Making it Work

2010-10-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

It makes sense that I started to work at a school at the start of last fall, the first fall I would have continued on with my life without new class schedules and teachers, something I thought I wanted since high school when I waited for vacations and weekends like a man wandering in the desert looks for water or a drunk girl in Brooklyn looks for a cute dude with tattoos and cocaine. And I guess it makes sense that I left right at the start of summer. Working at that college was one more year of education, nothing more or less.

Leaving when I did allowed me to have one of the best summers--probably the best summer--I've ever had.

I rode my bike for work, looping around Brooklyn with sandwiches and smoothies for production assistants and retail associates, listening to Fugazi and sitting in the park in my down time reading books and drinking iced coffee.

I interned at Nerve over the summer, putting together some fun pieces and talking to some interesting people, producing work with such wit and integrity as Sex Advice from Bike Messengers. (Not that Nerve isn't great. It is. And not that it doesn't publish work of wit and integrity. It does. But with always being on call for the delivery company and the tattoo mag, I didn't have quite as much time and energy to devote to it as I would like.)

I've spent a lot of time talking about tattoos--traveling to Boston for their convention, speaking to artists from across the country about their work and their industry, having phone conversations with tattooed fine artists and lead singers from bands I've loved since I was 17. Every month, I talk about the industry's history with the legendary Bowery Stan.

Work and life are good. I did a team race where we rode around New York with a boom box blasting dressed like apocalyptic hellions. We won.

I rode out to Fort Tilden beach every Sunday with huge groups of friends, swimming for hours, and eating strawberries and drinking 4Loko.

I rode from Philly to a lake somewhere far out in PA, went night swimming, and keg drinking. I was an extra for a movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and got paid too much to sit around with my friends in a church basement.

And if I get my check from the magazine tomorrow, I'll go to Atlanta for the weekend.
Either way, I go to California for a long bike ride and some exploring (SF to LA) on Monday.

And now it is really fall and maybe, once again, it's time to really think about what to do and why.

2010-05-03T21:48:00.000-07:00

Leaving School One Year After Graduation

Graduation wasn't a celebration for me last year. Saying goodbye to my professors, my peers, my work-study position coworkers, the security guard, and the facilities workers was a sad affair. I walked twenty blocks and grabbed a concrete from the Shake Shack, but not even frozen custard could quell my dread. I wandered around New York confused and lonely, went home, got drunk.

The slump lasted for months. I applied to jobs, got no response. I got one response, was told to pay a finger printing fee for the NY Department of Education, and to come in for a series of interviews to tutor kids in Brooklyn. I was told the job was a sure thing. It wasn't. I worked as an assistant to a 72-year-old novelist and as a bike delivery person. I fell off my bicycle and smashed my face. I went back to work 2 days later with black eyes.

A full-time position back at school seemed like a godsend, but I took the job with hesitation anyway. I liked riding my bike. I liked my 72-year-old novelist friend who sometimes paid me to eat lunch with him or to go stay in the Hamptons and who, above all, was the kindest, strangest person I'd ever met.

Still, I was grateful for the benefits and the regular schedule. Things got sour along the way and when my boss questioned whether I liked the job in a half joking way, I told it to him straight. My legs were shaking when I told him I was going to put in my resignation. I was not relieved. I did not feel strong. I felt like an insolent child, forgetting what was so wrong to begin with.

But things fall into place. I got a freelance writing job at a tattoo magazine the day after I quit. I got a call back for an internship while I was interviewing at the tattoo magazine. A boy on the street liked my tattoos and asked me if I wanted a job at a high end retail shop (see, haters, instead of hindering employment, tattoos are helping me to secure it). I have two delivery shifts again.

So, leaving school isn't easy this time. But it is easier. It's time for me to move on...to something. And the work won't be easy by any means and it won't be as comfortable, but it will be more fulfilling. And, eventually, I'll figure something out.

2010-04-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

The New York Times Loves the Obvious

I get so many letters and phone calls from so many companies about my student loan debt that I have begun to consider myself an evasion expert. Today, my school called me to discuss my repayment options. I thought about telling them that they should be paying me more for the clerical work at my liberal arts college that my liberal arts degree prepared me for.

Today, NYT's college supplement highlighted some enlightening information: students graduating from for-profit private institutions who did not receive financial help from their parents graduate with the highest amount of debt.

A clever commenter, Rudiger in Jersey, considered the plus side of what I often refer to as my soul-crushing debt. Those of us who took out loans to fund our education, tended to finish in less time than those who did not have years of monthly payments in their future. This could be a blessing or a curse. I barrelled through school at full speed because I was working 50+ hours a week towards the end and thought that the completion of my education would bring a welcome relief. Also, if I reduced my course load, I would render myself ineligible for various forms of financial aid and if I dropped out, I would be forced to begin the repayment process. This left little time to think about moving forward or to take the time to rethink what I was going to school to do.

Rudiger also noted that students graduating with debt were forced to be more realistic about work opportunities and financial situations in general. This is very true and I have found myself very fortunate in some ways since graduating. I have found work and continue to find it. I have no illusions about supporting myself as an artist or writer or going on to become an academic. But isn't it sad that I took out loans to be able to go to school and pursue my dreams and that these loans sometimes hinder me in that pursuit?

