The Iowa Face Meets the Harvard Face

For seven years now, I've been telling people about my college experience in Iowa. First I was telling them that I was considering going to Iowa, then I told them I was definitely going to Iowa, then I told them I did go to college in Iowa, and now I have explain that I graduated from a college in Iowa. And yes, I'm from New York. And yes, I love New York. And no, I wasn't running away from family tensions, or following a boyfriend. I just wanted to go to Iowa. I know it's hard to understand. Sometimes I even had trouble understanding it. It's just that, well, I've always liked going to new and different places, and Iowa was new and different.

I never regretted my decision to go to college in Iowa. However, I sometimes regret telling people about it, because they almost invariably respond with the Iowa face. The Iowa face is this scruched-up, raised-eyebrowed incredulous look of confusion that asks "Why would you go there? Is there anything there? Is it the same as Idaho?" New Yorkers are really good at the Iowa face. For a long time, I've been resigned to a lifetime of seeing the Iowa face. I figure it's something that will follow me for the rest of my life. And maybe it will.

Recently, though, there was a new development in my educational career. First, I got accepted at one masters program. Then I got accepted at another one. And then I got accepted at Harvard.

Let me say first of all that I don't know where I'm going yet. All of my options are excellent so far, and I don't know how I'm going to decide. But I don't want to decide based solely on name power. I went to a tiny college in the middle of nowhere that nobody had ever heard of. I turned down several more well-known institutions in order to do that, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. I want to learn from that experience.

Not surprisingly, however, the rest of the world does not necessarily see things my way. In fact, the rest of the world pretty much freaks out completely when I say the word 'Harvard.' "Harvard" is a word that makes people widen their eyes and drop their jaws and ask you to repeat yourself multiple times ("Wait, you say you got into Harvard? Is that what you said? You got in? Are you sure?") "Harvard" makes people see you in a whole new light. You can see their impressions of you as a person slowly shift. Suddenly you're not just that girl with the brown hair anymore. Suddenly you are that girl with the brown hair who got into Harvard. You know that famous scientist that taught dogs to salivate at the sound of a ringing bell? Well, the world has apparently taught human beings to have a similar reaction to the word "Harvard."

I have to be honest: this totally, completely, freaks me out. I do not feel comfortable with this. I feel comfortable with the incredulous Iowa face; I've grown accustomed to that. But this new face? This new expression of admiration (and honestly, sometimes jealousy, and sometimes intimidation?) makes me feel weird as hell. All I really did was fill out a bunch of papers and forms about me, and send them to Boston.

I'm not trying to be modest here. Really, all I want is to decide on a graduate program and put this awful, lingering feeling of uncertainty to rest. And I have so many conflicting feelings myself about my potential options that reactions from the general public (who, with all due respect, are not usually intimately familiar with the ins and outs of different graduate programs for English teachers) are sort of making all of this harder. Like, sometimes I feel like I should definitely go to Harvard, because everyone thinks it's so great. And sometimes I think I can't imagine going there, because then I'm going to have to deal with the Harvard face for the rest of my life, plus the Iowa face, and I just don't think I can handle both of them at once. But neither one of these reasons is a good reason to choose a graduate program, you know?

I'm learning something interesting, though, and that something is this: The things that you, as a person, find most interesting about yourself are not necessarily the things that people will find interesting about you. For example, I think it's very interesting that I've traveled to lots of different places. I love to talk about places I have been. Sometimes I know that people are really, really bored of hearing me tell stories about places I have been (My sister usually roars "Oh my god, are you going to tell me about this AGAIN?) but I talk about them anyway. Luckily for me, many peoplelike to talk about travel. However, every now and then I'll run across someone who just doesn't care. I'll make a casual comment like "This one time I got on the wrong train and went to Romania by mistake!" or "Once I was teaching this class in Greece..." and these people will nod and respond with "Uh-huh. Where do you want to eat lunch?" But if you mention Iowa to these same people, their eyebrows will raise, they will look confused, and they will immediately start grilling you about why a New Yorker would ever want to go study in the middle of cornfields. As for Harvard, well, I guess we'll have to see about that one.

