(I wrote this back on December 30th, 2003. I have a tendancy to write on a pad of paper and then bury it beneath piles of my stuff. I found this one and it is a gem. Verbum.)
26. I am 26 years old, I am a consultant at MIT,… no what I do is consult at MIT. What I am is a lost little boy is a man’s body. Another thing that I do is look for another or other jobs. I don’t want another one, but at some point, I will have to get one.
We 20 something average Americans have learned that we are not the contents of our wallets or what our jobs is.
During my one month as a graduate student, I learned a lot. Both from the material about the subject and just what it is all really about. “Graduate school is learning about despair.” It was not because I studied Christian Theology and not from a disgruntled former student. That was actually said to me by a professor, an advisor who was trying to convince me to not leave. It was reiterated by others in more disguised ways, but the sentiment was there. Current students, former students, faculty, Phd candidates, all in despair. There is enough despair in the world that I do not need to seek it out or pay for it.
One related piece of insight I got from a Phd candidate was most edifying. “Everything sucks, but this (graduate school) sucks a little less than most things.” This from a man who was mid 30s and had been studying at university in some capactiy since the age of 18, with a year or two off teaching primary or secondary school at some level that I can’t recall.
No one tells you at any point that everying sucks. Some or even all may try, but no one is able to hear. This is something that you have to figure out on your own.
Being a police officer, trying to protect and serve still involves all the petty and vengeful politics of the town, city or hamlet that you live in, along with a little hate from everyone that looks at you, who you are there for, who thinks “stupid pig” when they look at you.
Teachers have the bad kid(s) that disrupt for attention or just because they don’t care.
Graduate school admissions staff gets the people who send in every paper that the applicant ever wrote and every single individual document, page by page, is in its own sealed envelope and/or plastic sleeve.
I am on the quest to find a main activity that does not suck for me.
Peet
Earlier this week I was in the office of Robert Half International, OfficeTeam, office temporary work, amongst other things. The usaul spacy 50 something secretary not only seemed to lack the capacity to put 2+2 together, she proceeded to prove that to me by being unable to understand that one of the temp possible customers that was there was trying to do more than one test.
Not only was she spacy, she was terribly familar. I was here once before, in a very different capacity. I made a delivery here in my short career as a bike messener. At that point it all flooded back, the extremely narrow entranceway of the building, the setup of the lobby, the same secretary at the desk. The office looked difference through different clothes. There I was, trying to be an office monkey again. Last time, I was a road warrior trying to eek out a living. I lasted all of two weeks at that.
The cold and wet and probable pnemonia was what did me in. My fear of not knowing where things were and taking to long were what started me down the slippery slope. I was just not cut out for it, well maybe not at that time.
The mask of my clothes affects me so much. I feel like a scumbag with my long hair, I feel like all these people I interview with are looking down at me. Are they? And if they are, I should not even give them the time of day.
I feel like I done this a number of times now. Failed. I dropped out of graduate school after a month. I have left the same job at MIT twice. I failed miserably at taking language classes. I am finding it so hard to find my niche. Am I finding it harder than anyone else is?
Maybe I have to take a good long look at myself without any clothes on.
Peet
Reading:
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Graci�n