At 18, I wish my parents had been more honest with me about our financial situation. We were experiencing a downward class shift that would eventually lead my father to live in a trailer in Nebraska. I would have bitched and moaned if they instructed me to forgo my private education and my Brooklyn loft life. I may not have listened, but I might have if they told me how much money I would have saved by going to state school and living with one of them.

And maybe I wouldn't have listened at first, but perhaps I would have come around after having negative bank account balances, living in a condemned building, and subsisting on rice and beans for a few months. Or maybe I wouldn't have.

But conversations about planning your life and dealing with debt need to be an ongoing discussion between parents and children, educators and students. And the conversation needs to happen well before a loan exit interview once college is over.

2010-04-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

I guess I've fulfilled my own prophecy...time to get some skills

My wheel of my bike stops spinning at the midpoint of my commute and I am forced to carry the thing for fifteen minutes and shove it, and me, onto the crowded rush hour L train. I am fifteen minutes late and I don't want to be in conversation with my boss for the amount of time it will take to explain why. He glares at me. I glare at him. He throws thing at my desk. He sends passive aggressive e-mails. I send one word replies. I am at an impasse. My hatred of my job has turned into my boss's hatred for me.

Well, I brought it upon myself. A job I disliked because it was boring and inside and sometimes a little demeaning has become a job I hate because I am uncomfortable every moment that I am at my desk. So now what? Get the union involved? Too messy. I'm not 35 and trying to support a child. I pay $400/month for rent and live pretty cheaply. I don't need to ensure my place in a hostile work environment to support myself.

But, as much as I have told myself that I am above this job, I am not above it at all. I have a Liberal Arts degree. McSweeney's, in their normal mocking tone, published a good humor piece today about what that boils down to: nothing. Though this is not exactly news to anyone, McSweeney's tends to remind me of my plight in new and interesting ways on a daily basis.

Now that it dawns on me that I pretty much must quit my job, I am beginning to think of how nice and easy it has been to have a steady paycheck and health insurance and how struggling again will be so much less comfortable. I've applied everywhere and for everything, gotten a few freelance writing gigs that will throw me some peanuts and have been getting delivery shifts. I can make it work--but I can't do it forever.

So, it's time to acquire some skills. I don't think I could even get a job as a barista. A CUNY school for some computer science classes seems like a good call. Here's hoping...

2010-04-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

American Idiot: When You're Not Quite Sure Who the Enemy Is

My scenic artist friend who helped punk up the St. James theater for the Green Day musical gave me a ticket to go see American Idiot last night. Among mostly people of my age (mid-to-late twenties to early thirties), many of whom were pretty heavily tattooed with gauged ears, or large ear holes indicating that their ears were once gauged, I couldn't help but wonder who the show was actually for. Is Green Day's new material relevant to any one at all? Their music hasn't matured with their fan base and it seems, to me at least, that they're probably a bit too old to attract the teeny bopper crowd.

Anyway, I grew up on Green Day and I'm assuming that most of the crowd did too. I didn't expect much and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. The actors were good, their voices well-trained and well-suited for the pop punk they belted. The set was smart, and was probably the real star of the production. Televisions dotted the walls from floor to ceiling, broadcasting snippets of Family Guy, dream sequences, and news reports from the ground in Iraq. The wall projected a bus ride from the mundane suburban hell most of our protagonists were fleeing in favor of the big city.

The requisite characters were covered--punk turned army boy, punk turned heroin addict, and punk turned ill-prepared father. The protagonist, Johnny (aforementioned punk turned heroin addict), laments and laments, but his gripes are poignantly hollow. He sounds like the narrator of the "Detachable Penis" song. He knows he is ridiculous, but he can't help being sad. He has no passion, no direction, except for a girl who he has sex with and tries to stab, whose name he later forgets.

When she has gone, and his friends who have not stayed behind to raise a child or gone off to war after watching a television commercial, have also mysteriously vanished, Johnny decides to kick his dope habit. He puts on a white collared shirt and takes a desk job.

You'd think it would be the loss of everyone close to him and the debilitating heroin addiction that would send Johnny home, but the desk job was his rock bottom.

A few days under the fluorescent lights sent him back to the suburban wasteland to be reunited with friend turned father and friend turned amputee. After soliloquies and songs directed towards the "enemy," there is no vanquishing. Raised fists and anarchy symbols and safety pins flash on the television screens in neon colors, but these kids don't care to talk about workers' rights (seems they never really work). The moral in the end, I guess, is that they have each other...and pop punk.

So, the plot was a bit muddled and it was a bit cheesy (down to the chance to graffiti the wall downstairs...it felt like a vacation to a bathroom in Brooklyn), but it was entertaining and a lot of it was spot on. The final message was one of target-less rebellion--the urge to fight the good fight regardless of whether or not you can answer the question, "what are we fighting for?".

2010-04-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

Atlantic Media took the NY Times Internship piece to heart and is not only paying their current batch of interns, but is also offering retroactive pay to those who worked last year, reports Jeff Bercovici at the DailyFinance. Too bad most of the work is located in DC.

In NYC, Buzzfeed is offering some cash for what looks like it might be a pretty cool viral media internship.

Scallywag and Vagabond is looking for unpaid interns who are willing to devote 20 hours a week to the publication.

One prospective intern decided to take those Scallywags to task, posting a response:

RE:Widely Read Cultural Mag seeks Intern(s) (NYC)

Date: 2010-04-06, 5:38PM EDT
Reply to: see below

When trying to impress us young, starry-eyed college students with your media prowess in order for us to willingly give our time away to you unpaid, it would do well to have someone check your grammar.

