Flashes of Panic

Look, I need to gripe for a minute, OK? If you don’t like entries like that, skip ahead. (Or wait for the next one, or whatever verb means not reading this.)

The college at which I am supposedly doing a post-graduate certificate in preparation for graduate work has posted their spring semester schedule. Once again they are offering precisely nothing of use to me. “Once again” meaning, “for the sixth consecutive term,” if you’re not counting the two electives I took to mark time.

A year ago, I went in to talk to the department head about the odds of my ever finishing the certificate if they never offered classes I needed. He agreed that they needed to do something about scheduling required classes in the evening. (See, the school is a solid hour’s drive from my workplace, so I can’t make a class before 6.) Precisely nothing has happened. If I’d known what a waste of time this was going to be, I would’ve given up on them and started applications long ago. I feel like I’ve wasted a year.

The crushing frustration of it is, they were my only option. It’s not like I went there because they came highly recommended; I went there because they were the only ones within an hour’s drive who offered serious classes in the evening. I didn’t know then that they offered the same classes every year, and that after a year and a half I would’ve taken everything useful they had to offer. I didn’t know the only street available was a dead end.

And I’ve already asked my two professors at this college if they would write letters of recommendation. I feel like I should be sending forms now, or I’ll never have the letters in time for December and January application deadlines.

I started this whole adventure because I caught an illusion that it was possible—that I could pick up the courses I was missing, and start something new. That I could learn something in depth instead of skimming the surface of everything. Somehow in the last year the illusion has eroded. I can’t get the classes. And, with one exception, I can’t get the graduate schools to take me seriously—they act like they’ve mis-read my email, I must be inquiring about the graduate certificate program, the part-time program, anything but the serious academic program. “Our Ph.D. program is very selective.” «Yeah,» I’m thinking, biting back the retort, «I’m familiar with selective institutions.» Is it any wonder I prefer to email? And that exception is talking about provisional acceptance. I know I’m a good bet. I just can’t prove it.

I used to get this frustrated at work. I had a foam pig, the stress-ball kind of foam, and I used to spike it at the walls. Eventually someone delicately suggested that I should manage my stress better, and I stopped throwing things. It was fine when I was running; if you’re training properly, at the end of a workout there’s no energy to be angry with anything. Your heart just says to any irritant, “Eh. I’ve seen worse,” and idles along at 45 bpm or so.

Now, I want the pig back. I’m so angry I could spit. What an astounding, inefficient, apathetic waste of time.

Now playing: Everytime from You Were Here by Sarah Harmer