I have found something rare and wonderful, completely by accident, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with it.
As a matter of observation, things that are rare are not often simultaneously sturdy or robust. That’s not the sort of thing you can really test, either: someone hands you a Faberge egg, you are not likely to assess first-hand how well it bounces. You believe, through some instinct or education, that this thing in your hand is rare because it is frail—uncommon and valued because of its proclivity to be broken.
Approaching the matter scientifically, Darwin might have you believe that something rare is doomed—fragility will eventually and inevitably be selected against. How many creatures will we never know about because they couldn’t quite bear up against climate, predators, environment, or the distance between Boston and New York?
Okay, I may be referring to a very specific species that is at risk for that last one: a population of two that may or may not be viable in the long run.
Most relationships don’t stand up against selection pressures—from both within and without. You could say a selection pressure from within is just the act of being picky: the female bird is so not impressed with that particular feather display. Move along, pal. Relationship selection pressure from without has nothing to do with choice: if some manner of jungle cat eats the male bird, the female, no matter how much she approved of the male’s plumage, would seem to be shit out of luck.
I take no issue with my chosen bird’s plumage. When he met me on the corner of 34th and 8th this weekend, I saw him before he saw me, and I took a minute to simply admire him. Those are some fine feathers, let me tell you.
I know I am in trouble when Frank Sinatra starts singing in my head—that generally means I have passed out of the realm of reason and straight into fantasy, replete with imagined embraces in fog and fedoras. For the last few days, Frankie has been singing a George Gershwin standard, which begins: “There are many, many crazy things that will keep me loving you, and with your permission, may I list a few?”
The request for permission was probably a rhetorical exercise; it’s entirely possible that whomever Gershwin was writing about never knew such a list existed. In that possibility, I feel George’s pain. One of those selection pressures that could crush this fledgling romance into extinction is the act of my listing those many, many crazy things that keep me loving him… so I write them to the ether, on a whim:
I love the way your eyes crinkle up when you grin, like a cheeky little kid who’s quite pleased with himself for having been caught covered in peanut butter. I love your selective use of anachronisms when you talk. I love how the universe saw fit to create you with a breathtakingly perfect blend of irony and self-awareness—the personality version of a dry martini—which goes so well with your corduroy blazer. I love that I love your friends and your favorite book. That you are excellent at receiving gifts. That you drink ‘dark and stormies,’ which are awful. That you have expressed strong opinions about my shoes (you hate my Tevas, which recently broke and made me think of you). That you remember certain places where I have left pieces of myself. That you see me, my lowest common denominator self, who prefers blue jeans, talks too much, and is filled with obscure Star Wars facts, and you like all of those things. That sitting across the table from almost every date I have had in the last year, I have thought that I would rather be with you.
The memory of all that? No, they can’t take that away from me… but I don’t want the memory of it. I want the reality of it. Unfortunately, reality is the biggest threat to our population of two; something along the lines of “cause of death: blunt force reality.” Love and evolution aren’t mutually exclusive: I believe the best kinds of relationships evolve. Sometimes I worry, though, that giving something time can cut both ways: if you don’t make something happen, how can you make anything happen?
I’m not quite ready to drop the egg and see if it bounces; I don’t know that he’ll ever know of this list of many, many crazy things. But sometimes Nature does give me hope: there is miraculous footage of ducklings essentially BASE jumping out of their nest high in a tree.
They are fragile and wonderful too. And they bounce.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Courtesy of Rejection
June 16, 2008
Learning proper etiquette was a big part of my upbringing. In my family, you knew the order in which to place orders at a restaurant (based on seniority, which translates to a combination of age and gender) and which bread plate was yours (left, same number of letters and two in common with ‘loaf’). Thank you notes for Christmas were always posted before New Years.
Now, entering that murky but decidedly threatening realm dubbed ‘the real world,’ I find it mercilessly bereft of etiquette, and I have absolutely no recourse.
I graduated college in June with a degree in Art History and have found myself virtually if expensively unemployable. Deciding not to go straight to grad school and not being investment banker material, I began to apply for entry-level administrative jobs at museums. I have been applying for nine months, trolling museum websites every few days between classes and internships, then full time at home after I graduated. Nine months worth of applications adds up; I would say I have applied for roughly eighty jobs.
