As of Late

Exactly a week after I got home in May, I got a phone call from the English Chair at a high school in New York City. “We’d like you to come in to interview in person as soon as possible,” she told me. “Are you available tomorrow?” 

“Well, you see,” I told her. “I’m in Mississippi.” 

“Oh,” she said. “Hmm. How fast can you get a plane ticket?” 

During the next ten hours of ticket buying, sleeping, packing, and rushing to the airport, I received another surprise email from a school in Richmond. “How soon can you get here?” 

I like to imagine what a normal interview might be like. I’d meet with a potential boss. We’d shake hands and then Potential Boss would offer me a seat. I’d wear something nice but not miserable. Potential Boss would ask some questions and tell me about the job. Potential Boss would then ask me if I had any questions, and I’d come up with some to seem interested, even if I didn’t really have any. We’d both smile a lot, and I’d try not to fidget too much. Our chat would last about an hour, and then Potential Boss would thank me for coming in and ask me how soon I could start the job. I’d buy a celebratory snack on the way home. 

But private school interviews are not normal interviews. Private school interviews start a lot like normal interviews, except for the part where you travel a thousand or so miles to meet Potential Boss and are housed in hotels far fancier than any hotel you’ve ever been in in your life. You arrive at the school at an absurd hour in the morning to meet Potential Boss. The interview follows the aforementioned protocol, except I’m wearing a suit that makes me feel like I’m a straitjacket, and instead of the part where I’m offered the job and then go get my celebratory snack, I’m then brought to Potential Boss #2. Then the process starts again. And then again. And then again. Until I’ve met with the Headmaster, the Assistant Headmaster, the Dean of Faculty, The English Chair, the Head of Academic Affairs, the Athletic Director, and the entire English department faculty. At some point I’m fed lunch, generally with the whole English department, which means I do a lot of looking enthusiastic and answering questions and very little eating. And then I’m given a campus tour by a carefully chosen overachieving student. 

And at some point I have to teach a class. This class can be anywhere from a 7th grade class to an 12th grade class, from 12 students to 20. This class lasts an hour. In addition to the students, my audience includes 6 or 7 faculty and administrative members. I refer to this class as the Stress Test. 

After about 10 interviews, the lunch interview, the campus tour, some class visits, and the Stress Test, I get to leave. But then I have to go back the following day to finish whatever couldn’t be crammed into the day before. If it’s a boarding school, I also have to do dinner and breakfast group interviews/pretend eating and help with dorm duty. 

And then, finally, after two days of marathon interviewing and malnourishment, Potential Boss shakes my hand, thanks me for coming, and tells me I’ll hear more news soon. 

I fly home. (Or, in the case of this particular trip, I fly to Atlanta where my mother picks me up and we drive 8 hours to the next school.) A couple of weeks later, I receive two things. 1. A reimbursement check for my travels. 2. An email, which says some variation of “Unfortunately, we had to go with a more experienced candidate” or “a candidate who met more of our needs outside the classroom,” which I interpret to mean “a former Harvard professor” or “a new football, lacrosse, and soccer coach.” 

I’ve now repeated this process four times. And here I am, waiting for the next invitation. Here are some things I’m doing while I wait: 

-Searching for/applying to more jobs

-Writing follow-up emails for said jobs

-Doing phone/Skype interviews

-Watching True Detective 

-Watching other TV shows that I’m more reluctant to admit (HGTV shows. Dance Moms.) 

-Writing more followup emails

-Painting

-Reading some of the books on my “To Read” list. 

-Reading other books I’ll neither bring in public nor admit to reading (There are some wonderful YA books. And then there are these.) 

-Looking for tutoring jobs anywhere within a 100 miles radius (It seems no parents want their children to learn in the summer. Or else they don’t want to pay more than $10 for it.) 

-Apologizing for writing so many follow-up emails

-Looking for freelance editing

-Making up reasons to go to town (“I have $2 off my next Panera Bread order.” “I really want some figs, and the closest grocery store that has them is 50 miles away.” 

-Sitting on my couch

-Wishing I wasn’t sitting on my couch

-Feeling guilty about sitting on my couch

-Eating so many frozen grapes that I feel sick

-Writing letters

-Writing nothing else

-Attending family gatherings, where we do things like feed my cousins' alligator, Wally 

-Sending more applications

-Looking up dogs I want to buy when I (hypothetically) move

-Waiting for good news. 

