lechatgris

button down.

hammer time (!)

I play too and I've found that my general abundance of surliness adds a lot of, erm, "spirit" to my game. Plus, I've got some seriously impressive bruises to color my library pallor.

toilet paper.

hot toddy

hot potatoes.

and I filed away all the application stuff I don't need (everything except usernames, passwords, and correspondence from the schools to which I applied)--it's really a wonderful sense of closure not to see (and knock over) a heap of transcripts, GRE scores, statement drafts, etc., every time I pass my desk

I just completed a 3-hour desk cleaning mission! I'm pretty sure I haven't seen the surface of my desk since 2007. Strangely (sadly?) exhilarating.

village church

shoulda been a cowboy . . . I would go all the way back to high school and take a geometry class so that my GRE quant. score would be better than a 5th grader's.

swan dive

According to Pipl, a 2-week-old baby with my exact first, middle, and last name died 10 years ago. In addition, the baby lived in a city with the same name as mine, but in a different state. Now I'm sad. And a little creeped out.

I feel pretty good about the last couple applications I submitted, but when I think back to what draft my statement of purpose and writing samples were in for applications 1 and 2, I can only shudder.

rainbow colours

I think a lot of programs set late deadlines to allow applicants to polish their statements, take the GRE, etc., over the winter break (knowing that most faculty won't be able to begin reading until they too return from break mid-January). That said, I applied last year and my latest deadlines were definitely not the last schools I heard from. One school had a Dec.1 deadline and didn't reject me until April 1! Another took only 3 weeks to dash my hopes. I suppose it depends on the size of the applicant pool and the number of application readers available, among other things.

rubber band

I can only assume that most of the humanities ad comms are playing this game as well. They certainly don't seem to be in any sort of rush to process applications (although, if my current department represents the standard, we've taken to leaping wildly over the mountain of envelopes that began overflowing the inboxes in December. It's a bit like the giant Jiffy Pop in the movie Real Genius. If they don't start reading these things soon, the pile will eat the copy machine and I'll have to resort to teaching with hand-puppets instead of hand-outs).

lobster cake

lunch hour

age line

telephone call

working girl

charter bus

seize them

My problems are escalating. The mailman just parked his little truck outside my house, then crossed the street and started walking the other direction. Presumably, he will make a loop, ending with my house. I find this very distressing and am wondering about the legal ramifications of tackling said mailman and rummaging through his rucksack to make sure there aren't any grad school letters for me. Three more months . . .