Get This Man a Doctor

This Sunday was the annual Court Street fair. The street fair season signals the beginning of summer, which means everyone is a little bit too excited about a bunch of funnel cake stands showing up on their street corner.

I got completely burned by PJ Hanley’s this weekend. On Friday they put their gigantic smoker in their patio, which in turn stinks up all of 4th place. One would think this signals PJ’s loyal patrons to come eat burnt meat, but we were told that the smoker was preparing for Saturday. So imagine how foolish we felt when we again went to PJ’s on Saturday night, only to find out that the meat was actually for the street fair.

The brisket I got was terrible—the slicers they hired gave me an all-fat piece, so I could only eat half of it. Ah well.

I’ve been to a few New York street fairs now, and the ones in my neighborhood seem to have a much higher concentration of random crap than in other parts of the city. Most street fairs seem to have an ethnic theme or be focused on kids… our street fair is more like a giant yard sale.

Oh, and Roger Clemens is pitching for the Yankees. I don’t hate the guy, though I’ll admit he could be described as a jerk with an overinflated ego. But it seems to me like he would have to do way more than he’s done so far to counteract the fact that he’s probably still the greatest active pitcher.

Just got back from visiting the University of Maryland. Maryland never got back to me about my application, and I had assumed they rejected me. I emailed them exactly a week ago asking where they were with my application, and they sent a reply saying they were going to accept me without funding. Which is the grad school equivalent of tying a $15,000 carrot on five year long stick.

Then last Thursday, someone decided not to go to UMD, which opened up a seat for me. So I had to make an emergency trip to Maryland today to go check it out.

One thing that stood out about visiting Maryland over Washington and Oregon was the vast surplus of money they were throwing around. Maryland was able to pay for my lodging and car rental from New York, which believe me was not cheap.

But the best part? And the end of my visit, I got a goodie bag from Maryland containing a t-shirt and a USB flash drive. Okay, now I’ma go download 128MB of… math.

Well, I didn’t really feel comfortable writing about which schools I did and didn’t get into, but this is supposed to be a blog about my experience with grad school. So to remain true to that purpose, I have to make a post about how I am going to be rejected from almost every school I applied to.

The rejections have begun rolling in in the form of emails. It’s kind of ruining my vacation, but at least I’ll finally have some closure. I knew I wasn’t a very strong candidate, but I was secretly hoping that this might be one of those years with little competition. I was clearly wrong.

Out of the ten schools I applied to, my fifth and sixth choices just rejected me. Since they’re pretty much ranked by how competitive their programs are, that only leaves the bottom four.

My biggest fear now is being rejected from all ten schools, which will pretty much end my academic career. I don’t expect that I will be have the strength to apply again, and after another year I will be an even more undesirable candidate.

After some reflection, it was my lack of dedication that led to these rejections. In the three years since graduation I have had to deal with more adversity than I faced in college, and one thing it has elucidated is that I simply did not work hard enough during those four years. I only hope that I have the strength to overcome this failure in the future.

By popular demand, I’ve decided to go through and calculate just how much I spent on applying to graduate school. Well, actually, no one really seems to ask me how much I spent, but every time I think about it I can’t believe how much money I blew on a bunch of forms.

So to review: I applied to ten schools around the country. The one with the least fees was Carnegie Mellon, which charged $0.00 to read my application. The one with the greatest fees was the City University of New York, Graduate Center, which charged me $125.00 to read my application. The mean was $58.50.

The ETS charges $15.00 to report your (required) GRE scores. Per school. Plus a service fee per request. Since I had to submit one school twice, the total amount I paid the ETS was $216.00.

The total amount I spent on shipping is a bit skewed, since I FedExed everything. Most of my applications didn’t come down to the deadline, but I wanted to get everything in as quickly as possible. Total shipping costs: $199.73.

Finally, I spent $148.25 on transcripts, office supplies, books, and miscellany.

So, the grand total I have spent applying to grad schools since October comes to $1148.98. I wonder if I can get a tax write-off…

* = required question

Residence Halls Buildings Survey (Prospective Resident)

1. I am a:*
(X) Prospective Resident

2. What is your impression of UO residence halls?*
If I ever visit I will go look at them.

3. Not considering room rates or the assignment process, if you could live in any residence hall building on campus, which would you choose?*
( ) Barnhart
( ) Bean
( ) Carson
(X) Earl
( ) Hamilton
( ) Living-Learning Center
( ) Riley
( ) Walton

4. What is it about this building that is attractive to you?*
I like the name Earl.

7. What would make you want to live in the residence halls your first year at the UO?*
Probably a bribe.

8. What would make you want to live in the residence halls for more than one year?*
Yearly bribes.

9. Would residence hall facilities impact your decision to attend a university or college?*
(X) No
( ) Yes

10. Did/do your parents or family members encourage you to live in the residence halls?*
(X) No
( ) Somewhat
( ) Yes

What factors influence the decision to live in the residence halls versus living off campus?
I’m not 18 anymore.

11. Demographics:*
Gender
( ) Female
(X) Male

Age
24

Time magazine just eliminated all prestige associated with their Person of the Year issue by naming everyone currently alive as this year’s winner. Let the celebration begin.
What does it feel like to be named Time magazine’s Person of the Year? Personally, I’m pretty stoked. In fact, I’ve just added it to the bottom of my resume. That’s right, please refer to me as Sean Kelly, Time magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year. I’m probably not going to be using that thing for another five years, so it doesn’t really matter.

The only problem is that this maverick issue is going to take a lot of allure out of the award. I mean sure, everyone born after 2006 won’t have the title like we do. So when we all die, there will be a fresh batch of losers to pick from. But until then, who will Time pick to up the ante next year? Time magazine’s 2007 Person of the Year—God?

On a side note, my favorite Wikipedia article of the day is Unsuccessful attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution. What? There’s a chance the ERA could still be ratified? Get to it, Pelosi!

While eating at my favorite secret Joya replacement, my girlfriend noticed for the first time that I was left-handed. I replied, “Yeah, that means I don’t have to do the ridiculous knife swap like you right-handed people.” Which incited the argument.

Like the peeflap on briefs or driving on the left side of the street, the right-handed knife shuffle is one of those things that you never really think about when you’re outside the affected demographic. I never really knew that right-handed people had such a hard time using a knife until much later in life, when I suddenly realized someone was taking a ridiculously long time eating a steak. In fact, it took a lot of ’splaining to get me to understand what was going on.

When you’re left-handed, cutting something on your plate involves three simple steps:

1. Pick up knife in right hand,
2. Stab and cut food, and finally,
3. Put food in mouth.

I think this is perfectly normal until one day when I realize that right-handed people don’t have it so easy. They have their fork in their right hand, which is the same the knife is lying on. There are variations, but the shuffle seems to be something like:

1. Move fork from right hand to left hand,
2. Pick up knife with right hand,
3. Stab and cut food,
4. Put knife down on table,
5. Move fork from left hand to right hand,
6. Stab food (again!) and put in mouth.

When I pointed this out to the girlfriend, her response was that her left hand was exceptionally weak, which is why she did the shuffle. She also claimed that left-handed people “live in a right-handed world” and have to be a little ambidextrous, which is why we can cut with our right hand.

Personally, I think if it was a “right-handed world”, they would have put the fork on the right side. But that’s just me.

So now we need to conduct a study on whether or not the right-handed knife shuffle really exists, and what its cause is. Let’s see if DARPA will fund this.