this woman's work

Woke up hoping to feel better

Dawn — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:34:42 +0000

And I do but I’m tired. And I’m happy to be getting a hefty little freelance job but disappointed that it’s on-site just when the weather gets good. I had some plans to do with the kids and that’s going to get shuttled off until April. Normally I’d roll with it but I’m a wee bit fragile so I’m sad about it. Really I’m sad about grad school (of course) but instead I’m getting choked up when my coffee brews too strong. See? Fragile.

It occurred to me that these grad school people? They’re professionals and they’ve been doing this a long time. If they feel I wouldn’t be a good fit in the program, they’re probably right. After all, they know what they want and have spent some years proving it. It’s true that the director’s last words to me in the interview were, “I’d like to do research with YOU around blah blah blah” and maybe got my hopes up just a little bit too high BUT it’s also true that what he mentioned doing research about wasn’t something I actually have an interest in researching. And maybe when they sat down and looked at everyone else, maybe they realized that what I want to do is awfully specific and maybe they want someone who is less sure and more open. (Most of my interview cohort was less sure — perhaps they like that.) Or maybe there was someone whose interests meld better with the rest of the group. (The professors in that part of the program didn’t have research subjects that resonated with mine and I wondered if that’d be an issue when I filled out my application.)

In short, I’m going to trust then that it would be a bad fit and move on to Plan B. Thanks to a commenter here, I know that Plan B is having an info night tonight and maybe the funding there isn’t as dire as I think it is. At least I’ll know more after the meeting.

Also your encouragement and sympathy here and on Facebook and Twitter means a lot to me. And a couple of people emailed me very thoughtful notes including one from the guy who wrote this bit of brilliance: Great Books of the 20th Century as Reviewed by my Boss I think that ups my cool factor considerably. And you know what? He didn’t get into grad school either. So clearly grad school is all dumb and stuff. But I still want to go so I’ll keep trying.

But today if you see me, please be nice because I am liable to burst into tears for any small reason like the sun being too sunny or the breeze being too breezy or my husband forgetting to leave the checkbook like he did (oh shoot, there I go again! Tears!) because rejection is like that at first.

(As I drove to the thrift store last night because getting nice goods for cheap is soothing to me, it occurred to me that like an actor takes lousy life experiences to augment her performance, so I will take this life experience to augment my eventual counseling career. When a client comes in and says, “I was rejected by grad school/a job/life” I will be the picture of sympathetic understanding and one hopes wisdom. So see? Always that bright side, dammit.)

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | No comments yet | Come on by and comment!

Grad School Reject

Dawn — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:34:46 +0000

Hot on the heels of a freelance job offer, I got my rejection from grad school.

Now I need to figure out which Plan B looks best for me. I’m probably going to be at sixes and sevens for a little while trying to figure out what to do NEXT. You know, big picture stuff. And at least I can quit hitting refresh at the OSU admissions web site, (which is where I found out I got rejected). So that’s a small glimmer in the morass of self-pity I’m planning to dive into.

Today is a day of wandering around sadly and trying to figure out if I can swing this freelance job (temporary but on-site) because that will go a long way to giving me more time for staring off into the middle distance and talking myself out of getting well and truly depressed.

(I know what to do next is to head to my Number Two choice school-wise but there isn’t funding there and that gives me pause because counselors don’t make scads of money for paying back graduate school loans.)

So anyway. Bummer.

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 31 comments so far | Come on by and comment!

Brett wants my phone

Dawn — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:38:58 +0000

This is part of my continued review of the miraculous Palm Pre Plus! Below the cut!

(...)
Read the rest of Brett wants my phone (494 words)

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments so far | Come on by and comment!

This reminds me of a kid I knew

Dawn — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:19:39 +0000

… [A] recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country’s capitals of obesity. Experts say these are not parallel problems persisting in side-by-side neighborhoods, but plagues often seen in the same households, even the same person: the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well be not sickly skinny, but excessively fat.

via The South Bronx, Plagued by Obesity, Tops a Hunger Survey – NYTimes.com.

