I tend to shy away from blogging about my personal life. I find the idea to be somewhat pretentious and the results seem to be more than a little boring. I certainly don't have anything against pretension--I think a certain bit of pretentiousness is a prerequisite for even starting a blog--and boring is okay from time to time, but the combination of the two? Not good (amusing stories from junior high school being a notable--or possibly notorious!--exception). That being said, I'm going to deviate from my standard operating procedure and write about my life outside of my antipathy towards George W. Bush. Feel free to stop reading now. I won't take it personally; after all, I'm not terribly interested in reading about your life, either*.
Anyway, I mentioned a few months back that I was applying to the University of California, San Diego in order to transfer into their Biological Anthropology program. After many days of nail-biting and eager mailbox-checking, I finally was informed in May that my application was rejected. Today I found out why. As it turns out, I was rejected because of where I was transferring from, or more precisely, where I wasn't transferring from. Apparently the UC system is mandated by the California state legislature to give heavy preference to students transferring from other California states schools and community colleges, and because UCSD consistently has so many applicants coming from these schools, they accept basically no transfer applicants from non-California schools (and they probably just point and laugh at students coming from tiny, Midwestern, evangelical Christian liberal arts schools--thanks, Wheaton!). That's what I was told, anyway.
In one sense, I feel this comes as good news because now my ego can rest assured that the cause of my rejection was not some personal or academic flaw of mine. On the other hand, the news is disappointing because, as the admissions office informed me, nothing I can do will ever get me accepted. It's simply not going to happen. As many Socal surfers are wont to say, "Bummer, dude."
There goes plan A. And plan B. . .well, I'm still working on plan B. I'm feeling kind of similar to the underpants gnomes of South Park, except that the gnomes have both steps one and three of their business plan figured out (to those who do not consider South Park to be an integral part of their lives, the underpants gnomes' business plan consists of the following steps: 1. collect underpants 2. ??? 3. profit), whereas I'm really only solid on step three of my evil plan to become an exotically rich and famous primatologist who takes over the world. My plan looks something like this:
1.???
2.???
3. Become exotically rich and famous and take over the world. Or is it become rich and famous and exotically take over the word? Or possibly I'm suppsed to become rich and famous and take over an exotic world! Who knows?
Apparently I may still need to spend more time working this whole life-plan thing out. I may not know what it is that I'm doing with my life, but at least I now know what the next step is. Oh wait, I haven't the foggiest clue about that either. Okay, I may not know what I'm doing with my life and I may not know what the next step is going to be, but at least I know what the next step isn't going to be! I think I'll take some solace in that. Oh hell, maybe I'll just join the underpants gnomes; I'm sure they have things figured out by now.
*Just kidding, Catherine.
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1 comment:
Dave -- LOL! I have so much to say in response.
1. Once at Wheaton, I was friends with some guys who stole nearly all of another guy's underpants over the course of a semester and he NEVER NOTICED. They then handed them over to me. I put each one in its own ziplock back, with a carefully drawn map of Edman chapel seats directing whomever happened to receive the bagged pants to pass them along a certain route until they reached the assigned chapel seat of the owner. I then distributed them around the room right before chapel began, and watched as they were passed (and even tossed at times) around the room for the next hour, ended up in a large pile on the victim's chair. I would consider this to have been "profit" because the "victim" was not, shall we say, an "enjoy a good joke" kind of fellow. :)
2. I try to keep the personal information/boring information line in mind at all times while posting. But, I have friends and relative all over the globe (yourself included!) begging me for the latest Toby updates, etc. So...whatever keeps the masses happy... Otherwise, I totally agree with you. :)
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