Calypso

It has come to my attention that some parts of the world can't see my masthead and are deprived of adorable pictures of my cat. Since I always like an excuse to post pictures of my cat, I'm including them here, in the text of the post, and changing my masthead in the hopes that something else will show up better.
This is Calypso, sleeping in her favorite place, ie, the fruit bowl. Unfortunately, a pomegranate had already taken up some of the available space, so she decided to make the best of it. She has a harder time squeezing in next to bananas and potatoes.
Next up we have another picture of Calypso, this time napping on the computer router. This is one of her favorite places to sit, along with the fruit bowl, my shoulders, and a legion of cardboard shoe boxes. This picture was my masthead, because I figured it was sort of computer related, but also cute. Calypso likes computers; the other day I came home to find that someone had tried to sign into AIM as "uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu." I'm guessing it was not a human. Unfortunately, AIM responded "invalid username!" and that was that.

In Which I Spoil A Number of Key Plot Points

I had this really horrible moment last week. I had just finished sending off the last of my graduate school applications, and I decided to celebrate with a mocha latte from Starbucks and an episode or two of The Sopranos. (Have I mentioned that I love the Sopranos? I do, I really and truly love the Sopranos. I told my boyfriend that they are all my friends and now he thinks I'm insane and that I possibly have hidden homicidal tendencies. But I don't care. I haven't liked a show this much since Reading Rainbow.)

Anyway, I put the Sopranos DVD in the machine, and I turned on the television. The television proceeded to blink "INCORRECT DISC" at me. I took it out and reinserted it. The TV kept insisting "INCORRECT DISC." I told the TV that I didn't ask it for its personal opinions on what I watch, thank you very much, and even if I choose to watch nothing but Norbit all day, interspersed with bits of FOX News, it has to play them, because it's a TV, not Roger Ebert, for crying out loud. The TV's response to this outcry was "INCORRECT DISC."

So I took out the incorrect disc, and sure enough, it had a giant crack down the middle. I was furious. I almost threw my mocha latte at the TV, but then I remembered that how much it cost me (the latte, not the TV) and I refrained. As an alternative, I called the people at Netflix some names that would make Tony Soprano blush. Then I ran back to the Post Office to return the incorrect disc. I was mad. I was so damn mad. Here I had been all ready to find out what happens to Adriana and Tony Blundetto, and now I had to wait days for a new DVD? This was completely unacceptable. (As a future English teacher, let me add that this is an excellent argument for reading- books rarely experience technical difficulties)

The thing is, though, I am totally behind. Most people found out what happened to Tony Blundetto while I was still in college. Most people have moved on to reflecting on the final episode. To these people, I am a random girl who has apparently spent the past five years in outer space, and now wanders around saying things like "Wait, Darth Vader is Luke's father? Bruce Willis had been dead the entire time? Do you believe that? Oh, but I totally think Harry and Hermione are going to get married."

When you're that far behind the times, nobody really tries to keep you in the dark. They figure that, if you haven't found out already, you don't really care. Even my DVDs have spoiled certain plot elements for me. I try not to look at the pictures on the DVD case, or read the little synopsis that they show at the beginning of each episode, but it's hard sometimes. Sure, they never explicitly tell you what's going to happen, but whenever the plot summary says "Tony has to make a crucial decision about So-and-so," or "Tony must finally come to grips with the reality of so-and-so's loyalties," or "Tony must show so-an-so who's the real boss of the Soprano family," you just know that So-and-so is going to end up dead.

This is the negative part of beginning a series months after it has already ended. On the upside, when an episode ends in dramatic cliff-hanger fashion, I can just click 'play' on the remote, and watch the next episode. I do not have to spend a week wondering what's going to happen next. More importantly, I do not have to agonize for several years between seasons, constantly wondering what's going to happen next.