Commencement

I’ve tried to write for weeks, but I’ve hardly written a word since my last assignment was due. The last few weeks of school were so busy that I felt like I was running daily marathons. Everything I tried to write felt too sentimental. Everything was sentimental. 

I graduated last Wednesday. Most of my friends didn’t, because they wanted more time to work on their theses. It was the smart decision for anyone who planned to stay in New York anyway. But I was determined to graduate in May all along, determined to prove the professors wrong who told me no second-years walked in May—that would mean turning my thesis in in March, which most people thought was preposterous. “What’s the rush?” people kept asking. But I wanted to be done. I wanted to wrap things up neatly and walk away at he end of the school year. I wanted to start a full time job in the fall that I’d need an advanced degree to get. And I wanted out of New York. Two years, I told myself the spring before last when I accepted Columbia’s offer. Two years and I’ll go to a place I’d rather be. 

What I didn’t know was that in those two years, I’d find a community of friends unlike any I’d ever been a part of. I didn’t know that I’d be one of the only ones to leave the city once classes were over. Brown launched us ceremoniously into the world once our four years were up. Columbia expects us to linger. 

I had my thesis conference a few weeks ago and one of my readers, a former professor, hugged me goodbye and whispered in my ear, “You’re gonna get this published, and you’re gonna get a job.” Which is exactly what our professors are warned against saying, but it’s sometimes what we need to hear. Then there was our Thesis Anthology Launch (aka prom) which was exactly what prom is supposed to be. Full of friends, nostalgia, and painful shoes. There were reunion parties, BBQ parties, dinner parties, after parties—any excuse for us to be together while we were all still in one place.

 I spent the last couple of weeks saying a lot of goodbyes that I didn’t want to say and a lot of see-you-laters when I didn’t want to say goodbye. I got my MFA. I left my roommate/best friend alone in what I will always think of as “our” apartment. I packed up my room and loaded it into a U-Haul and drove to Mississippi with my family. 

People keep asking “What now?” All of my belongings are in boxes squeezed wherever they can fit throughout my living room and kitchen because there are too many to fit in my bedroom. My bed is propped against the wall in my hallway. I don’t want to unpack anything because I don’t know when I’ll be leaving next. 

The last couple of months have been full of interview after interview, then second interviews, then silence. Repeat. All I can do is keep waiting. I sent in some last minute applications for jobs in New York. Not because I think I made a mistake in leaving, but because I want the option of changing my mind. So my answer is that I don’t know. But for now I’ll repack the boxes, this time with bubble wrap, and keep waiting until I know the answer. 

Waiting Game

These past few weeks have been hectic. At the end of February, I braved the snow walls and took a bus to Boston for a teachers hiring conference. For two days, I sat in a in a conference room in my ill-fitting suit and blister-causing heels typing my thesis while waiting to see if any schools wanted to interview me. There were representatives from over 200 prep and boarding schools in the room across the hall, scrolling through our candidate files and deciding who was worthy of an interview. “This is basically speed dating,” one man said to me. “I think I might be very bad at speed dating,” I told him. Luckily I got to talk to 9 different schools, and I left feeling like it was worthwhile. 

I added the final revisions to my thesis on the 5 hour bus ride back to New York, and sent it to the printer as soon as I got home. Then I had to wait for it to be printed over the weekend so I could turn it in that Monday. I turned in 206 pages of a book draft, and even though it might double in length after I add everything in the next draft, at least it’s a start. And now I just have to wait for the list of professors I can choose from to be my thesis readers, and after that I’ll have to wait for my thesis conference in May. 

Including the schools I’ve interviewed with and the schools I’ve applied to online, I’ve now applied to over 30, from Miami all the way to Vermont. Now I just have to wait for responses, wait to see where I’ll be this time next year. 

I had all four wisdom teeth removed at the beginning of January, and since then, I’ve been waiting for my mouth to feel normal. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting. For the past month, I’ve just been trying to hold out until I could get home to do X-rays to see what’s going on. 

I’m a patient person (most of the time). But so much waiting is exhausting, especially when there’s no guaranteed pay-off. But we’ve been waiting so many months for spring, and the temperatures in New York last week were finally in the 40s/50s. Spring break is finally here. Daylight savings has finally started. All of the X-rays are fine, and there’s nothing wrong with my teeth. The first day of spring is tomorrow. Maybe it’s not much, but these are the much-needed reminders that our patience is worth it. 

