Monday, November 21, 2011

Team Bella

So, I'll just come right out and say it.

I, Grad School Escapee, am a Twilight fan.

Don't judge me.

I like the books that the hipsters love to like ironically. I've seen all of the movies to date, and I'm firmly on team Bella, though Jasper could easily sway me.  I wasn't that excited about the wedding scene in the film, because, let's be honest - I'd already read about it. Twice.

Why is this important? It's not, I just wanted to grab your attention.

As the semester comes to a close I find myself having more spare time and doing absoultely nothing with it. I sit around, a lot, and think about how much I'd rather be sleeping.

I've gotten lazy. And the realization of this doesn't sway me one bit. It's like I'm 12 a year old boy. I just want to sit around eating and playing video games. WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME?

Fear. That's what. Somewhere along the way I let the constant articles and news reports about the futility of graduate school and PhDs sway me. I let the statsitics for recent graduate employment get under my skin. I let the fact that my English prof told me she had to search for a job for two years after getting her doctorate before should could find one in academia bother me. She had to wipe the asses of small children and wait tables to make ends meet.

Wipe. Asses. Children. No thank you. This is exactly why people should approve the genetic modification of fetuses. That way - they'll come out potty trained. I'm not wiping anybody's kid's ass.

And you better pray you never get me as a waitress. Your order will be wrong, your silverware dirty. And, NO, you can't have any fresh lemon to squeeze onto a napkin to clean it off. You want clean dishes? EAT. AT. HOME.

Suffice it to say, I need to nip this laziness in the sparkling bud. If Stephenie Meyer can build a multimillion dollar empire with books about constipated, sexually repressed teenagers, dammit I can, too!

Whether I decide to return to graduate school is beside the point, because it will not get me a job. I will. The MFA, or any other technical/terminal degree only serves to make you more knowledgeable of your field. At the end of the day, you get the job, not your degree.

I never cared about all of those "once in a lifetime" opportunities before, or those "extremely competetive" programs. I applied and hoped like crazy that I would get them. But I was never so scared that I didn't even try.

The fear is getting to me now because this matters. This writing matters. Being published matters. And the fact that I might fail at something that actually matters scares me shitless. Maybe I should see if my English prof has any friends that are in the adult wipery business.

And, on that note, adios compadres!