Obsessive and Happy

So. I am now a full time college access adviser. I love my job. Some days it's hard, some days it's easy, some days it's Monday. All days I am grateful for this opportunity.

It's lonelier than it looked like it would be at first. The first month we were all together, all of the advisers for the different schools, and that was fun. Now we hardly ever talk, which is sad. We have a meeting on Wednesday, though. Maybe some of us will reconnect. I hope so. But the kids are awesome--they're going through so much, and they ALL deserve to go to college, which in some cases means they deserve another chance. I only hope that I can give it to them.

Some of the faculty are so negative. I hate it. One of the kids that I encouraged to aim for the University of Utah (he'll have to get his grades up and score pretty high on the ACT) was told up front by his counselor, "You'll never get accepted to the U." I can't believe people do that! Why are these people guidance counselors? I can understand being realistic, but realistic should sound like this: "That's going to be tough. You'll have to work hard at this point, and do __ and __, but if you work hard enough, you can do it. Just in case, you should apply to a couple of backup schools that you'd also like to go to. But do your best, and I'll see what I can do for you." Instead they're creating a negative environment that turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. No wonder these kids don't graduate or go on to college. They're just living up to everyone's expectations.

In my other life, the one where I will be a novelist someday, I have entered the obsessive phase of applying to grad school. Nearly all of my free time is spent working on apps or pouring over the Speakeasy posts or TSE or Kealey blogs. I am glad to have them as a resource, even though they feed my MFA addiction. I also spend a bit of time working on my manuscript, a very disproportionate amount of time when I consider how crucial the manuscript is to the process. But I feel good about what I already have finished, and I feel really good about what I'm working on. It should be finished by mid-October and polished by mid-November, when I'll be sending in the packets to the different programs. Here is my set-in-stone list (already gave it to my recommenders, can't change it now):

Texas-Austin

Virginia

California-Irvine

Brown

Oregon

Johns Hopkins

Alabama

N Carolina-Greensboro

Syracuse

Notre Dame

Hollins

Wash U-St. Louis

I believe, deep down in my soul, that at least one of these schools will read my manuscript this year and put me right on the top of their pile (the acceptance pile, you buttheads). If not, my life will essentially be over. I'll have to change my name, shave my head, bind my breasts and become a monk. Or something. Oh! I also checked out books by faculty from most of the programs (I think all but three). I'm putting a lot more time and money in (two things that I didn't have last year) and I'm hoping that will make the difference.

In the meantime, I've got some exciting things going on. I finally found an opportunity to volunteer--I'll be helping out with the Bad Dog Rediscovers America creative writing class for teens every Tuesday night. I'm so excited. I tried to volunteer at the Road Home but no one wanted to take a writing workshop. :(

Also, I just joined the 29 Day Giving Challenge at www.29gifts.org. So I'll be blogging here about that. It should be interesting.

Something to Do

Haven't written for awhile... where to start...

I have a job. A real job. Nothing against my fellow servers, who are amazing people and lovely to work with--I'm sad to leave the food industry because you cannot find a more interesting, diverse, and personable group of people--but I never considered it anything but a temporary measure to pay the bills, and this new job is more than that. I'll be working as a college outreach adviser, helping high school students to think about, apply to, and finance college. I know it's going to be hard work but if I do my job well, I'll be changing lives. It's difficult to find a job that you can say that about. I was shaking when I got the phone call. It's a temporary position, from August 1 2008 until May 31 2009, which may just work out perfectly if I get into grad school next year.

I broke my collarbone. It was one of those random, stupid, silly things, not even a good story, I was just riding my bike down a hill, hit a pot hole, and went butt-over-head, which is a much more accurate description than head-over-heels. I won't be whole until September; in the meantime I'm supposed to wear a sling but almost never do because I am a rebellious child. Also because the doctor told me I didn't have to. My collarbone is always going to stick up funny. This shouldn't be depressing but it is.