Motel 6 and Home

I wrote this a few weeks ago on the way back from visiting Providence, and I’ve only just had time to type it. 

February 8

I’m on the bus on the way back to New York, and we just passed the Motel 6 where I spent my first night in Providence (my first night above the Mason Dixon, actually). It was almost 8 years ago, the summer after my junior year of high school, and I’d convinced my parents to drive me to visit colleges up the East Coast. Boston was our final destination before we turned around to head home, but that morning I casually suggested from the back seat, “Maybe we could stop and look at Brown. I mean, just to see it. Since it’s on the way.” I remember my mom was driving, and we didn’t want to wake my dad up. We took an exit for Providence, and we ended up on Atwell’s Avenue on Federal Hill, which is a place I would end up liking very much. But it was very late that night, and there were a lot of tacky neon lights and I couldn’t help but think it looked trashy. Back then, my dad didn’t get hotel reward points yet, so we stayed in the cheapest non-scary hotels we could find. My mom and I would talk my dad out of the Motel 6 and 8s when we could, but sometimes it was the only option. (“They all look the same with your eyes closed!” he loved to repeat.) The hotel was gross. Brown I loved—maybe the only thing I ever loved at first sight, apart from puppies and bookstores. Providence left me skeptical. 

I’ve been thinking about home and what it means. I’ll be leaving New York at the end of May, and I have no idea where I’ll go next. Will I be able to bring my bed? My car? Will I get to buy the dog I’ve been wanting? Will I have a roommate? Will I live in a house or an apartment? 

I’m fascinated by the relationships we form with places. When I got to college, Providence felt like home before Brown did. Brown would end up feeling more like home than anywhere ever had. Columbia’s writing program felt like home right away. I’m still not sure New York ever will. 

I’m not sure what makes a place feel like home, but I know the people are part of it. Yesterday was the first time I’d been to Providence since I moved out of my dorm on the day after graduation. There’s hardly anyone I know left in the city. I didn’t know what it would feel like without the people there who made it home for me. And the weirdest thing was, apart from the people, everything was exactly the same. Everything about it felt familiar, everything almost thoughtless because I’ve walked the same sidewalks and gone to the same places so many hundreds of times. I’m the one who’s different. This is always how it goes with the places we know the best. Brown and Providence will always have been my home, but they belong to someone else now. But just when I thought that I wouldn’t see a single face I knew, one of the students from the first year I worked in Europe came in the cafe where I was sitting. She’s a junior now (how is that possible?). And I was reminded again how small a place like Brown can make the world seem. 

Coincidentally, that trip eight years ago was the first time I ever saw New York, too. It left me awed and satisfied and with no strong desire to visit it again.

The snow in Providence is piled taller than my head. I’d forgotten what it’s like to be without a car in a place where transportation is slow and unreliable. Another huge storm is supposed to hit tomorrow, so I had to leave a day earlier than I’d planned. I slid my way down the sidewalk to wait for the next bus and thought, It’s okay, I don’t mind going home. 

I list the places I’ve lived for any length of time, and I stop and consider whether or not the list would be the same if I listed places that felt like home, instead. Henleyfield, Oxford, Providence, Rome, Segovia, Athens, Durham, and New York—but instead of eliminating places, I feel like I should add more. Picayune obviously belongs on the list. New Orleans. Destin. Boston. 

I sat in my favorite coffee shop today. I used to arrive before the shop opened at 7:00 just so I could claim the best table, and then my best friend would join me when he woke up a couple of hours later. I texted him a picture of the cafe counter, the chalkboard menu. “Home!” he said. And I guess it still is. I guess we can have more than one. 

Interview Day

Juno left us with not that much snow and an unexpected day off.  So of course I did some diligent research to find an open coffee shop (though they are closing a few hours early, I’ll forgive them because it took me 4 tries to find one that was open at all) and traveled to Tribeca to “do homework.”  And instead I’m remembering the snowstorm that hit Providence right after I flew back for my final semester at Brown, and how I had to step in other people’s footprints on my way to the Coffee Exchange, because when I stepped in fresh snow I sank to my knees, and  how the snow that was piled by the side of the street easily reached my elbows. 

