I’ve been extraordinarily happy today. Cheerful, even. It could be the
\nchilling Edgar Allen Poe story I was listening to on tape on the way to
\nschool this morning. Somehow listening to something so demented, so
\ndepressing, so devilish puts me in a good mood. Or it could be that it was a
\ngorgeous day. Or that my birthday is tomorrow, and I’m excited. I kept
\nasking people I met, “Do you know what today is?” and “Have you seen the
\ncomet?” My psychology test was too easy. Well, no, it was a good test, but
\nI knew all the answers. If I get anything wrong on it, I’ll be surprised. I
\nwas the second person to finish. Usually I’m one of the last people to leave
\nthe room during a test because I take my time. But I was confident, so I
\njust up and smugly left the 50 or 60 odd people still laboring over the exam.
\n Jaymz caught up with me outside. He was in a cheerful mood too. He’s got a
\nmore mischievous demeanor than I thought. I also thought of him as the quiet
\ntype, but he started talking about being in high school and playing poker and
\nchess in pre physics\/chemistry class.<\/p>\n
Even a trip to Food World couldn’t dampen my spirits on the way home despite
\nthe fact that I seem to have lost my wallet. Although I invariably seem
\ndestined to get at least one of the items on the list wrong.<\/p>\n
Hmm… how very odd. Someone just rapped at my window. I pulled back the
\npartially closed curtain to reveal Nathan peering at me from the other side
\nof the glass. This might not seem odd, except that my room is on the second
\nfloor. “You gonna elope with someone tonight?” he asked. I pulled back the
\ncurtain further. He was standing on a ladder leaning against the side of the
\nhouse. I wonder if The Shadow Demon has been around lately.<\/p>\n
Mom is in a cheerful mood as well, which is always nice. I think going to
\nthe opera last night helped. She doesn’t get out as much as she should.
\n She’s downstairs now practicing her scales on the piano. She’s going to
\naudition on Wednesday for something, I can’t remember exactly what. It’s
\nlike a big recital where a bunch of piano teachers play at the same time. Or
\nsomething. She’s real excited about it. She’s playing a Bach fugue and
\nsomething else. Maybe something by Beethoven.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I was in a good mood today when I came home, lugging my things
\nupstairs. I used to just dump my purse, bookbag, and jacket behind the easy
\nchair in the den whenever I came home, exchanging my books later. But then
\nmy grandmother had a stroke, and every little thing seemed to tick my parents
\noff, especially things lying around the house. So now I habitually take
\neverything upstairs first thing when I get home. As I performed this ritual
\ntoday, I looked through my sunglasses at the pile of stuff for me to take
\nupstairs lying on one of the steps. Added to the assortment of things were
\nthree new envelopes. I picked them up and continued to ascend. Once in my
\nroom, I looked at them more closely. One caught my attention. It was from
\nthe Pew Younger Scholars Program. Determining to open my mail later, I threw
\nthe letters onto my bed and strode back downstairs to further empty the car
\nof its contents.<\/p>\n
I stayed up almost all night sometime last week preparing the applications
\nfor a couple of things that might happen this summer. One of them was the
\nPew Younger thingy. It’s a research type course for three weeks in May or
\nJune at Notre Dame. Dr. Schaefer made an announcement about it in class, and
\nI sent off a card from a placard he’d been sent to hang up at school. The
\ninformation I received in response was of a program divided into several
\ninteresting looking categories. Participants would receive a certain amount
\nof money for transportation,<\/p>\n
Crap. I just got on maf, was fooling around with finger, and hit q for some
\nreason. It said, really quit lynx? I panicked and hit b, missing n by one
\nkey, and it logged me off. Ah well. No one was on anyway, and I found out
\nwhat I wanted to know. I was complaining to Paul this morning about not
\nbeing able to delete when he said, “Zterm?” I nodded, yeah, I use Zterm.
\n “Rubout,” he said, “You need rubout.” Sure enough.
\n___
\nthat half hour pause was me making lady bug chicken after mom yelled that
\nwhoever was in charge of doing it better get it done NOW.
\n___<\/p>\n
Anway, so I have backspace now. Thptptptptptptp….<\/p>\n
Where was I.. Okay. Participants in the Pew Youngers thingamagigy would get
\nlike 250 bucks for transportation up there and then a stipend of like 700
\nsomething dollars. Plus, I think all the books, fees, meals, and room were
\nprovided. Good deal, right? I thought so. So I applied and all, sent in a
\ncouple of writing samples (a paper on Madam Bovary, which I’ve been thinking
\nabout sending to you, and one comparing Hamlet with the existential
\nphilosopher Soren Kierkegaard), and managed to mail it a couple of days before
\nthe due date.<\/p>\n
So here it is, only about a week and a half later that I’m getting a letter
\nfrom them. Possibilities rushed through my mind. I thought of the nastiest
\nno-we-don’t-want-you-in-our-program letter I could think of and then
\nhurriedly slit the envelope open before my imagination came up with anything
\nmore rosy. I forced my eyes to read the contents quickly.<\/p>\n
Dear Joanna:<\/p>\n
We received your application to our Summer Seminar program, but regret to
\ninform you that you are ineligible for application because you have not
\nattended one of the 173 small Christian colleges and universities that our
\nprogram targets.<\/p>\n
If you have any questions concerning which schools may or may not be
\neligible, feel free to call our office.<\/p>\n
Thank you for your interest in our program.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
the administrative assistant<\/p>\n
Well, I’m not disappointed. Just annoyed. Maybe even a little angry. I
\ndidn’t expect to be accepted in the program. Just thought I’d give whatever
\nopportunity that presented itself to me a shot and see what turned up.
\n Rejection letters are a part of life. But this is stupid. I’m fairly
\ncertain that Schaefer doesn’t put up any placards unless the people who send
\nthem to him ask him to. If this is true, then they sent UM a thing that UM
\nstudents aren’t even eligible for. That just irks me. I mean, it would have
\nbeen okay if they said they didn’t want me, but now after all this they’re
\nsaying that I don’t even go to an eligible school. That’s plain silly.
\n Argh. Okay. I’m a bit more than a little mad, now that I think about it.
\n To think that I stayed up all night sweating about this (okay, maybe I
\nstayed up most of the night chatting on the internet and then eventually got
\naround to getting the stuff together).<\/p>\n
I guess this is one of those cases when I get upset. Mad. Injustice. Not
\nthat it’s a big deal or anything. I’m obviously not meant to go there, and
\nthat’s okay. But it bothers me. I’ll show it to Schaefer. He should know
\nanyway.<\/p>\n
Ah well. It doesn’t really bother me that much. I just had to vent a bit.<\/p>\n
Anyway, that’s one more option eliminated for this summer. I wonder what
\nI’ll eventually end up doing?<\/p>\n
There’s something ironic about dead flowers. We surround ourselves with
\nflowers perhaps to remind ourselves of life. Color. Vivacity. The dead
\nmagnolia is sitting still perched in its empty vase on my desk. Its red hues
\nare slowly morphing into a dryish brown. Its mottled appearance isn’t as
\npretty as it once was. Yet its appeal is even greater for me now. It’s
\nlooking more like death, and perhaps that is why it appears even more
\nbeautiful to me. Death.<\/p>\n
Death.<\/p>\n
I handed the letter I got today to Nathan. He got mad. “Write ’em!
\n Complain!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been extraordinarily happy today. Cheerful, even. It could be the chilling Edgar Allen Poe story I was listening to on tape on the way to school this morning. Somehow listening to something so demented, so depressing, so devilish puts me in a good mood. Or it could be that it was a gorgeous day….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonclassified-nonsense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}