A Call to Action

All right. That's it. The time has come to shake off the detritus of this latest useless year and give some form to this sorry life.

I remember when I was a teenager, 16 and shifty and dating A. in secret. My parents didn't know about A. at first, but nevertheless they were worried sick that I would fall, like the fragile daughters of lore, into the arms of some leather-clad bad boy and from then on all would be lost. My grades would plummet, I'd spend all my money on makeup, and soon I'd be out at the lot parties with the bad kids, doing wipits and making out with the football team. My mother bought a book called Reviving Ophelia which was all about the crisis of adolescent girls--eating disorders and depression and promiscuity and drug abuse and all that good stuff.

As it was, my mother misspent her money on that book. I dated A. for the rest of high school and far from threatening my good marks, he was doubtless a stabilizing force. My parents bought into the talk-show hysteria and they were wrong, at least about me. Not that anyone should find that surprising.

I've been reminded of this lately because these days, M. is the one who shoves me toward action. It's largely thanks to his persistent bullying that I have decided, at the last possible second, to apply to graduate school this winter.

"I can't do it this year," I protested. "My recommendations will be laughable. I don't have the prerequisites. They will throw my application in the garbage."

"Well, so what if you're not good enough?" He said. "You'll never be good enough. So apply now with all your flaws, or admit failure. I think you have a chance. I have never had the prerequisites for anything I applied to, and who cared? Do you want to be working in that office all your life?"

That did it. I won't admit failure, even if I fully expect it. And my job brings me no joy. So here I am, scrambling to arrange standardized testing dates and letters of recommendation, a "statement of purpose" and emergency meetings with my Hoover adviser.

M. is applying to a Ph.D. program now and the odds are stacked neatly on his side. The chair of the admissions commitee owes him both a good sum of money and a fat favor. And unlike most masters students, M. will be published in a big-name, peer-reviewed journal soon. In this case, envy is no sin: it is a call to action.

By the way, and this is wholly unrelated, my French housemate just made a vat of thyme-infused ice cream for her husband's birthday and I hereby declare it dangerously delicious.