youngmanhattanite answered your question: Earlier today when I was walking to Grad Alley* I…
Acknowledged, briefly. Free cotton candy is like $200K… If you paid $200K for cotton candy when you coulda got it free. Like an education.
So, I was going to respond to this with one of those ALLCAPS jokes I usually spin on Krucoff, because Krucoff likes to mess with me / give young people shit and so he deserves it. But instead I’m going to be serious and talk about my dad for a little bit.
I do believe that learning can take place in any environment and that it’s possible to get a really amazing education through real-world experiences, sans traditional college proto-academia posturing.
BUT.
My dad worked for 15 years in arts management and found himself out of a job 3 years ago when the Honolulu Symphony went bankrupt. Everything I know about management and being a good editor flowed in some way from him; despite dropping out of college at 20 to dick around in LA and play in a band, he is in no way an unintelligent man, and he ended up with a good career because people recognized that.
After the symphony folded, he spent 2 years on unemployment trying to find a new job. He never found one. No one will hire him for a management job because he doesn’t have a $200K piece of paper that says he wrote a few bullshitty academic essays 20 years ago. He currently works as a short-order cook in a North-Carolina-style barbecue restaurant, getting paid sporadically under the table in cash.
I am beyond pissed about this, to the point where I’ve adopted a cynical acceptance of the fact that you have to get a piece of paper in order to succeed in the world, and, since our society has bought into the brand-name, intrinsic, unquestionable value of this piece of paper, probably pay out of your nose for it.
Despite what you (and I, to a certain extent) might say about education being a continuing experience that takes place outside of institutions, that piece of paper still has value.
So if you’re going to give me shit about this, it would be way more appropriate to point out that I could have gone to CUNY or UH and accrued way less debt for this degree, which is at least an actual valid point.
But perhaps more importantly, to turn around and tell my parents that I don’t think this paper was worth the time, debt, and effort that they put into getting me to Yankee Stadium would be an act of unfathomable disrespect and dishonor, one that I would never forgive myself for engaging in.
Earlier today when I was walking to Grad Alley* I came across a yellow hibiscus plant – Hawaii’s state flower – in full bloom outside of Think Coffee on Mercer. I’ve decided that it’s good luck.
—
*as a side note, can we just briefly acknowledge how bullshitty it is that I’ve given NYU roughly $200K in tuition money and the way that they choose to thank me for this is free cotton candy?
Current Obsessions
- Le1f’s Dark York mixtape
- Polka dots
- This color
- This tumblr
- Kate Bornstein
I bought a dress to wear to graduation.
(This isn’t one of those things like getting married where no one is supposed to see the dress until the event, right?)
Letters, Unsent
I met a boy who smells like you.
It wasn’t the first thing I noticed about him, nor did it creep up on me in the way that red flags remain hidden until it’s too late. Breathing whiskey, he whispered about jazz, and I crumbled, leaning in – and there it was, wham. That sick-sweet stench filling my nose until I tasted fifteen, mouth dry, heaving. A small part of me groped for air in protest but I trampled it, down, standing in a bar, surrounded by strangers. Not to make a scene. Not to suffer loudly. Not to draw attention.
But, here was this boy who smelled like the past.
I can’t even quantify it, the smell. It has no comparisons or references. Is it a combination of qualities? The writer’s guilt, the insecurities, the arbitrary judgment calls? But none of these things correspond to scent.
Now sometimes when I spend time with him I wonder where you are and what you have been doing with your life. You never liked the internet so I looked up your girlfriend instead, only she isn’t your girlfriend anymore, and you have subsumed into nothingness. Because how can anyone exist if they do not have a persona separate from themselves, a fiction to obscure flesh?
Your name is not distinct enough to be Google-able.
An email would be too personal, a violation of the trust I have placed in myself to leave old wounds unsalted, an invitation I cannot give.
So instead I finger the book of Neil Gaiman’s short stories that you gave to me, the lines scrawled in the margins, think how you said that Harlequin Valentine reminded you of me. Flattered at first, I had read the story, and realized, betrayed, that you were holding your projection of me against a reality that had never existed.
Timing is everything. We were not meant to meet at fifteen, still scared, dishonest, unwilling to know the truth about ourselves.
I could have loved you.
Perhaps I did.
Washed Out
I have a pretty low tolerance for bullshit, which is the result of being raised in a household where no one was ever truly honest about how they felt, and subsequently blamed everyone else for anything terrible that ever happened to them. When I left I decided I wasn’t going to do that; I wasn’t going to be that person who lied about what they like. (However, it turns out that acting in direct opposition to your upbringing only results in a completely new set of social issues. WHO KNEW?)
There is this great photo of me with my parents from the first time they visited me in New York after I moved here. The three of us sitting in a line in Central Park, you can tell so much that I am a composite of them, the temper of my mother and the moods of my father, down to the curves of our smiles, but I am washed out next to them. I lean forward into the camera because I don’t know who I am yet.
I remember that I was still mad at them then. You can’t tell in the picture.
Holden tells me that maybe it is better not to remember the truth, which is an idea that once may have struck me with rage because it is disingenuous, but lately I am beginning to think s/he might be right. Bullshit is bullshit, but in photographs we can be all smiles.