I have been officially rejected by two of them.
It has been a long road since January, when my peers and supervisors at my college museum were assuring me I was destined to get a great job. I started out hopeful, even though the word 'recession' began to flicker on the edges of my consciousness. There were fewer jobs, and arts budgets were being cut. I still had faith.
Every week I would fire out more applications. Writing a single cover letter would eat up hours. I tried to go with a form letter: one for development positions, another for education positions, etc. I found that was a lot like a technique I tried to use in grade-school for my thank you notes: “Dear ___, Thank you for the ___. I really love it.” The form method in both cases flopped.
Each cover letter I would send was an interesting façade of fact and enticement covering outright desperation. It is true, I have good qualifications, but what I could not say outright was how I wanted a job so badly that I would work longer and harder than anyone else just to prove it.
One museum rejected me in a single line of email text: the position has been filled. Another sent me a form rejection, thanking me for my interest though they could not at this time offer me the position. I clung to this rejection as so much kinder than the first. By now, however, I would gladly welcome anything as short as the first. Key word: anything.
The logical side of my brain tells me that the human resources departments cannot possibly keep track of all applicants and coordinate mass rejection. This side of my brain also seems to laugh wryly and say, “Welcome to the real world, little girl.” I am not particularly fond of that side of my brain of late.
After all, I tortured myself over each cover letter: how to appeal most articulately, how to show my talents, how to stand out in the crowd. My resume is my little masterpiece, recording the things I have worked so hard to accomplish: awards, honors, magna cum laude, experience in the field.
The image of that resume languishing in someone’s email trashcan breaks my heart, but then, as an art history major, I am probably overdramatic with my images.
I walked around my college campus with an intoxicating self-assuredness. I understand that it is part of the deal to be squashed back down to where I belong: the absolute bottom of the food-chain, the new college-grad. I have found that the word “internship” in fact translates out of the erudite dialect of museums into a reality of unpaid, well-qualified labor.
Unlike most commencement addresses promise, I am abundantly aware how I cannot change the world, since I can’t seem to find an opening. I do not want to be an investment banker: I want to work in a museum. I want to talk to people about art. I want to communicate to my own generation how art is a record of what makes us human. I want to help others feel the new-love butterflies that I feel when I look at El Greco’s “View of Toledo.” I want to start an outreach program to fund the livelihood of students who would have internships at the Met but cannot afford to live in Manhattan. I want to break the closed socioeconomic circle of the art world, because as I see it, art belongs to us all. I have faith. I have a mission.
I just don’t have a job.
Learning proper etiquette was a big part of my upbringing. In my family, you knew the order in which to place orders at a restaurant (based on seniority, which translates to a combination of age and gender) and which bread plate was yours (left, same number of letters and two in common with ‘loaf’). Thank you notes for Christmas were always posted before New Years.
Now, entering that murky but decidedly threatening realm dubbed ‘the real world,’ I find it mercilessly bereft of etiquette, and I have absolutely no recourse.
I graduated college in June with a degree in Art History and have found myself virtually if expensively unemployable. Deciding not to go straight to grad school and not being investment banker material, I began to apply for entry-level administrative jobs at museums. I have been applying for nine months, trolling museum websites every few days between classes and internships, then full time at home after I graduated. Nine months worth of applications adds up; I would say I have applied for roughly eighty jobs.
I have been officially rejected by two of them.
It has been a long road since January, when my peers and supervisors at my college museum were assuring me I was destined to get a great job. I started out hopeful, even though the word 'recession' began to flicker on the edges of my consciousness. There were fewer jobs, and arts budgets were being cut. I still had faith.
Every week I would fire out more applications. Writing a single cover letter would eat up hours. I tried to go with a form letter: one for development positions, another for education positions, etc. I found that was a lot like a technique I tried to use in grade-school for my thank you notes: “Dear ___, Thank you for the ___. I really love it.” The form method in both cases flopped.
Each cover letter I would send was an interesting façade of fact and enticement covering outright desperation. It is true, I have good qualifications, but what I could not say outright was how I wanted a job so badly that I would work longer and harder than anyone else just to prove it.
One museum rejected me in a single line of email text: the position has been filled. Another sent me a form rejection, thanking me for my interest though they could not at this time offer me the position. I clung to this rejection as so much kinder than the first. By now, however, I would gladly welcome anything as short as the first. Key word: anything.
