Grad Schools, Dead Babies.

AAAAAK. I have been working on grad school applications today and there are few things in the world that I like less than working on grad school applications. I know it doesn’t seem like it should be that frustrating, but it really is. Every school is different, every website is different, all of the instructions are both vague and complicated. Its like Kafka dreamt them all up.

Plus, after having been rejected by some of the finest MFA Creative Writing programs the last go around, I feel more than a little trepidatious about and intimidated by the very prospect of applying again. I feel like the websites are just looking at me going, “Back for more, eh?”

That last part is probably just in my head though, right?

There is a great movie (and by “great”, I mean “terribly depressing”) called Jude. It stars the lovely Kate Winselt and a skinnier than normal Chris Eccleston. It is based on the novel Jude of the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Basically it is the story of poor Jude as he works as a 19th Century English stonecutter while dreaming of getting into a school that (I think) is supposed to be Oxford. Basically he is too working-class for their tastes and he never gets in. But there is a great scene where he is standing in the rain outside the school and angrily singing the school’s song at the big brick buildings. It really is heartbreaking.

I think of that scene every time I work on grad school applications.

If I haven’t already sold you on the movie, let me tell you these other facts about it: Jude spends most of his time depressingly carving headstones, Kate Winselt refuses to marry him because she doesn’t believe in marriage, which is fine because Jude is still kinda married to this other woman who is a total slag. Also, Jude and Kate Winselt keep getting kicked out of the shitholes where they live because even though they aren’t married, they have kids together, which is a big 19th Century no-no. AND! If you’re still not sold on this movies, let me end with this: dead babies. Several of them.

So anyway, go Netflix this thing, spend three hours of your life watching it, and then you will know how I feel about grad school applications.



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