Who needs training from a "professional" who doesn't know how to use commas?
----------------------

Maybe there will be an intern uprising, a revolution of the inexperienced. Until then, I'm racking up the delivery shifts and thinking about heading to work over at the Cupcake Truck for some care-free summertime fun.

2010-04-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

An upcoming event about re-imagining higher education, brought to you by those wonderful feminist radicals at Bluestockings NYC:

172 Allen Street
New York, NY 10002
Wednesday, April 21st @ 7PM - Free
Reading: Anya Kamenetz "DIY U"
Over 90% of U.S. high school graduates aspire to college, but tuition is too costly for many - making higher education particularly inaccessible to those who will soon predominate: the first-generation, the low-income, and students of color. Join Anya Kamenetz for a reading from "DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education," a resource guide and much-needed call to rethink higher education. Kamenetz is a staff writer for Fast Company magazine and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her contributions to "Generation Debt."

2010-04-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

Will Work For...Work?

Being a scourer of media job postings and a recent graduate, I am well aware that no real "entry level" jobs are to be had. There are internships and there are jobs requiring experience. Interns often go without pay or receive meager stipends. As a lower middle class college student who needed to pay for food and rent, I never could justify the time expenditure. As a lower middle class graduate with a job that I hate, I wish that I had found a way to make it work. Steven Greenhouse wrote in the NY Times this week, that not only do internships reinforce class stratification, they may be illegal in many instances.

Some internships make sense. Writing at an esteemed publication helps an intern gain experience and clips. This is true in many other industries but, more and more often, I see "administrative" or "data-entry" internships at small businesses. All that is is free labor.

Case in point:

Part-Time Sales Internship (Park Slope)

Date: 2010-04-06, 2:49PM EDT
Reply to: job-zyjxs-1679272469@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

Brooklyn clothing boutique seeks friendly, energetic intern for potential hire to join our retail sales team 2-3 days a week. We specialize in vintage and new clothing/jewelry and are looking for someone with a passion for fashion and a strong interest in learning the inner-workings of a small boutique. Position is un-paid, but STRONG potential for internship to turn to a paid part-time position if candidate is the right fit. Immediate start date.

Duties/ qualities include:
- Personable, outgoing, and interactive with customers
- Detail oriented a MUST
- Point of Sale and cash register operation
- Assist in maintaining store image
- General store management (inventory, cleaning, organizing)
- Website/Social networking site management
- Creative and proactive; always thinking of new ways to grow business and generate sales
- Prior retail sales experience ideal, but NOT a must

Must be available to work weekends.

Email resume and cover letter in body of email.

--------------------------

You, too, can get your foot in the door as an unpaid retail associate. The NYPD Cadet program seems like more and more of a good deal.

2010-03-30T16:42:00.001-07:00

Happiness v Health Insurance

A year ago, I was a month away from graduating from college. I was finishing my "senior work" or undergraduate thesis, churning out articles for the student newspaper, and wondering what I was going to do with my life. My health insurance was about to go. My work study award was over and my only work prospect seemed to be riding my bike in circles, delivering food for money.

And I was happier. I was progressing, reaching towards some goal. I was bound to go somewhere. Six months or so later, that somewhere was right back to the school I graduated from at a desk job. Benefits, a relaxed work atmosphere, some good coworkers, a chilled-out 10-6. And another six months later, I began to think about quitting everyday.

Everyone I know who has a job, be it bike messenger or chair warmer, hates it.

Money can't bring happiness. Winning awards doesn't necessarily do the trick, either. Apparently, according to David Brooks' Op-ed column this week, happiness has to do with personal relationships. And while the connection between happiness and income is tenuous after a point, this does not hold true when it comes to marriage, which he claims increases happiness as much as $100,000 a year would.

While this might be obvious to the more enlightened (and chronically poor, yet not unhappy among us), this article deeply impacted a woman who I truly admire. An ex-consultant, come academic, who has worked her way up through the University ranks. She is an incredible teacher who has literally pulled so many people I know personally up by their bootstraps and inspired them to become something. Myself included, sort of. We talked about how much I hated my job on Monday. On Tuesday, she came to my desk, telling me that I absolutely have to follow my dreams. That nothing is rational. That we must do whatever it is that makes us happy.

So what do you do when you're not quite sure what that even is? Riding my bike all summer would probably make me a hell of a lot happier than sitting in this desk. But I would most certainly be unhappy if I broke my collarbone and did not have health insurance and an alternative source of income.

We need to be happy and pragmatic. Is that even possible?

2010-03-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

Reform, What Have You Done For Me Lately?

So, the Health Care Reform bill. It's exciting. It's historic and groundbreaking. It's a disappointment. It's not pro-choice. It's not everything that was promised or hoped for. I've read interesting and cogent critiques from all sides today and I'm sure you have too.

One exciting development for my demographic is the extension of health care coverage under a guardian's plan until the age of 26, easing the transition from school to gainful employment. Obviously, not even everyone falling into this age bracket benefits--one has to have a parent/guardian with health care coverage, and said parent/guardian must be willing to include their offspring under their plan. But it's a huge step. And that's how I feel about the bill as a whole.