The logical side of my brain tells me that the human resources departments cannot possibly keep track of all applicants and coordinate mass rejection. This side of my brain also seems to laugh wryly and say, “Welcome to the real world, little girl.” I am not particularly fond of that side of my brain of late.
After all, I tortured myself over each cover letter: how to appeal most articulately, how to show my talents, how to stand out in the crowd. My resume is my little masterpiece, recording the things I have worked so hard to accomplish: awards, honors, magna cum laude, experience in the field.
The image of that resume languishing in someone’s email trashcan breaks my heart, but then, as an art history major, I am probably overdramatic with my images.
I walked around my college campus with an intoxicating self-assuredness. I understand that it is part of the deal to be squashed back down to where I belong: the absolute bottom of the food-chain, the new college-grad. I have found that the word “internship” in fact translates out of the erudite dialect of museums into a reality of unpaid, well-qualified labor.
Unlike most commencement addresses promise, I am abundantly aware how I cannot change the world, since I can’t seem to find an opening. I do not want to be an investment banker: I want to work in a museum. I want to talk to people about art. I want to communicate to my own generation how art is a record of what makes us human. I want to help others feel the new-love butterflies that I feel when I look at El Greco’s “View of Toledo.” I want to start an outreach program to fund the livelihood of students who would have internships at the Met but cannot afford to live in Manhattan. I want to break the closed socioeconomic circle of the art world, because as I see it, art belongs to us all. I have faith. I have a mission.
I just don’t have a job.
Note from Dylan
Shortly after I graduated college, I sat down on my bed and wrote an essay called “The Courtesy of Rejection.” A lifelong Newsweek reader, I had written it specifically for their column “My Turn,” in which guest authors (read: the rest of us pedestrians) submit short essays about particular life experiences. I thought even if they never acknowledged my existence, they’d prove my point, so that would be some consolation.
A month and a half later, about three weeks before the economy collapsed, I got a call from an editor saying they’d like to publish the essay. I met with a team to do a photo-shoot a few days after that (no, seriously—a photo shoot), and I worked closely with an editor to perfect the essay for print. It wasn’t just the idea of national publication that made me deliriously happy—actually being paid to write seemed like some sort of miracle—but that museum directors might read it, deduce I was brilliant, and hire me. I signed the contract and faxed it in, believing everything was about to start going right.
(Cue the dire music.)
Three days before the essay was set to be published, one of the senior editors cut it without any explanation. The editor with whom I had been working told me over the phone. She was very kind as I tried (and failed) not to cry and suggested maybe taking a different direction with the essay, but I think we both knew that I wasn’t going to be published in the magazine. I had spent the last few months (and would yet spend several more) being rejected, but that one I think was the most painful from that year.
Understandably, my readership of Newsweek ended abruptly. Don’t get me wrong: I mourn for the print media, but my attitude towards that particular magazine became distinctly unsympathetic. My friends, bless their hearts, didn’t ask when the essay I had been so ecstatic to have published would appear, and I didn’t have the heart left to tell them that it never would.
I thought of that essay recently, more than a year now into the job I eventually got. I knew it was a bad fit even while I was interviewing, but when the offer came, I bounced off the walls anyway, because it was the opposite of rejection—finally. So now, many paradigm shifts later, I proudly publish one of my original essays.
Take that, Newsweek.
Monday, April 5, 2010
To Go—Bravely or Otherwise
During high school, I developed a weird little ritual, which I enacted every time an in-class essay was assigned. Generally speaking, as soon as the assignment was on the board or handed out, my classmates would begin scribbling furiously. At the time, I think we all knew that the exercise of in-class essay writing was part preparation, part adrenaline, and part bullshit. Fortunately for most of us, we were consummate bullshit artists. As they began writing, though, I would just sit. I don’t even remember if I would read the assignment, but I do remember the act of simply doing nothing. And one thought would cross my mind:
What if I just didn’t do this?
