me a chess player in which every opportunity, every person met is to be evaluated as to whether they're the one with whom my story is altered.  When you're on your 2nd maybe even 3rd chance in life, you get really good at asking the intimidating questions up front, "seeing the moves" before they're made.  And, on the other side of that, is this insane honesty centuries of uptight sophistication and gender role ingratiation and social rules have left isolated.  To look at a person, at a friend, a co-worker, a stranger, a classmate...and wonder is this the person that's going to change my life, with out hesitation, is freedom. It's pathetic what we do to avoid that question, or worse still what we do to avoid letting ourselves believe the answer, if it's not convenient, if it doesn't fit how we need it to, if it doesn't work for someone else, if it's not right, right now.   We lie to ourselves and the friends, co-workers, classmates, and strangers.  We create a non-existent noble farce in keeping silent.  We save face.  We rescue the status-quo and for some short time convince ourselves how things are is how we want it.  That because we've staved off change, we've mastered life, in that aspect for a time, for a time.  But that's all we've done.  We have not progressed or moved forward or made a grand choice.  In denying the answer, or denying to answer such a simple and horrifying question we have become stagnant. It is in asking we live, and accepting the answers we are alive.