I have waited ten hours to see a doctor in a clinic just to be told that she could not give me a blood test in good conscience because she couldn't be sure how much it would cost. I've elected to not visit a hospital after sustaining concussion. I've seen more than one friend opt for Super Glue instead of stitches after a nasty fall. More than one of my friends has accumulated the same amount of debt I did over all four years of my college education because of a bike tire meeting a pothole after one miscalculated pedal stroke. More than one of us would have had a different experience if this bill had been passed. And that is something.

The student loan bill that's to pass along with HCR is less exciting to me. The bill raises the amount of money provided by Federal Pell Grants. The maximum amount provided by the Pell grant is set to go up to $5,975 by 2017. It's currently at $5,350. The $625 increase seems like a paltry sum compared to the overall cost of education, especially over a period of six years. In fact, taking tuition increases into consideration, those applying for financial aid in 2017 will probably be no better off than those applying today.

At least it'll be easier to pay off the loans without an additional 40K of debt from medical bills.

2010-03-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

Why Doesn't Anyone Under the Age of 35 Want a Real Job?

There's been a lot of talk about hipsters on food stamps on the Internet in the past few days. Let's ignore the what is a hipster question (even though we all know the answer is anyone under 35 who is not an investment banker or a religious zealot). Let's ignore the fact that a lot of the attacks waged at these people are actually indicting these people for socially responsible behavior (buying local, supporting small business). Let's ignore the class issues that it brings up (what is privilege?).

What this article really makes me consider is the fact that no one my age wants to bunker down and get a real job. We all want to go off and ride our bikes and go volunteer on organic farms or start pickling companies or tend to a beehive. We want to blog about cupcakes and maybe, someday, publish a cupcake cookbook or open a cupcake shop. We want to write and do art. Isn't that what everyone's parents wanted to do before time and circumstance made most of them settle down?

It sounds awful. It sounds immature and ridiculous. "Buck up, Buddy," I think. "Get yourself to work for eight hours a day. It's not so bad. Your parents and those before them did it. You only have another 45 years if you're lucky...or, if you can't hack it, go get a teaching certificate or something, etc. etc."

But something in me reels against it. I've been at this desk job (admittedly, one that is kind of ideal) since October and I realize I was happier working on my bike. The responsible person in me should be thankful for having any job at all, for insurance, for stability. But the living, breathing person says, "Rent is cheap, ride a bike, try to write, and see what happens."

In the end, if we try to suspend ourselves in this prolonged adolescence in this Never Never Land of a city, we all might end up old, penniless, and jobless in a state of self-induced downward mobility. Or will we, inevitably, succumb to the grind where we whittle away the hours by keeping a blog no one will really read, or looking at street cam photos a coworker e-mailed of a parade uptown, or staring at the setting sun through the ninth floor skylight?

2010-03-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

DIY Education

Everyone knows that you can live the dream. You can earn a BA at home in your footie pajamas or sitting at your computer desk in your Payless pumps while "working" for the man.

This alternative mode of education is interesting on some levels and I'm sure some universities offer online initiatives of similar quality to their on-site degrees (The New School takes a lot of pride and its online offerings and I would wager that students taking these classes put in the same--if not more--work than their on-site counterparts). But I am wary of the for-profit ventures I see advertised every time I log in to Facebook.

Some online models of education do have promise. MIT opencourseware and iTunesU let us all learn algorithms from MIT's finest or Philosophy from the professors over at Oxford without trekking to Massachusetts or the UK, having stellar SAT scores, or the cash to fork over for tuition. Of course, you also don't get the degree, the credentials, or the associate benefits. But isn't education about knowledge?

Also interesting is the new abundance of community based forms of education. Skillshares are becoming more common in my part of the world and something in me gushes over the idea. Brooklyn Brainery offers classes for $25 on topics ranging from gardening to meteorology. Classmates pool their knowledge in discussions mediated by class leaders. Brokelyn features those good folks as well as classes from places like the Brooklyn Kitchen,where things like local food and home brewing meet alternative education.

Brooklyn Skillshare and others such as Grand Opening have been hosting days and weekends of communal classes where students are asked to barter skills or cheap, readily available goods. Classes have included kombucha brewing and kite making.

The Really, Really Free Market has been doing this sort of thing for years as part of its work towards a new economic model: sharing.

Shouldn't the sharing of knowledge be what education is all about? Is the answer in reworking the federal loan system or in reworking education as a whole? I wouldn't hold my breath for either, but the answer is probably both.

2010-03-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

How Does the Internet Impact Subculture?

Something I've been thinking about a lot recently is how the Internet changes the dynamics of punk or alternative subcultures. I realize that as a preteen and teenager my experience of music and the whole "scene" was very much shaped by the Internet. I looked to music blogs more than the record store. Wikipedia informed me of the multiplicity of genres and forms. I learned about shows and clothes and everything else on message boards. I made e-zines instead of regular zines. This has interesting implications on a scene that is very much based on social interactions and physical demarcation.

The Internet has made living an alternative lifestyle easier. In many ways, it embodies the DIY ethos. It questions authority. For better or worse, we're all encouraged to go out there and say anything about anything. My blog can be your life and so forth. Think about veganism. Back in the day, curious vegans had to rely on things like the Hippycore Krew's Soy Not Oi! zines and books for recipes and ideas. Today, someone interested in an alternative diet can find a recipe for whatever flavor of vegan cupcake, donut, or whoopie pie their cruelty-free heart desires. The same is true of the green movement in general, bicycling, sexuality, and any number of "alternative" interests.