It was an uncharacteristically rebellious thought for me—especially in light of the fact that my favorite classes in high school were the classes in which these in-class essays were assigned. For whatever reason, though, I always felt the need to sit still for a few minutes and consider my alternatives. I knew in the most literal sense that no, the world would not end if I did not pick up my pen and begin to wax pretentious about the phallic significance of this or that (one teacher in particular had the reputation of giving an A to anyone who could find anything remotely penis-like in a passage of text). Many students in my school, though, myself included, believed in some sense that some world would in fact fall of its axis or explode in a flurry of singed Hemingway pages if we did not pass muster. Personal Armageddon is a miraculous motivator. After all, a paper wasn’t a paper: a paper was a grade, a grade was a transcript, a transcript was a college acceptance or rejection, and college… well, we didn’t really know what college was short of “monumentally important” for some obscure reason. Our priorities may have been completely wacked out, but it wasn’t a coincidence that our school could brag about a clean sweep of the Cal universities and Ivies alike—no matter if their graduates were emotional and adrenal messes when we got out.
It is in this context that my few moments of perspective were particularly out of character. Needless to say, though, after I took those few minutes, my adrenaline would kick in and I would begin writing frantically. Alas for missed opportunities.
My oldest sister told me once that there is a very well marked border between brave and stupid. She was referring specifically to an ill-advised bike ride I took once that left me hypothermic in the fetal position on my floor, but I think she’d be willing to extend the statement to a broader context. I would, however, pose a question: if you aren’t near that well-marked border, if there are no landmarks (“Welcome to Stupid—Population: Regrettably High”), how do you know when the ground you’re metaphorically standing on is brave or stupid?
All of my in-class essay exercises in latent bravery came back to me this weekend while I was on the road. A large family gathering had necessitated a car-swap scenario that had me driving my grandfather’s SUV back out to their house in Lexington. Not owning a car myself, the act of driving has become a rare high for me—it hints at an autonomy and independence I don’t ordinarily have. I have borrowed that particular SUV, an ancient and noisy gas-guzzler, many times to drive north back to school to ski or see friends. And on this recent Sunday night, I found myself in that car again, windows down and radio up, pointing north on I-95. And that traitorous thought came back after years of dormancy:
What if I just didn’t do this?
What if I didn’t take the exit towards my grandparents’ house? What if I just struck out north and left everything behind? The idea was as intoxicating as it was implausible.
In a weird way, over the last couple of months, my thinking has changed. It’s not so much the where anymore that is the draw—it’s the act of going and the fact of gone that you leave in your wake. Another adult who’s been at this longer than I have told me recently that maybe it is brave to be out on my own, working every day, not really liking my job: doing the hard thing every day, even though it’s hard, is brave. As I hit the turn signal on Sunday night with an emphatic swear, I didn’t feel brave. I felt like a coward as I exited towards Lexington, and the feeling of freedom stayed on I-95 and headed north without me.
I used to be an exclusively goal-oriented person. The promise of where I wanted to go was the fuel that got me there. After a couple rough years of economic realities, though, my intended destination is starting to waver. All sorts of questions are invading and eroding my certainty, the most corrosive of which is: What if what I think I want will not actually make me happy?
In high school, I drank the cool aid and pushed myself to the point of breaking—but I got what I wanted: the acceptance letter to the school that had fueled me the whole way. No matter what I was thinking at the beginning of class, I always turned in the essay at the end. Now, with my faith in my goals faltering, I’m stalling on the way there.
The high school chapter of conventional wisdom more or less worked for me. The twenty-something chapter says that you get a job, you pay your bills, you apply to grad school. Essentially, you do your time and work towards what you want. Sometimes I wonder, though, if what I want takes into consideration the common models of wisdom, or if what I want is trapped inside the common models.
Yes, it would be stupid to abandon job, apartment, and possessions and pretty much commit grand theft auto with my grandfather’s ’95 Explorer. Perhaps bravery for the sake of bravery is stupid. The ‘bravery’ that tempts me always seems to be reactionary: I want to use the convention in my life as a push-off to launch myself in the other direction. It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that what I’m launching myself into will make me happy, or that the act of launching makes me brave. So I always turn in the essay, I always exit towards Lexington on Sunday nights, and I am praying that whatever qualifies staying the course—bravery or stupidity—will eventually be worth it.
It is comforting to know also that north isn't going anywhere.
What if I just didn’t do this?
