Thursday was atrocious. It was one of the most depressing days of winter for me. This had nothing to do with the weather which is typical February. So when I got up on Friday I didn’t feel much better.
I wondered how I was going to get through the day.
I began by failing miserably in my own kitchen. There was coffee on stuff. Coffee in stuff. I tried to make oatmeal twice and succeeded once. Then rushed out the door. Dusted snow and scrapped at ice. Where the hell does that stuff keep coming from? There's always just enough of it to make me remember why the scraper rides shotgun in my car all winter. I made the drive blissfully without incident. Which was good as my wipers were not wiping in a fashion that made visibility better.
I got there and forgot all about my problems for a while. Thank god. I just did my thing.
I got home feeling like at least I did something today. And since it wasn’t even 4:00pm I was energized for all the things I thought I was going to be doing with the rest of the evening. Not all of them happened. Damn life keeps getting in the way of my plans.
In the mail was a skinny little envelope from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
I was pissed off: they’d sent me the skinny envelope!
No phone call and a skinny envelope. Everyone knows that the skinny envelope means. This was bad, very bad. So when I read the first like “Congratulations on your admission ...” I had to go back and read it twice more before I believed it.
It is an English MA program with a focus on creative writing. Which sounds a lot like what I did as an undergrad as the focus is more evenly divided between literature and writing. This is not an MFA. There is also a Ph.D. offered by this school in the same focus.
This was better than I'd hoped once because when they emailed me to say I had not submitted the application form the English Department wanted, I panicked. I had submitted the application form the Graduate School wanted but not separate program specific form because their website was like a rat warren. I had thought, if they know I'm not even smart enough to send the damn form, why would they ever admit me? And then I banged my head on my desk a few times for the wasted chance.
I didn’t worry too much or too long about the form mix up because it’s not my style. I prefer to shrug off things I can't change. Things I could potentially change I'm willing to tie myself in knots over if it suits my mood. I sent them their form as quickly as I could, it went in the mail that very night, and it appears that was enough to offset my stupidity.
