I'd Like to Thank My Father for Teaching Me to Use A Screwdriver

When I left work last night, the view of campus looked like this:

Magical, huh? It sure was gorgeous, but it was also very, very wet. It was so warm that when you stepped in it, it melted under your feet. Good thing I shoveled the sidewalks, because last night the temperature dropped almost 40 degrees and all that slush turned into ice. My walk to the office this morning almost killed me (okay, I exaggerate -- it almost dropped me on my tush) at least four times from the hazardously icy sidewalks. On the upside, though, there was this:

Since the semester is now officially over, the office is, how shall I say this, extremely slow. At least one person came in yesterday, and I did get a few calls. However, today: zilch. Good thing I Had A Plan.

This is what my office looked like my first day of work back in August.

This is what my office looked like at noon after I spent the morning rearranging it.

Okay, it wasn't that big of a rearrangement, mostly I just switched the orientation of my desk. You can't see it in either of the above photos, but my office houses the office's library on a couple of bookshelves just out of the picture on the left. That means people are popping in and out of my office looking for things. In the previous orientation, that meant getting out of or back into my desk space was really annoying if people were perusing our collection, and since people do that pretty often, the situation was less than desirable. So with all the lovely time I have on my hands while the semester is out, I hatched A Plan to fix that.

I have to say, I'm pretty darn proud of myself. That desk is huge and while it's not massively heavy, it is unwieldy. The two parts are actually screwed together, a fact I found out after clearing it off and trying to move it. Unscrewing it was easy, and once the two parts were separated it was pretty easy to get them moved to where I wanted them. The hard part was getting them screwed back together. You have to hold the smaller piece in place to make everything line up correctly, and obviously I can't hold it in place and screw it together at the same time. (Believe me, I did try. I tried to hold it up with my legs and  screw it in (with my hands, obviously), but it was a no go.) No one else was in the office, and I couldn't just go pop into the Controller's office across the hall and ask some startled accountant if they'd like to come hold my desk in place while I screw it together.

The solution I came up with is, I think, certifiably genius. Or at least worthy of being dubbed "MacGyvered".

Yup. That's a camera tripod. Genius, right? Sometimes I just really love myself.

Well, that did the trick, and I had the two pieces back together. Then I spent about a half-hour wrangling the appalling tangle of cords sprouting out of the back of my computer into a manageable tangle...

...and put everything back together. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with myself for getting it all right on the first try. I didn't even have to hunt for the reason why my second monitor wasn't working or (fake) swear at my printer for doing wonky things. Nope, it all turned back on perfectly.

Here's the view from the back corner of my office, looking out the door into the hallway leading to the rest of the office. You can see the bookshelves I mentioned above behind the lamp. And that's a picture of one of the bridges over the Han River in Seoul on my computer desktop.

All in all, it was a pretty good day. I feel accomplished.

Homesick

Today is the official last day of the semester, and most of the students are long gone. That means things are slow at the office. I'm flying home for Christmas next week, and I'm starting to get (more) homesick, in more than one way. How many ways can you be homesick? you ask. I'm anxious to get home and see my family, of course, but I've been missing Korea more and more lately.

Last night after work I took the bus downtown and had dinner at the Korean place. The proprietor and I are  pretty close. We chat about Korean politics (more like he lectures and I nod - my grasp of Korean-politics Korean is very tenuous), I hang out in the kitchen and chat with his mom (who makes the food), etc. And I can always count on him telling me I look like I've gained weight. (The topic is not taboo like it is in the States.) I've got to start working out regularly again, just so I can finally hear him tell me I've gotten skinnier.

I'd really like to go back to Korea soon. It doesn't look that will happen, especially not if I get into grad school this fall. The problem is that I don't know what I'd do there even if I went. I could teach English, but I don't know if that's something I'd want to do. I'd love to go to school there, but that's an expensive proposition. What I need is an American program that incorporates a study-abroad component, like the University of Hawaii's or American University's, but let's face it--I can't afford either of those places.

Actually, at this point, I'd like any kind of direction. Don't worry, I'm not all mopey like in my last post, but the frustration at my lack of direction is still there. I'm not any closer to knowing what I want to do with myself than I was three weeks ago or three months ago. It makes me feel a little lonely and pointless.