The Internet opens up everything, allowing for alternative models of education, of courtship, of work. What remains unclear is what alternatives work and could possibly offer ways to overthrow the old models of being and doing.

2010-03-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

March forth; it's March Fourth.

The organizers of this round of education protests are at least poetic. While this particular outcry originated in California due to severe budget cuts and a mid-year tuition increase, today is a national day of action demanding that education be treated as a right, not a privilege. In California, and across the country, schools have faced hard economic times since well before the current recession. Students and faculty across the country are asking representatives to take a look at where their money is going. And where could it be better spent than our educational institutions? (A cheesy point, but really, schools are at least more important than prisons and are probably on par with health care)

The thing that makes me step back here is that students at private universities are protesting (and the ones at my university seem to never stop). If a public system fails to serve you, it seems one is obliged to protest in some form. If a private system you willingly feed money into fails to serve you, wouldn't the obvious answer be to speak with your wallet as opposed to your poster? Isn't continuing to pay tuition a form of assent? These students want more from their university, but private education is--and must be--corporate. Is there any way to resolve the business nature of a school and the radical underpinnings of what some students yearn for from their university?

2010-02-23T22:45:00.000-08:00

To Be or Not to Be a Graduate Student

It's funny how when I was in school, less than a year ago, I would stay up all night doing work and wake up early and go to work and then class and do it all again. I read so many books and wrote so many papers, completed an 80 page thesis on women and bicycles that was part historical research, part personal narrative, and part anthropological ethnography. I wrote newspaper articles and stayed at closings well into the night. Now, I find it hard to complete anything.

It's a lot harder to find motivation without concrete deadlines and without the real promise of constructive criticism by a professor. A recent article in The Chronicle, "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go," by Thomas Benton, enumerates a lot of recent college grad's reasons for wanting to return to school. Mine mirror most of what Benton lists, and I have some others.

School provides qualitative (and often quantitative) assessments of work and effort. If a student can clearly understand the goals of an assignment or the wants of a particular professor, they can receive a good score. Each assignment or class is a system with a clear objective. Once a student figures out the constraints, there is a logical plan of action. If it is executed correctly, the student receives an A. It mirrors the idea of games applied to life that Ken Wark addresses in his work. Often, as has been the case with all of my various jobs, the workplace does not offer this logic.

This lack is especially true for those of us who would like to write. Not only will my work not be graded, but most likely it will not even be read. In college, professional writers not only read, but often lauded my work or offered constructive criticism of it. When I wrote for the newspaper, my peers read my work and often talked to me about it. Now, I write things and send them into the void.

School provided some sort of purpose. I was doing something to further myself. Now, I work to live and see little opportunity for advancement in my current field. At the end of all of my assignments while in college, graduation gleamed ahead of me. Now, forty plus years of work loom ahead.

What should weigh most heavily on my mind is the loan debt I accumulated in school. Because I work at a university, grad school would be free and my loans would be automatically deferred. But without clear direction, I feel like going to grad school would be a waste of time and energy--and also opportunity. While I did always feel like I was working towards something while in school, between course work and other work, I hardly found the time to envision a future. I feel like grad school would fill a void, but I would come out just as confused and directionless. Benton talks about the declining amount of jobs in a market already defined by desperation. I see this first hand when I skim through 173 applications for a single part-time teaching position. Finally, I can't see myself doing this job 10-6 every day for as long as it would take me to finish a degree, so I would inevitably incur even more debt to finance it. School doesn't seem like the answer today. Maybe it will when I wake up tomorrow, because I can't seem to decide on anything.

But what I can perceive clearly is that school at one point provided me with some sort of meaning and now I have to find it elsewhere. And the question is, just as it was in May, where do I go from here?

2010-02-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

It's the lovely time of year when the country recognizes that every week, though I don't have any money, it takes a large portion of cash (that I should be using to pay off my loan debt) to be used for its own purposes. And, friends, when tax day comes, I generally end up with a chunk of change.

Well, not this year. Almost all of my Federal return is going to pay for a withholding error my employer made ($666 no less) and, this just in, NY state doesn't have enough money to send out the returns. Oh joy!

My mom will be happy about the lack of new tattoos.

2010-02-05T09:21:00.000-08:00

And more on education from the NYtimes today:

How do Parents Pay for College?

Lisa Belkin, in her NYT blog, Motherlode**, talks about the rising cost of college tuition. Her answer to the question her post's title poses: in her words, "they're not." But really, she goes on to say, they pay for most of it. She advises parents to save one third, to pay for one third while their kids are in school, and have the kids borrow the other third.

If parents have the money to provide for college expenses, it is an admirable, and wonderful thing for them to give their children the gift of education. But there is something in me that feels that it is just that--a gift, a luxury. I do not believe that parents who are struggling to make ends meet for themselves should also be burdened with the expenses of their grown up children.

For FAFSA purposes, students cannot be emancipated from their parents until the age of 25 without due cause. So, parents are expected to provide some of the cost of tuition for their children, even if they have taken six years to complete college.

Parents have a responsibility to provide for their children and, in an ideal world, to help secure the best possible future for them. But a college student is still an adult and should bear some of the financial burden that comes with attending college--especially if they do not come from a background that allows their parents to pay for the tuition easily (this means that not only will the parents' quality of life suffer, but after graduation this student will not be able to rely on their financial support as a safety net).

