--The Ramones

No real time to write an entry, but it's been a week since my last one... so rather than typing something new, let me start with an e-mail I sent out very late this past Sunday night:

Okay, I'm facing the college's internal deadline for applying for the British Marshall and Fulbright scholarships, and I'm freaking out a bit. Not only haven't I written a draft of any of the relevant essays, but I don't know what it is I'm going to be proposing I do. For each one, that is, as it looks as if I'm going to need to develop at least three utterly different game plans, possibly more; one for the Marshall, involving getting a degree in England that needs to be completed in precisely two years, which means either a "research Master's" or an accelerated second bachelor's degree; one of the Fulbright, involving getting a degree in *one* year, which means a "taught Master's"; one for the Mellon (and the Javitz, if it's being awarded this year) specifically for a Ph.D. program in the U.S., which needs to be in English Literature, or perhaps Interdisciplinary Studies, but *not* Creative Writing; and perhaps one representing what I wanna do should all of these fall through.

I understand that, as problems go, this is not a bad one to have; that I actually have a chance (albeit only a *very* slim one) of getting one of these things is more than most get to worry about. But the thing is, if I *don't* get one of the first two, there's no way I can afford to go to England, but I still need to research, find, and apply for the place(s) I want to go to there, with all the work involved in that, on that outside chance. As if my classes weren't enough to worry about.

Let's not even get into the matter of my finally getting my GRE fee waiver this past Friday, the day the application form had to arrive in Princeton, NJ, exacerbated by a phone conversation in which I was informed that I had a couple of weeks to go, which I now realize was mistaken, 'cause I need the Monday administration, rather than the Saturday one, and the person on the other end misunderstood me, which isn't surprising, and is, I suppose, the reason why I'm in speech therapy now. Which I am, BTW, one session down so far; stay tuned for further developments on that. Anyway, the upshot of this is that I may have trouble with the U.S. scholarship things, 'cause I'm not going to be able to take the useless GRE in English Literature until mid-December. But I digress, I think.

The real point here is that I'm not sure what I want to do. No, strike that; I do know what I want to do, at least short-term. I want to go to England for a year or two, hang out in the British Library, learn all about British uses of dirty words, in the past and in the present, which I can then incorporate into the book I plan to write on the subject. ("Effing the Ineffable" has refused to stay within the confines of one essay. I was already thinking of parlaying this semester's work on the subject into a book-length project; England would just put the icing on the cake, I think. And I'm drooling at the prospect, in truth.) As said book makes its way to publication, I wanna come back to the States and go for my Ph.D., although I'm not really clear what in.

More to the point, I'm not really sure what sort of program in England would facilitate my looking into lotsa dirty words. Plus, I was sort of thinking that if I was going to go with a Master's and a Ph.D., rather than skipping straight to the latter, then it would be nice to get the former in Creative Non-Fiction, and the latter in something more research- oriented, involving literature or cultural criticism or both. I can't seem to find any creative non-fiction programs in London--or, for that matter, anywhere else in England--though. Could be I'm just not looking in the right places? (London, incidentally, is my first choice of locale, mostly because of its Jewish community. I'm told Manchester and Gateshead are good in that regard also, but I haven't found any colleges therein that have appealed to me yet. Anyway, a quick restaurant check reveals the presence of kosher pizza shops in London, which is, after all, one of my two inflexible requirements... but I digress *again*.)

So. If not creative non-fiction, then a research thing in Language History makes some sense for this, that probably being the most convenient pigeonhole. But then where do I go from there? Again, if I'm gonna be going for the Master's *and* the Ph.D., I'd rather they be in two different areas, that seeming to be of the most utility all around. Plus if I get the former in the same field as the latter, I'll be ineligible for getting the Mellon on the latter. Although, again, I suppose that's the very least of my worries. Okay, strike that last bit from the record.

I dunno. I don't know what I'm doing, really. Which makes it impossible to write a focused essay on what I want to do and why I want to do it in the university in question.

Anyway. I know this whole thing basically boils down to a primal scream, rather than a reasoned request for help; I just needed somebody to wail to about the whole thing. Thanks for listening.

• Monday afternoon. After having been up past dawn looking for British grad schools, I overslept and missed the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance meeting, my English Department job, my Comedy class, and the first 40 minutes of my 45-minute speech therapy session.

• Wednesday afternoon. I'd had an appointment at the dentist. I ended up cancelling, having been too busy getting a couple of Marshall letters of recommendation in order. I did, however, make it to Far Rockaway to give my boss at the Camper's Paradise his packet for that purpose, spending three hours on buses to do so. I skipped French class afterward and slept instead.

• Thursday afternoon. I arrived at my painting class late and found that the entire class had vanished without leaving a forwarding address. It turns out that they'd been outside painting landscapes, but I didn't find that out until the end of class. I now have to find time to paint a landscape before the next class.

• Wednesday through the present. I note that my nycmail.com address isn't working as well as it should. Time-sensitive mail is being delayed or lost. Bleah.

• Thursday evening. Met Jen to see The Original Kings of Comedy. One day, the two of us are going to see a movie that we actually like. Hasn't happened yet, though.

• Monday: The long-awaited English Club literary journal hits the stands. It turns out to have lots and lots of typos, some of which I remember correcting in the proofs, but, hey, at least it's out, and the actual content is pretty good.

• Tuesday night. The last season's final episodes of Buffy and Angel are rerun.

• Wednesday. eVoice gets its act together, and gets Verizon to do the same. My voice-mail account now works. Except that it's currently set to send messages to my nycmail.com account, for which see above. My brother leaves a message on Wednesday night, and I receive it Thursday morning... but it's a start.

• Thursday afternoon. True, I can't find my painting class, but I got to speak to a former classmate who won a Marshall scholarship two years ago, and said conversation was helpful and reassuring.

• Thursday evening. Okay, fine, so we weren't in the movie's target audience, but at least I did get to see Jen for a bit...

• Wednesday: I've been rehired to maintain the American Studies Web site for the year to come, although it's not immediately clear how much will be budgeted for me this time around. I'd planned not to stay on doing this any longer, as I don't really have time for it, but I do need the money.

I do wanna go back, though, if only because they have food, and I don't. And it's been a little while since my last visit. Gonna be a close call, though... darn. I suspect I'm gonna have to add it to the list of this week's missed appointments.