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part II

Here I am. I'm 26, barely graduated from my undergrad, working two part-time jobs (but thankfully with insurance), and I've got a GRE Analytical Writing score that could very well keep me out of grad school. (At least this year.) The kicker is that when I checked, I saw that I only needed another half-point (or a 4.5) to jump all the way to the 73rd percentile. Basically, the difference between my reader being in a good or generous mood and s/he being anxious to get home or go to lunch. When there's a-- wait, let me do the math...29 percentage-point difference in just a half a point on your scale, you need a new scale.

Mostly I'm just mad. But there's another part of me, a not-very-small-and-in-fact-growing-increasingly-larger part of me, that wonders what the heck I do now. To be honest, I decided to apply to grad school more because I'm not too keen on continuing to do what I'm doing now more than because I finally know what I want to do with my life. Having an MA at least means I can start looking for work in my field, or I could move on to a more prestigious program and get a Ph.D. I figured the U would be a good choice; I could finally take some formal Korean classes, deepen my understanding of the culture and history of the region, and yet the tuition wouldn't totally break the bank and I'd have a decent shot at a fellowship, not to mention friends and family who live in the area. And the U is thankfully in a bigger city than Logan. It would be a leap of faith, but not a huge one.

So...now what? I could take the GRE again, but that's another $175 and I'd have no more time to prepare than I did last time. Not to mention, because I waited so long to take it the first time, now I have only about two dates I could even take it -- and that close to the application deadline, there's no guarantee that they'd receive my scores in time, anyway. I could call up the ETS people and keep squeaking until they give me some grease and take another look at my writing score, but let's face it, the probability of that happening is slim to none. I could throw myself on the mercy of the admissions committee at the U and try to explain my way into getting them to admit me. Or I could just give up.

Honestly, that last option was my first inclination. Just throw my hands up and say, Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it and resign myself to being a 26-year-old BA working two part-time jobs in a small city with no real job prospects in her field (but thankfully with insurance). But isn't that too pathetic? I already feel like I'm a pretty amazing failure, but that would really take the cake, no matter how much I just want to sit down and have a good cry. It's hard to feel upbeat when I look at so many of my friends and peers and they're working on their Ph.D.s or Master's, or traveling the world, or living and working in other countries, or gainfully employed and have cars and houses and kids.

Even worse than the (not inconsiderable) blow to my pride is the lack of direction, the shattering of expectations. I don't know what I want to do with my life. The pointlessness of it all is inciting an existential crisis. I want to do something, but it's eternally frustrating that I just don't know what. I wish I had that clarity of purpose and utter conviction I had as a three-year-old who wanted to be a ballerina. I'd settle for the naive confidence of the high school sophomore who was convinced she wanted to be a biochemist. (Whew, dodged that bullet.) Heck, I'd love to even have the optimism of the brand-new college freshman who wanted to become an English professor.

What am I doing with this time I'll never get back? Nothing very fulfilling. Please don't mistake me, I am so grateful to have a way to support myself, somewhere warm and dry to live, good food to eat, a little expendable income for fun things and to pay down my student loans a little faster, a family who loves and supports me, and an education. I am tremendously blessed, and even if that was all I had I'd still be one of the richest people alive. I've been trying to concentrate on those things, and I've been glad to be here in Logan for some things happening in my life and in the lives of people around me, but I feel like I'm stagnating here. The problem is I don't know where I want to go, let alone how to get there, to get myself moving and cease stagnating. I have no idea what the future holds or why this happened to me when everything suggested it wouldn't. I don't know what I want. I don't know what God wants me to want. I feel like every time I think I do know, it turns out not to be the case...? At this point I just want to stay in bed all day and stare at my ceiling.

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part I

The annoying thing about life is that it's impossible to do perfectly.

As much as I would like to be able to, I can't. And sometimes, Life throws you a curveball just to drive that home.

When I graduated earlier this year, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I'd kind of decided to move to Korea to teach English, and so I hadn't worried about doing silly things like taking the GRE or filling out a FAFSA. Well, Korea didn't pan out, much to my disappointment, and so I spent the summer pretty much lollygagging around until I finally got my act together and found a job. Then I got a second job because the first job was only half time. I vaguely figured I'd work for a year, pay down some of my student loan debt and regain my sanity, then plunge back into school the next fall.