So, perhaps, an even better gift is the gift of experience--namely, work experience. Students should be expected to take on some of their college expenses, if only to learn how to balance work with life, to gain a sense of work ethic, to keep their drinking in check, to learn how to cook rice and beans, and how to live without a lot.

And that, in the end, is what I am grateful to my parents for. They couldn't help out too much with school and, sometimes, I wished I didn't have to have two jobs while scouring craigslist for random gigs so I could afford to pay rent and eat a peanut butter sandwich. But all of that work made me appreciate the value of money, and really made me learn how to stretch a dollar, how to prepare a good, cheap meal and how to live like a real person.

And now, as I watch my friends struggle with bills, job hunting (finding, and hating), I am thankful that the gift of education my parents gave to me was not the one that Belkin describes.

**What is with these NYT mother blogs--Belkin and Wife/Mother/Spy? I appreciate the complexities of the life of a working mother, but they are so incredibly boring, and indicative of a certain class and way of life...

2010-02-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

NY Times is always on the ball...

The Search - Back to School, as an Adjunct

Yes, there is an absolute abundance of adjunct teaching positions, NYT. That's why 50 over qualified Anthropologists applied for an opening in the Food Studies Department and over a hundred applied for a position in International Affairs... But hey, if you're looking for a little money on the side, think about teaching. You'll probably never get a call back, and if you do, you'll make about as much as you would if you got a weekend job delivering food or working at a coffee shop.

2009-08-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

So, I spent one hundred and fifteen of my dwindling dollars just after graduation to get fingerprinted for a tutoring job that ended before it began. Probably for the best. I hate children.

The next stop on the job hunt worked much better. The old man was a dream. He hugged me as soon as I walked through the door of his Alphabet city apartment. He called me his savior, not realizing he was mine. He talked to the crows outside on the trees, and once fell asleep on his bed while I proofed his work in the other room.

"I could have died just then," he said. "And I wouldn't have known."

He brought me to work with him in South Hampton, where he and his girlfriend fed me cereal and berries, water with lemon and mint, grilled vegetables, and cherry pie. I ended up on an eminent artist's private beach.

He took me to cafes sometimes and made me bill him for the hour spent eating sandwiches and talking about his many travels.

For those summer months, I divided my time between his house, organizing the office of a scholarly woman I sometimes work for, and delivering food on my bicycle.

2009-06-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I was delivering food until around midnight, when I met up with some friends to head to a party. I drank two twenty-twos of Ballantine and started to head home a little after one or one thirty because I had to work again at nine.

Next thing I remember,I woke up in my bed a few minutes after nine, my phone blaring in my ear. "Fuck, I overslept," I thought and began to feel pain coursing throughout most of my body, especially my shoulder and face. I felt like I had gotten hit by a truck and thought I had had too much to drink before realizing that I only had two beers.

It was my boss on the other end. "Heard you got hit by a cab last night. You okay?"
"Maybe. That explains a lot."
"You need your shift covered?"
"That'd be good."

I looked at my bike--bent. I looked in the mirror--blood on my face, half of which was double its normal size, a fat lip, a black eye, bruises everywhere. I'd later realize I had actually broken my face.

I've started to think that health insurance might be a good idea.

2009-06-01T23:30:00.000-07:00

The NY Times today seems to have a lot to say about my plight in life:
On assisting

The article's conclusion: "An artist is someone who refuses to work as anyone’s assistant." So, perhaps, an artist is one with enough funding to remain unemployed or enough fortitude to remain homeless.

On graduating in 2009
This year, God save us all, Twitter is our beacon of hope. NYT, didn't you exhaust the Twitter angle over a month ago?

On living in Greenpoint
Young folk moving into industrial neighborhoods is apparently still news, as are oddly situated bars and clothing stores in Brooklyn neighborhoods.

2009-06-01T23:21:00.000-07:00

The majority of my first school-free week was spent sleeping, reading The Savage Detectives (which has been on my list for two years and has, so far, been worth the wait), attempting and failing to secure the tutoring job I applied for, applying for other jobs, and drinking. I received zero responses to my applications. The weekend was spent delivering food (Friday, Saturday and Sunday, all annoyingly slow). Somewhere between, I received a facebook message from an old coworker. She asked if I was looking for work. I, of course, replied in the affirmative. Tomorrow, I start work as an assistant to a 72-year-old novelist.

2009-06-01T22:56:00.000-07:00

Though I rarely wear heels, I wore them to graduation. I wore them as I walked around Manhattan--from 12th street to Thompson, to the bank on 18th street to deposit the one hundred and fifty dollars my mother gave me, to the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park to get a concrete to drown my sorrows in, back to the subway on 14th. I wore them through Brooklyn after taking the L, to a sandwich cart my friend works at and to a bike shop where I knew another friend would be. I wore them as my iPOD was stuck on V, playing Velvet Underground for two hours as I sobbed to myself behind my sunglasses about my future and the past four years. I wore them for the at least two mile walk from the bike shop back to my apartment.

I could hardly walk by the time I got home and kicked the damn shoes off. I had blisters and my arches and toes ached. I wondered who was calling me from a 212 number (usually an office or business of some sort) as I was about to sit down.

A job. Thank God. It was a tutoring company that I had submitted an application to a month or so earlier. They had just been assigned 135 kids for the summer and were in desperate need of tutors.