On Saturday, I got to be an interviewer for this year’s New York City area Brown applicants.  Saturday’s interview day was designated for residents of Long Island, Staten Island, and Queens, so probably 100 kids (and their parents) took the train into Manhattan so they could interview with an alumnus.  After the interview, we were to write an evaluation for the student for the admissions committee to read along with their applications.  

I have imagined myself doing a lot of far-fetched and preposterous things, but I had never imagined myself in a high-rise office building in the middle of Times Square introducing myself to a teenager who wore a blazer and tie, shook my hand, addressed me as ma’am, and handed me a resume (So not necessary, buddy.  I can’t admit you.).  I’m supposed to be the one trying not to let my hands shake when I hand someone my resume.  You’re too young for this, I kept thinking.  I was wearing jeans (It’s okay— so were the other interviewers), stood a foot shorter than the kids, and picked the raisins out of oatmeal raisin cookies in our break room when things got too intense.  Which these kids were.  

I interviewed 7 students, and even though I had to keep the interviews around 20-25 minutes, I could have kept going for hours.  Do you sleep, ever?  I wanted to ask.  (No.)  What do you mean exactly when you say you “conducted medical research?”  Yes, Brown will let you take 4 math classes at once if you want to.  I had free reign of what I asked, so I got creative.  Some of the kids were so nervous they sounded like robots, and some sounded like 30-something-year-old professionals.  I thought about my own Brown interview 7 years ago.  It was in a new gym complex in Biloxi (my interviewer was the owner), and he gave me a tour of the place once we were done talking.  What the heck did that man write about me?  When I got in, I called him to let him know and to thank him.  “I knew you’d get in,” he told me, but I know now, even more than I knew then, that that wasn’t true.  No one can know that.  All of those kids sat together waiting for their turn, knowing that of the 10 students sitting closest to them, only one might get in.  That of the 100 students in that room, maybe 8 will get in.  

Most of those students have spent the last 15 of their 18 years 100% devoted to this task— getting into an Ivy League school, and some of them Brown specifically.  Is it worth it? I wondered.  Is anything worth it if it dictates your life for 15 years, whether you get in or not?  Maybe.  But maybe not.  I wanted to apologize to every one of them.  To tell them, you all deserve this.  Some of you aren’t a good match for the school, some of you will be happier somewhere else, even though you don’t know it yet, and some of you will just not be quite as lucky as the person next to you.  But don’t let this decision make you think you don’t deserve this.  

I wrote my evaluations with the horror and awe that comes with knowing you might be directly impacting the rest of someone’s life.  I’m at a loss as to how admissions narrows over 30,000 applications to about 2,500.  Why would you put yourselves through this, I’d think for a second, and then I’d remember.  

I’m planning to visit Brown in a couple of weeks.  It’ll be the first time in nearly 3 years— since the day after graduation.  I wanted to tell those students that they’ll end up at the school where they belong, as cheesy and cliche as it sounds, and even if they don’t believe me right now.  It may be Brown, or it may be somewhere they didn’t even know they wanted to be.  What I thought was my first choice turned me down, I wanted to tell them, so that something better than I ever imagined could happen instead.  And one day you’ll buy a bus ticket back to that place just so you can see it and sit in a coffee shop and visit with old professors that you now call by their first names.  And you’ll get to interview students who you want to be able to reassure, too.  You’re gonna be fine— I’m sure of it.  

But I didn’t say that.  Instead, I wished them all the best of luck, ate more raisins, and thought about jobs that I’m waiting to hear back from and the essays I plan to submit for publication, and how the series of rejections and acceptances never really ends, and I’m not even sure they get much easier.  But I’m still pretty sure we’ll all be fine anyway.  

Page Break

I started this blog almost a year ago with the obligatory New Year’s Reflection post.  It’s strange that it’s already time for another one.  