It was an uncharacteristically rebellious thought for me—especially in light of the fact that my favorite classes in high school were the classes in which these in-class essays were assigned. For whatever reason, though, I always felt the need to sit still for a few minutes and consider my alternatives. I knew in the most literal sense that no, the world would not end if I did not pick up my pen and begin to wax pretentious about the phallic significance of this or that (one teacher in particular had the reputation of giving an A to anyone who could find anything remotely penis-like in a passage of text). Many students in my school, though, myself included, believed in some sense that some world would in fact fall of its axis or explode in a flurry of singed Hemingway pages if we did not pass muster. Personal Armageddon is a miraculous motivator. After all, a paper wasn’t a paper: a paper was a grade, a grade was a transcript, a transcript was a college acceptance or rejection, and college… well, we didn’t really know what college was short of “monumentally important” for some obscure reason. Our priorities may have been completely wacked out, but it wasn’t a coincidence that our school could brag about a clean sweep of the Cal universities and Ivies alike—no matter if their graduates were emotional and adrenal messes when we got out.
It is in this context that my few moments of perspective were particularly out of character. Needless to say, though, after I took those few minutes, my adrenaline would kick in and I would begin writing frantically. Alas for missed opportunities.
My oldest sister told me once that there is a very well marked border between brave and stupid. She was referring specifically to an ill-advised bike ride I took once that left me hypothermic in the fetal position on my floor, but I think she’d be willing to extend the statement to a broader context. I would, however, pose a question: if you aren’t near that well-marked border, if there are no landmarks (“Welcome to Stupid—Population: Regrettably High”), how do you know when the ground you’re metaphorically standing on is brave or stupid?
All of my in-class essay exercises in latent bravery came back to me this weekend while I was on the road. A large family gathering had necessitated a car-swap scenario that had me driving my grandfather’s SUV back out to their house in Lexington. Not owning a car myself, the act of driving has become a rare high for me—it hints at an autonomy and independence I don’t ordinarily have. I have borrowed that particular SUV, an ancient and noisy gas-guzzler, many times to drive north back to school to ski or see friends. And on this recent Sunday night, I found myself in that car again, windows down and radio up, pointing north on I-95. And that traitorous thought came back after years of dormancy:
What if I just didn’t do this?
What if I didn’t take the exit towards my grandparents’ house? What if I just struck out north and left everything behind? The idea was as intoxicating as it was implausible.
In a weird way, over the last couple of months, my thinking has changed. It’s not so much the where anymore that is the draw—it’s the act of going and the fact of gone that you leave in your wake. Another adult who’s been at this longer than I have told me recently that maybe it is brave to be out on my own, working every day, not really liking my job: doing the hard thing every day, even though it’s hard, is brave. As I hit the turn signal on Sunday night with an emphatic swear, I didn’t feel brave. I felt like a coward as I exited towards Lexington, and the feeling of freedom stayed on I-95 and headed north without me.
I used to be an exclusively goal-oriented person. The promise of where I wanted to go was the fuel that got me there. After a couple rough years of economic realities, though, my intended destination is starting to waver. All sorts of questions are invading and eroding my certainty, the most corrosive of which is: What if what I think I want will not actually make me happy?
In high school, I drank the cool aid and pushed myself to the point of breaking—but I got what I wanted: the acceptance letter to the school that had fueled me the whole way. No matter what I was thinking at the beginning of class, I always turned in the essay at the end. Now, with my faith in my goals faltering, I’m stalling on the way there.
The high school chapter of conventional wisdom more or less worked for me. The twenty-something chapter says that you get a job, you pay your bills, you apply to grad school. Essentially, you do your time and work towards what you want. Sometimes I wonder, though, if what I want takes into consideration the common models of wisdom, or if what I want is trapped inside the common models.
Yes, it would be stupid to abandon job, apartment, and possessions and pretty much commit grand theft auto with my grandfather’s ’95 Explorer. Perhaps bravery for the sake of bravery is stupid. The ‘bravery’ that tempts me always seems to be reactionary: I want to use the convention in my life as a push-off to launch myself in the other direction. It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that what I’m launching myself into will make me happy, or that the act of launching makes me brave. So I always turn in the essay, I always exit towards Lexington on Sunday nights, and I am praying that whatever qualifies staying the course—bravery or stupidity—will eventually be worth it.
It is comforting to know also that north isn't going anywhere.
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