It was a good plan. Okay, at least it wasn't a bad plan.

The only problem was, I forgot that grad school is not something you decide to do and just do in the spur of the moment. You have to plan ahead, waaaaay ahead, and do silly things like take the GRE and fill out a bunch of applications and ask a lot of people to write letters of recommendation and fill out the FAFSA. By the time I realized, Crap, I have to take the GRE and start looking at schools stat if I want to go to grad school in the fall! it was already early October. But the whole thought of that (and all the money it would require) was so overwhelming I procrastinated dealing with it. Finally, in early November I bit the bullet and went for it...but many of the places I was looking at had application deadlines on 1 December or in the middle of the month. If I wanted to even have a shot at applying to them I'd have to have my GRE results in to them by then, which means I'd have to take it in the middle of November at the latest. So I registered, paid my money (watching $175 go out of my bank account just for the pleasure of taking a test hurt a little bit), and took the test on 15 November at 8:00 in the morning.

I spent the lion's share of what little prep time I invested reviewing math concepts I was supposed to have mastered in middle school and the first couple years of high school. I'm sure this will not come as a shock to any who know me, but my mastery of math concepts basically stops at multiplication...if that. My grasp of even basic math was pretty rusty at best. I was not terribly worried about the vocabulary sections, since I knew about 90% of the words on the vocab lists in the prep book I borrowed from the library. (Let's face it, with my parents and my bookworm childhood, I'd be worried if I didn't.) Likewise, I was pretty confident about the analytic writing portion; if I managed to procrastinate every single paper I'd ever written at USU (some pretty spectacularly) and still not lose any points, I figured a half-hour to write one one-page essay was not going to be terribly taxing.

What's that scripture again? "Pride goeth before the fall"? (More accurately, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. But it still applies.)

The morning of the GRE I wasn't feeling too bad about life. Nervous, but confident. I'd said my prayers, and I figured any Asian Studies program probably wasn't going to look too closely at my math score anyway so I'd be okay. The analytical writing section came first, and I felt like I did a good job on the two essay prompts I'd been given. I asked the Lord for the inspiration and guidance of the Spirit and for His help in doing my best, and I felt like I'd received it. I moved into my first math section feeling confident. (I didn't end it feeling confident, but that's a whole 'nother ball game.) The rest of the GRE went pretty quickly, especially the verbal sections -- I finished those with almost half the time to spare. The new computerized version of the GRE tells you your raw scores for the math and verbal sections as soon as you're done taking the test, so I knew I'd done okay with a 163 in verbal and a 154 in quantitative. I left feeling pretty upbeat, which was only confirmed when I looked up the table that converts your raw score into the percentile score grads schools use for admissions. I was 91st percentile in verbal and 60th in math, definitely good enough to satisfy admissions requirements. I was sure that when I got my writing scores I'd get a 5.0 or a 5.5 (out of 6.0) and be fine.

I realize that sounds incredibly cocky, but nothing in my education to that point had ever given me reason to disabuse myself of that notion, so you can imagine my utter shock when I opened my official scores Sunday morning to see a glaring "4.0 -- 49th %ile" staring back at me. I've never been hit with a 2x4 before, but I imagine the feeling of stunned bewilderment and disorientation is somewhat similar to how I felt at that moment. In case your math is as bad as mine, the 49th percentile is 21 percentage points shy of the 70 I needed to be admitted to the program I was most seriously considering, the Asian Studies MA at the University of Utah. The 49th percentile is average. Average. I went down to my room and sobbed.

The thing is, I realize that I'm being compared to other takers of the GRE, who are on average a smarter  bunch of people (or at least better test-takers) than your average US citizen. I know that, I do. Yet I find it utterly incomprehensible that my math score could be higher than my writing score, ever. Maybe back when I was two and learning to count but couldn't read yet. Definitely not now, not after not taking any math class for more than two years and not having a "real" math class since my second semester at UTM taking college algebra (and I got a B, by the way) more than six years ago. I felt like calling up ETS then and there and demanding to know how the heck this had happened. But I'm a chicken so I didn't. Now I'm desperately scrambling to find a way to fix this and I feel like my life has just been knocked into a flat spin. This post, however, is getting long, so I'll talk more about that in my next post.