"The only problem is that it says here that you expect your BA this month," the man on the phone told me.

"I just graduated three hours ago."

"Congratulations. Everything is in order then."

All I had to do was go to Downtown Brooklyn for fingerprints (and pay the state's $115 fee) and interview the next week. I went to the office the next day and got a letter to present to the Department of Education stating I was a contracted employee of EducationLink. When I asked if the position was definitely mine, I was told it was 115% guaranteed. I paid the fee, took the trip, and went through the fingerprinting process on the next business day. I waited 48 hours for the prints to clear, called the office when it opened at 9am and scheduled an interview for 3PM that day. It had been a week of trips to and from Manhattan, and from Greenpoint to Downtown Brooklyn. I had called the office at least 10 times and made one visit. At noon, while I was in the shower I missed a phone call. I got a voicemail from one of the women.

"Your interview at 3 has been canceled. There are no more children available. Again, your interview has been canceled. Feel free to call back about opportunities in the fall."

2009-06-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

I am a graduate of the class of 2009. I have just earned my BA in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Writing. In a time of economic downturn, I have spent four years earning a frivolous degree. In spite of the fact that I worked up to fifty hours a week while earning this degree, in six months I will have to start paying back my student loans. I live in New York City and have no home to move back to. My health insurance will be gone soon. I am working as a bicycle delivery person and an assistant.

I graduated well--with a 3.8 gpa, and the recognition of my department as well as four years of administrative experience and eight years of customer service experience. People congratulated me. My fellow graduates were stoked to see an end to textbooks and seminars. People wanted to party. I wanted to walk around the city and cry, maybe buy a new book if I could justify the expenditure. I could think of only three words: "Will end badly."

I refuse to work as an assistant in Midtown. I am not an experienced server. I am clumsy. I do not want to become a bartender as I have too much of a proclivity for drinking and know that staying up until four would ruin my schedule. I also probably couldn't get a bartending job because I have no experience.

So, here I am. I am a graduate of the class of 2009. I figure I should record my disappointments.

2008-08-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

Plea from a Cat Named Virtue

For the first six years they were married, my parents had no children--just a cat named PJ. They got him from a vet with a shaved and broken leg. My dad loved that cat. He always got along with the animals better than the people. Then, I was born and PJ was really resentful of sharing his crawling grounds with another creature. He swatted at me, bit me, scratched me, did the hurtful things cats can do. And my parents did the thing that parents sometimes have to do and got rid of the cat to secure the well being of their child. I wonder if my dad ever resented that.

The point of that little vignette is to maybe explain why I hated cats so much as a child and teenager. Though I don't remember PJ, I suspect I subconciously began to view animals of the feline variety as sinister beings. I never petted them, always scoffed at them when they rubbed against my leg (could have also been because they sullied all the black I wore...), thought them less loyal and loving than dogs.

When I was 17 or 18, my mom got one of those ugly sphinx cats for cheap because it *had* hair (I don't understand the logic)--hair that felt like a Brillo pad. Thin and scruffy with a triangular face, two little bald spots completed the picture. This was the worst of cats, I thought. Luckily, I didn't have to live with it.

Or I didn't have to live with it until my first apartment was condemned and I shoved myself into my mom's studio with the damn cat (Natasha) and my decrepit childhood dog (Chauncey). But the thing would rub up on me all morning when I ate my oatmeal and wake me up in the morning kissing my face. It was sort of endearing. And after that month of close proximity, I was thankful to leave the studio and stop living with my mother for the second time, but was sad to leave that sweet cat.

A few months later (or maybe a year because it was 2 apartments later), a cat crawled in through the window a day or so after I moved in. It wouldn't leave, so we named it Popcorn and bought it a litter box. After a couple weeks, we realized it had a home (our neighbors' infact) and had to make Popcorn go. After Popcorn went, I decided I really needed a cat.

I convinced my roommate and found a sweet lady on Craigslist who took in one Feral lady-cat and found herself with 8 tiny kittens a few weeks later. We took two. Lindsay named hers Dinah (a grey and white tuxedo cat) and I named mine Virtue (an orange-spotted Calico), after a Weakerthans song.

They are kamikaze cats that slip and slide all over our hardwood floors, scale to the heights of the apartment and leap down without fear. They also get hair all over my comforter, couch, and clothing.

I didn't get Virtue spayed quick enough (DO NOT DO THIS, SPAY YR CATS GOOD AND YOUNG) and she went into heat. She walked around making ungodly sounds for two days, sticking her butt into the air. I put her in water, petted her, gave her catnip, soothed her, but she would not stop. I should have felt bad for her. But I didn't. I couldn't.

And I thought about what a horrible person I must have become. I can't even love or show sympathy for a helpless, horny cat. I googled wildly--cat in heat, help!, etc.

The internet, sadly, did not help other than to find others who suffered the pain of sharing a home with a cat in heat and stories of satisfying cats with a q-tip (one person included their explanation: "It was desperate times, I hadn't slept for days, you do desperate things").

I looked at Virtue and my roommate. She offered to do it. I said I would hold her, but there are just some things I can't bring myself to do. I took in the sight of the cat and my roommate and the q-tipand we realized how ridiculous it all was and decided against the anal swab.

And Virtue looked so sad, cute though--ass in the air, ungodly purr and all.

