not qualified for further education

today i feel: up and down
today i'm hearing: the air conditioner and my roommate (not a great name for a band)
today i'm thinking: that i'm not fat despite what all of my clothes are saying

I do not want to go to Graduate school! Let me tell you why.

I have no plans for the rest of my life. Not 'plans' plans. Not actual concrete ideas for what I want to accomplish and where I want to work and what cancers, if any, I am hell-bound to cure. I don't have that. I can't cure cancer because cancer is not a witty dramatic work written sometime between 1880 and 1895! I have no plans! The closest I have to 'plans' are 'maybe I'll go to Chicago after school and tell the union to suck my cock'. ...That is it!

Now, this is not normally an issue to me. After all, I made my academic decision based upon the fact that a random university said, 'Here! Have fifty thousand dollars!' and I said, 'okay!'. I didn't even know if I wanted to go to uni when I was moving in to my dormitory last fall. What does that tell you about me?? However, I'm very comfortable with my lack of any real direction. It makes me care less.

But there's this problem, see.

Because this random school that decided to give me an obscene amount of money apparently gave this to me under the impression that I'm an intelligent human being. And, apparently, intelligent human beings attend graduate school. Now, this is a debatable fact. I happen to know a lot of intelligent human beings that did not, in fact, attend graduate school. At the same time, I know some very unintelligent human beings who did choose to attend graduate school. I'm really not seeing how my hypothesised intelligence has anything at all to do with graduate school!

But despite the fact that I am supposedly an intelligent human being, I have been labelled as wrong. Because the powers that be in this here academic circle that I have so gracelessly floundered upon have decided that the only future I have is a future in graduate school and that the best way of succeeding in graduate school is to apply for Major Scholarships And Honors.

...Wow.

So the head of Major Scholarships And Honors dropped me this application and said that I had to fill it out and come see her on Friday. Now, I was under the impression that this was to retain the Obscene Amount of Money that the school had all-ready given me. I'd kind of like to keep that Obscene Amount of Money, so I dutifully agreed. Then I came upon the essay question. And my heart was filled with doubt.

What do you hope to do, and what position do you hope to have, upon completing your graduate studies; and exactly why are these plans important to you?

And I thought to myself, 'Self, I don't think this is about my current Obscene Amount of Money'. And myself thought, 'Self, I think you're probably right'.

Now me, being me and not wanting to go to graduate school, is given a moral quandry: do I write an honest response to this question (ie. I don't want to go to grad school) or bullshit my way to the ninth circle of hell. Well I went to U-High. So, naturally, I bullshitted my way to the ninth circle of hell and used my usual game of if-I-use-enough-polysyllabic-turns-of-phrase-they-will-not-ask-questions. But before I sold my soul in such a depraved manner, I wrote the truth to my life. And I'd like to share it with you.


I'm not actually planning to go to graduate school. I want to graduate from uni and go hang out with whomever until they're done with school and then go up to Chicago and live with Paige and starve for the next ten to twenty years. And then, one day, I'll decide I'm sick of that and get a real job, maybe teaching somewhere until I can scrounge up enough cash to open up a café somewhere in Lincoln Park. I want to write stories and poems and plays and eat Miso soup and have a cat named Templeton. I want to read books all the time, all kinds of books so I know a little bit about everything. I want to sleep in late on Sunday mornings and have kids maybe someday even though children terrify me. I want to have enough money so that they can have a good education. I want to die in a bar fight and, even if I don't, I want my memorial to say I did. Because that would be really cool.