Only Assholes Go to Grad School as Adults

It began as a whim. I had started noticing that I was getting stupider every day. I needed to do something to curtail my downward spiral into idiocy before I got to the point where I’d be too dumb to even read Dear Abby in the newspaper. Now some people would pick up a Suduko book. Others would attempt the New York Times crossword puzzle

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Not me. When I decide to do something, I go big. When I wanted to try running, I didn’t practice for a simple 5k. Nope. I began training for the Los Angeles marathon. And I’d have done it, gosh dang it, if in month six, when we were readying for a half marathon, I hadn’t pulled a groin muscle.

So with what was left of my mind, I decided to back to school. I wasn’t going to just take a course at the local community college or an extension school. Nope. I set my sights on a PhD. In English. At one of the top schools in the country. Hell, I figured if a dope like James Franco could go to Yale for God’s sake, I could go to USC.

In my defense, I was an English major, and then a writer by trade, which I felt would give me a leg up. And I’d gone the Master’s Degree route before, in Journalism. Which is almost as useful a degree these days as Art History. Or English.

When I started researching the seats of higher learning that surrounded me in Southern California  I  discovered that most didn’t offer advanced degrees in English. SC did. Looking through the course catalog sold me. It was like being in a candy shop for intelligent  people. I could take this! And that! With that professor! Or that one! I was hooked. I felt smarter just reading through the list.

Not that there weren’t a few flies in the proverbial ointment. One of the requirements was that I needed to speak a second language. If you know me, you’re aware that I occasionally have trouble with English I have been known to make up a word when an existing one didn’t serve.  A new language was going to be a problem.

You’d also think that the requirement would be Greek or Latin, since that’s the basis for English. In my case, it might as well have been, since languages are not my forte. In grade school I took 6 years of French. Which means that I can now sing “Frere Jacques” perfectly. In middle and high school I took six years of German. “O Tannenbaum!” This time I settled on trying Spanish since that would actually be useful in Southern California.

I  started looking for a tutor.Not surprisingly, that was easy. Just about everyone and their brother,(actually usually their kids, had a Spanish tutor. After talking to a few of them -in English- I found a very patient lady who just so happened to specialize in teaching people who were taking exams.

The next problem loomed even larger: the GREs. The Graduate Record Exams are standardized tests similar to the SATs, but are used for entrance to graduate school. Sadly, the ones I took 30 years ago for J-school had apparently expired, and I’d have to take them again. 

Standardized tests have never been my friend. The idea of taking a four-hour exam was beginning to give me nightmares. Talking to friends that had gone back to school didn’t help. “It will make you cry,” one assured me. “Be prepared to blow your brains out,” said another. One comforted me by recommending a test preparation book. “It helped,” she swore.

So off I went to Amazon.com and bought the fattest GRE prep book I could find. It boasted heaps of tricks and memory boosters as well as actual practice tests. For a week I couldn’t bear to open it. The enormous book sat on my counter scorning me. Finally I cracked it. The first half was the English part. I zipped through it and aced the practice tests. Something had apparently sunk in after 30 years of working with words.

But then I came to the math section. Did I mention that I was an English major? And can barely balance my checkbook? And had to take Algebra 2 twice? And what the Hell does math have to do with my ability to pursue an English degree? I can promise you that Shakespeare never took calculus.

I finally forced myself to open the first math section.  The first paragraph was a blur of numbers and squiggley lines. I slammed the book closed.

I took a deep breath and opened it again slowly. I forced myself to focus and slowly reread the section. I made myself  do everything they said, step by step again and again. I gradually worked through the section. And then the next. I’m never going to be confident about the math part, but I might be able to fake my way through.

I’ve set a deadline to take the test in June. I may still do terribly. Or I may do okay and USC may decide that they don’t want to waste a precious spot on a geezer. But I do feel a little teeny bit smarter. At least I can understand Dear Abby.

Operating System You Hardly Know Me

 

With all of the interest in Spike Jonze’s “Her” I’ve been giving some time to pondering what my OS thinks of me, and what kind of relationship we have.

                

The answer, I’m afraid, is a little worrisome.  Quite obviously, I am dependent, some might say addicted to my OS. I never leave the house willingly without my phone, and if I do, I almost obsessive check it.

               

  Naturally I use it for my email—it’s even kind enough to pre-sort the letters into several categories . This helps me when I just have a moment to scan my mail. There are my regular letters, notifications from social media groups and the so-called promoted mail.  ‘Course occasionally my person mail does get bundled with my social media, and the promoted mail falls into the regular mail file.

               

  But until recently I believed that was just an honest mistake; that my little Samsung had no ulterior motives behind the mail mix-ups. I mean, how paranoid would I have to be to believe that some of the ‘promoted’ mail had deliberately been placed in my real mail file. After all my OS isn’t perfect.  It’s  told me a few times, it’s just doing the best it can.

                

However, for some reason lately I’ve been getting a ton of spam and suggestions for internet sites. Most is sorted into the spam file, but, one does have to check that regularly to ensure that the invitation for drinks from George Clooney doesn’t get misplaced. 

But while I believe the absolute best of my OS, apparently, it doesn’t have the same high opinion of me.  Apparently my OS thinks I’m a desperate single. Why else the constant barrage of pleas from cowboys dying to meet fellow single horse owners like me? Or fantastic Jewish men looking for their soul mate?  Or even other fish from the sea. (Nevermind that I get seasick.)

I can even almost forgive the ads for the senior dating websites, even if they do offend me—who the hell are they calling a Senior? And what makes them think I’m looking for an old man? Everyone who knows me knows I aim young. But I digress.

No, my OS thinks I’m a tramp. Lately I’ve been inundated with messages from ‘married but lonely’. Or others whose mantra is ‘life is short; have an affair!’ Well, I’m here to say that I’m not that kind of girl. I mean I’m really not that kind of girl. I am not married and don’t have anybody to cheat on. So their whole pitch is kind of flawed. I thought my OS knew me better than that.

I was wrong. I have also received an onslaught of information regarding high school degrees by  mail. Initially this had me worried, was it possible that my OS knew something I didn’t, and that my degree from many moons ago was falsified? I checked with my high school, who were delighted to hear from graduates like me, and suggested I make a donation to the building fund. 

Obviously Sammy has no respect for my education because it next had questioned the validity of  my college degree. According to OS, exceedingly reputable organizations will accept me no questions asked and will rectify the situation. Again, I checked with my alma mater. They too assured me that the sheepskin I owned was for real. But they were also  more than willing to take a nice donation if I felt up to the task.

 Having straightened that out, OS is extremely concerned—and confused—with my earning potential. It implores me daily to enter sweepstakes for millions—or buy a raffle ticket for my dream home. But it isn’t sure I can pay to enter, so it helpfully suggests that I make extra dollars from the comfort of my own home stuffing envelopes or doing data entry.

I’m going to be really good at that, OS believes, and has even given me several ways to access helpful workers willing to toil for well under the minimum wage. I thought that was illegal, but I trust that my OS would never point me in a direction that would endanger our relationship—I understand that phones are not allowed in prison.

I could live with all of this. And I truly wanted to believe that since I took the time to understand my OS’ wants and desires, the intricacies of its apps and oddities of its software, eventually it would really come to know me as we

That ended today. OS pleaded with me not once, not twice, but three times to skip grocery shopping (something I’d be happy to do) by signing up with Omaha Steaks. Oh, OS break my heart. You don’t know me, a 20 year vegetarian, at all.           

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