I know how painful that waiting time is. I read Harry Potter. I spent several years in high school absolutely convinced that Ron was going to die, and maybe Hagrid, too. Then Cedric Diggory died instead, and I spent the four years after that convinced that Hagrid would probably die in the fifth book, and then the sixth, and so on. I developed complex theories based on obscure mythology in my attempt to figure out what would happen. It was fun, but I was always wrong. When I reached the end of Deathly Hallows, I was sort of relieved that most of my favorite characters had made it through unscathed, but I was also sort of disappointed. I mean, here I'd literally been worrying about their welfare straight through from my high school days to my own days working at a high school, and most of them turned out just fine. So why did I invest all that energy into preemptive mourning?

Now I see my ninth-grade students read the Harry Potter books, and it's hard for me to believe that they'll just be able to fly through one book after another. I try avoid starting sentences "Back in my day!" because it makes me feel really old. But this is one time I just can't resist. Back in my day, we couldn't find out what happened in the next book right away. Oh no, we had to wait years, and years, wondering, agonzing, scouring interviews with JK Rowling for clues, walking barefoot through the snow to Barnes and Nobles at midnight...It was a struggle. Kids these days just don't understand that.

On the other hand, kids these days don't get to spend years wondering, and I admit that's a little sad. More than a little. I sort of grew up with Harry Potter. (Well, not really; even when I started reading them, I was already fifteen or sixteen. But still, a person does plenty of growing between fifteen and twenty-four. ) I didn't get to grow up with the Sopranos. Actually, I'm not sure that it's such a good idea to grow up with The Sopranos. I would not have been able to fully appreciate it when it first aired, that's for sure. But at least I could have spent a little bit of time wondering and waiting...and not just waiting for the next DVD to arrive from Netflix.

All right, you'll have to excuse me...Tony's in a coma. I'm pretty sure he's going to wake up eventually, but I want to find out for myself.

Super Tuesday

As you may have noticed, I sort of figured out how to create a masthead. Well, I figured out how to upload a masthead, anyway. The only picture I had to upload was, of course, my cat. I have so very many pictures of my cat that I could probably make a new Calypso-themed masthead every day of the week. But I'll spare you. I might play around with it a bit, though, every now and then. Who needs a web designer?

Today is both Super Primary Day, Fat Tuesday, and Superbowl Parade Day. (Hey, did you hear? New Jersey won the Superbowl! Go New Jersey! The only thing I can't figure out is why they came all the way to lower Manhattan to have their parade.) Unfortunately, this means that when I went to the gym today and tried to watch TV there, every single channel either had a)football fans screaming or b)Republicans. I honestly could not decide which was worse. I almost watched the financial channel, out of desperation.

In Which I Don't Promise Anything

Yeah I know. It's been a while.

But here's the thing. Since August, I've been applying to graduate school. I didn't realize it was going to take so much effort. Actually, I knew it was going to take effort, but I thought the effort would mostly involve things like seriously contemplating my future, and taking time to carefully and painstakingly write a personal statement that would express my personality and plans for the future in an eloquent, clear manner. Instead, the effort mostly involved going to the Post Office, filling in my social security number seventeen consecutive times, writing my home address twenty-three consecutive times, going back to the Post Office, asking current and former employers for recommendations, sending them recommendation forms from the Post Office, sending transcript requests to various schools through the Post Office, receiving transcripts in the mail, putting them back in the mail at the Post Office to be sent to new schools, and so forth. Precious little of it actually involved complex thought. Most of it involved the Post Office.

But today, Monday February 4th, I awoke to find that, for the first time in months, I really don't have any application work to do. I have to admit, I feel kind of lost. The constant grad-school "To-Do" lists that have been following me around for the months have had all of their items crossed off, without many new things to be added. I'm done!

It's kind of boring. Which is why I've decided that it's prime time to get this blog started up again. (Was it ever really started in the first place?) Now, I am aware that I have repeatedly vowed to start blogging again and then ended up doing nothing of the sort. So this time I'm not going to promise anything. I might write a lot. I might write nothing. You'll just have to stay tuned if you want to find out.