Just got back from California (San Diego and then LA). It was a wonderful trip, too short. I got to spend a morning with my Grandma, an afternoon babysitting my cousins (four of them... which is excellent birth control and confirmed my decision to only have two children when the time comes), hours and hours on beaches, an entire day with my Grandpa, who took us sailing to Coronado and then out for margaritas in Old Town, plus a tour of the Gaslamp district. Got to see my brave little cousin Ella who is just three months old and has survived two operations in conjunction with a brain tumor. Andy stepped it up and was a perfect gentleman to my Grandma, asked my Grandpa all kinds of questions that I had never thought to ask him, and didn't grumble too much when I wanted to just sit on the beach for hours. We went to the zoo, where he meowed at all the cats... silly boy. He took me to a couple of beer bars and breweries, where everything finally just clicked for me--he's been trying to train me to really appreciate beer for over a year and I've just humored him--and I got excited about some of the beers we tried, especially the Petrus Aged Pale. We went to Stone Brewery, which is just a beautiful place aside from having an amazing selection, and later in LA we went to a Biergarten where I decided that my favorite patio drink is a good Bavarian Weiss.

Also in LA: saw Wicked at Pantages. Very cool theater, elaborate and well-performed production. Lots of themes to think about. I don't remember the novel being nearly as good. Went to a Dodgers game, which was as fun as a game can be when the scoreboard looks like this:

300000000
000000001

(Andy tells me this is typical of Major League Baseball games. Almost as boring as watching golf.) Venice Beach wasn't quite what we expected--more trinkets and less performers. We wandered along the beach from the end (or start) of the boardwalk all the way to Santa Monica (?) pier.

Now we're back and busy finding a place to live (we're moving closer to downtown/U of U for Andy), working extra shifts where we can, trying to make everything work out.

Things are coming together as far as my manuscript. I feel good about the different projects I'm working on, have one just about completed and a great start on another. I need to get going on my screenplay, though. If I want to enter American Zoetrope I need to finish it by August 1. I'm only about a third of the way done. In the back of my head I guess I'm planning on doing it Kerouac-style, maybe three caffeine-fueled days of writing. Not a good plan. That's how the script started, though. I wrote the first thirty pages over the course of several feverish hours. If I finish it and love it, I'll have a tough decision to face: apply to Michener for fiction or screenwriting? Fiction is my passion but I might have better odds with a screenplay, especially a strong one. We'll see. I wish I could apply in both genres. (I can study both genres, sort of major/minor style, if I get in, but I'd love that extra chance of getting in.)

I miss the ocean.

FINIS

Wow. I'm done. It feels so strange. I took my last final this morning, easy peasy, and now basically nothing stands between me and that diploma. I kept expecting something to happen, I don't know why, usually I'm not the paranoid type (not even on pot; on pot I'm the "weep over not getting to choose the cereal brand" type) but I was just waiting for a bad case of gangrene to keep me from finishing. I kept waiting for an Acme...oh jeez. What are those things called? Those things that have no relevance to everyday life except for falling on cartoon characters? Really heavy. ANVILS. Right. I kept waiting for an anvil to fall on me. But I'm done. It's kind of exhilarating, like making it to the $1000 level in Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. It's not that exciting, really, but at least they can't take it away from you! Take that, Regis!

And now you know how long it's been since I've watched TV.

It's been a good four years, y'all. Lots of change. Lots of growth. Two long-term relationships with a couple of flings in between. More moves than I could chronicle without the help of amazon.com's address book--god bless you, amazon.com. Wonderful roommates, lots of laughter, at least seven different jobs, lots of failures, and a couple of successes. College is everything they say it will be, and then some. Wear a condom.

This is a big step. I don't know what comes next. I guess I have to either accomplish my dreams or fail to accomplish my dreams now. Which kind of sucks, because who needs that kind of pressure? Not me. Obviously I'm big into pursuing success at the moment. Because blogging is the first sign of true commitment to one's future. Not a sign that one needs at least a brief vacation from self-discipline. Hooray, summer! (That's your cue. Summer? Summer...?)