When I taught daycare there was a child in our class who was fat and who was always hungry. His mother, acting on the advice of their pediatrician, told us that he was not allowed seconds at lunch. He got one serving of the (mostly) balanced meal and one serving of the Goldfish crackers or raisins or cheerios at snack. One serving and that was it no matter how much he begged.

He was fat but he was hungry.

I remember one time when a substitute accidentally gave him seconds.

“Dawn, Dawn!” he called, his 3-year old face lighting up. “Look! I got more!”

Eventually I started babysitting for him in his own home and that’s when I realized why he was hungry.

There wasn’t much to eat in his house and what there was to eat was processed foods. Fruit snacks instead of fruit. Frozen meals with processed cheese food sauce instead of fresh vegetables. Packages of ramen. He was fat but he was probably also malnourished. His mom was so skinny that I bet she never ate (to save money maybe?) and judging from the ‘fridge and cupboards, her son was the focus of her grocery list since every happy-looking package was pasted up with kid-friendly slogans and graphics. No wonder he wanted seconds on our (not much better but at least USDA-approved) lunches at daycare!

I was only twenty and dumb and didn’t know I could do anything about this (like find some nutrition information to share with his mom) so I didn’t. But I thought of him later when I met fat clients at the shelter who were getting their meals from food banks (boxed dinners, canned spaghettio-s). And I also think of him when I hear about doctors taking a glance at a kid’s growth chart and advising, “Don’t let him eat seconds” instead of having the time and inclination to sit down and say, “Now what all do you folks eat in a regular day?”

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments so far | Come on by and comment!

On being a writer

Dawn — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:42:12 +0000

Here is a fact: If you are a writer, most of your friends/family will not read your stuff. They will if you ask them to (they are good like that) but they won’t if you don’t. I have written a lot (not just this blog) and I’d venture to say that the only non-writer person who I am friends and/or related to who has read most of it (not all) is Brett. And that’s because I make him.

Now writer friends will read you and they will applaud you and encourage you but most people who are not writers will not read what you write.

Here’s a true story about a relative who shall remain nameless. Said relative met another writer and wanted to see what this writer has written so they did a google on that writer’s name. Then they did a google on mine. They reported back to me, “Wow, you’ve written a lot! Even more than [other writer]!”

See, said relative who shall remain nameless was thinking of this new person as a writer since they met said writer in the capacity of Writer but since they met me in the capacity of Relative it never occurred to them that I am also a writer. And in fact am more accomplished than the other writer and (I say, pretending to look modestly down) I’m more talented. Despite the googling, they still seem to persist in seeing my writing as an adorable hobby of mine that I do when I’m not busy scrubbing floors. (This even though they’ve visited my home and know I do not scrub floors.)

I am usually not all that concerned about people who I love and who love me who don’t read me stuff because if I was concerned it’d drive me crazy so I have decided to not be crazy about it but it is kind of lonely. Because my writing is very important to me and I rarely get to talk about it with people who are otherwise very interested in other parts of my life. Again, this makes perfect sense. They are interested in my kids or my for-pay work or in my cooking or in my marriage or in my other friendships because they can relate to these things but if you are not a writer, it’s hard to make much sense of writing. Too, some people hate writing or have bad feelings about writing or are casual writers and so they understand writing in a particular way that makes them think they are understand writing for ME and for other serious writers but this is not true. Impossible to disabuse people of this notion though. That’s just how it is. But it’s a piece missing in a lot of my relationships because here’s this thing that kinda runs my life (because really I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to have more time with my family and more time to write and everything else is detail) but it’s like it happens in a vacuum.

Of course I haven’t written much in the last year because I’ve been busy trying to Make Money. This is depressing. Not just because trying to Make Money can be dreary work but also because I’ve discovered that the friends and family who won’t read the stuff I write for the sake of writing are inordinately interested in how I’m doing at all that money making. Which matters to me (sure) but doesn’t matter to me as much as writing for the sake of writing.

I’m disgruntled lately. I blame it on the wait to hear from grad school.

Ahh well.

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 13 comments so far | Come on by and comment!