2008-05-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

Some fiction

The Belly Button of the World

We held hands on the belly button of the world. She wanted to see the statues and who was I to refuse? I, too, wanted to see their wide noses and half-frowning lips up close. I wanted to see not just Easter Island, but the whole of Chile and the fare was reasonable.
We held hands on the Valle de la Luna. Save for the yellow signs awkwardly planted into the bone-dry sand, it was as if we really stood upon craters of the moon. We were miles away from who and what we knew. The sunset cast colors I had never before seen across the acrid land. We read Neruda aloud, “drowsy and tangled together.”
I paid no mind to her walks with another member of our tour, Roberto. He told us he was biking across the world. I laughed to her about the difficulty of this task considering the vast amount of water covering the globe. She told him she liked his biking shorts and I thought she was joking about the lack of logic in wearing spandex in the desert. I was “drunk as drunk on turpentine” off her scent—jade flower-scented perfume mingling with sweat and smoke. I paid no mind until the note in the morning. “Adios, mi amor,” followed by more elementary Spanish we learned together from audiotapes. She was gone.
I believe that Chile is the longest country. And if it is not, it certainly feels that way traveling alone and by bus. The Andes rise and fall and rise and fall and so on and so forth for days. I smelled her smell. I saw the back of her dress, her sun-streaked hazelnut hair. I would call her name out and the woman would turn around, years older or years younger, much more beautiful or much more ugly. It would happen in dreams and I would awake to rain or the snoring of other passengers, sometimes their screams.
Once, towards the end of our journey, I heard two men fighting. A corpulent man a few years older than I trying to excuse himself and an athletic man in spandex biking shorts accusing him of some sort of attack.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t see me here. I’ve been here the whole fucking time.” Spat the man in spandex biking shorts.
“L—lo siento, no intento—“ the other man stammered, and ran towards the front and eventually off of the bus as the spandex-wearing man grew closer, redder, more hostile.
Before he moved into the now empty seat, I recognized the angered man as Roberto and wondered if she gave him the slip too. He was quiet for the rest of the trip.
When we finally reached Santiago, all I could think about was getting home. I would leave her to her pursuit of geographical navels and cyclists. To love is sometimes very short and to forget is sometime shorter.
I had forgotten all about Roberto. Until I saw him being embraced and kissed by an older woman on my way to the airport.
“Mi niño! Sorry about la cabrona but what are you doing in those ridiculous shorts? You don’t even ride a bike! And also, you need to fix that button on your jacket! Aye, dios mios! You look like a hobo.”

2008-01-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

I was on the downtown F train leaving Forest Hills after a TV and Thai takeout Christmas with my mom when I decided to check out the tree at Rockefeller Center for a minute. Terrible idea I know, but I love Christmas and I didn't ever get in the spirit this year. I looked up from my book at 21st street Queensbridge and a man who I could barely makeout with my bad eyes waved. I shook my head and went back to reading about dying people and living dogs.

"Why'd you shake your head at me?"

The man was sitting next to me. I didn't say anything but I looked up at him for a second. He wasn't half bad and didn't seem more than a little crazy. It was Christmas and I guessed he had been drinking.
"Where you getting off?"
I told him and he asked if he could come. I figured going to the most populated place in the city wouldn't be too dangerous, so I said sure. He asked about the book I was reading and about my boots. He smiled at me, he smiled at the rest of the train. The homeless man in the car started yelling at him for smiling so wide. At some point, he started yelling back about his four years at Riker's Island, his methadone addiction, his life on the street. "Everyday is Christmas for me, everyday," he said.

47-50 Sts./Rockefeller Center came and went. I didn't get off. He asked me why I let it pass. I said I was going home. He asked if he could walk me. I said no, got off at Grand Central and walked to the tree by myself.

2008-01-02T08:24:00.001-08:00

Friday, the 21st, the day after my 21st. I don't remember when I went to sleep but I got to work at 10:00, got out early for the holidays and walked uptown.

A tawdry, chubby woman was pulling a man in a tan overcoat by its sleeve across Fifth Avenue. His eyes rolled back into his head. He was holding bags of Christmas presents from toy stores and clothing stores, and bags of groceries from Food Emporium. The woman let go of his sleeve and he stumbled five feet backwards almost into the Cingular store. The man who stood outside repeating "Free phones" pretended not to notice.

"He almost die. I stop him from walking in front of truck!" the woman screamed in a thick Polish accent.

A girl who works in my building was also going the same way and we both tried to tell the woman she did the right thing, she was doing the right thing. The man was swaying from side to side--leaning dangerously too far right, barely catching himself, pulling himself upright, and faltering dangerously too far left. I grabbed his arm to keep him from falling.

The woman who saved him and the woman who works in my building decided we should call the police. I called. Then, the man who was selling "free phones" decided to interject. The guy was just a junkie. If he went to the hospital, he would get arrested. His family would never get those presents. He wouldn't be home for Christmas. A few other men who didn't help us hold him, who didn't comfort the now crying Polish woman, came by and said the same thing.

But the ambulance was coming already and the man was leaned against a wall and the Polish woman wouldn't stop yelling. And how could you leave a man in that condition? Heroin addict or stroke victim he was going to get hit by a bus.

A blonde guy came and grabbed him, said "Hey buddy, come with me," and dragged him down the street.

I called to cancel the ambulance but it still came. When it did, the man and his friend had disappeared into Union Square but the bag from the toystore was still on the ground.