2014 wasn’t easy on us.  There were empty spaces around our holiday tables, more stress than we felt like we could handle, and days we’d rather forget.  But there were good things, too— new houses and puppies, new friends and reunions with old ones.  I spent the summer at Duke assistant teaching two of the best classes I could have ever hoped for.  I still missed Rome and Segovia.  I finished my third semester of grad school.  I learned that New York is not the place for me.  I still missed Providence.  I saw a lot of doctor’s looking for answers that I never got.  I lost count of the number of jobs I applied for, and the number of rejections.  I had three different jobs that I loved.  I flew on 12 planes (my 73rd-85th), spent 2 weeks in hotels and other people’s houses, 50 nights in a dorm room in Durham, and 7 months in my apartment in Manhattan.  I hosted 6 visitors and crossed some things off my NYC To-Do list.  I survived the polar vortex.  I got a nice email from John Green.  The film based on the short story I wrote premiered at several film festivals.  I saw my friends get published and act in plays and make movies.  I read 75 books.  I wrote some things.  

I like New Year’s Day— the concept of it.  I like how it’s a shared starting point, a much needed page break.  I like how everyone feels a little refreshed, a little more optimistic.  

I hope 2015 is a beautiful one for all of us.  

25 and Familiar Things

No one rides the buses in New York City unless they have to.  The subway takes a quarter of the time and is generally more reliable.  But I kind of love the buses.  I like the back right corner seat the most, especially when the back half of the bus is elevated so I can see out the window.  I like that it never makes me feel claustrophobic and no one’s ever yelling on the loud speaker to “stand clear of the closing doors.”  I like that the people who take the bus aren’t in such a hurry.  I’m on the 104 bus, heading south, because the train isn’t stopping at my station this weekend.  But we passed the next train station, and I’m still on the bus.  I think the 104 goes all the way to Times Square.  I guess we’ll see.  

I turned 25 a couple of weeks ago.  25 doesn’t seem like a possible age to associate myself with, and I’m sure it’ll take the next ten or eleven months before I get used to saying it.  25 means the last year I can be on my mom’s insurance, the year I’ll find a real job (hopefully one that gives me my own insurance), and when I’ll have to start paying back student loans.  But all of those only make 25 feel daunting.  It’s better to think that 25 is the year I’ll graduate, the year I’ll finish my thesis, the year that I’ll leave New York for somewhere new, or somewhere warm, or somewhere familiar.  

I’ve been craving familiar things.  I went to DC a few weekends ago to visit my best friend from college who I hadn’t seen in too long.  The best friendships are the ones where you can eat Thai curry on the couch in sweat pants while watching X-Men, and it doesn’t matter that you haven’t seen each other in a year and a half.  I visited a couple of museums while I was in DC, but I couldn’t make myself care about them.  I only cared about coffee shop conversations and visiting my friend and his family.  And I was reminded again that I’ve put myself in a position to always be far away from people I care about.  

On the bus back to NYC, I saw a horrific wreck that put me in a weird mood.  There was an incessant beeping noise that persisted for all 5 hours, and I tried to sleep in a position that set my whole spine and rib cage on fire.  I got home to my empty apartment, my Halloween pumpkin on the table with mold in his smile, and I wanted to turn around and get right back on the bus.  

I saw my favorite poet read a few nights later, and he made me miss home and New Orleans and possums and pancakes.  

One of my oldest friends came to visit last week.  He arrived in the evening and had to catch his bus back just after midnight, but it was nice to see an old friend even thought it was only for a few hours.  I brought him to get his first slice of New York pizza and a Magnolia Bakery cupcake, then took him to see the new World Trade Center, even though it was too rainy to see the top.  He kept offering his seat to women and children on the subway, kept running to open doors for people, kept saying ma’am and sir, and it made me feel far away from home and glad that I have some life-long friendships that distance doesn’t diminish. 

My best friend from college came to visit the next night.  We got bagels and coffee in the morning, like we have a thousand other mornings in settings that weren’t this one, and even though I no longer eat bagels or drink coffee, it felt right.  We went to the Museum of Modern Art, which I’d never been to, and I had the experience I’ve had in museums in New York, Rome, Florence, and Madrid— the experience of having to remind myself that even though I’ve seen these paintings hundreds of times in my life, this time it’s real.  This is the time it counts.  

That night my Columbia friends came over to celebrate my birthday.  My roommate baked a cake and everyone brought snacks and drinks.  The last birthday party I had was my 18th— it was small, with a few high school friends, and we ate pizza, drank Powerade slushes, and watched Aladdin.  Seven years later, I’m in a city I never though I’d live in with an apartment full of people I’ve only met in the last year and a half, people that have made me happy to be here even when NYC has tried its hardest not to let me be.  

I like finding familiar things in the new ones, and I like letting what’s familiar be new again.