Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Here, There, Back Again

After taking another four day weekend, of course I came back to Midd and was productive - well, hardly. But I've reconnected with my Addison County constituents in time for tomorrow's big vote and its nice to be caught up to date, drink flavored coffee and gossip, and spend the rest of your night chatting with your mom, your spiritual advisor, and then even your artifically designated little brother - when people realize and feel your absence, I guess it signifies that you are in fact a presence.

So this GRE business. The main problem is that I don't know what constitutes a good score, I have no idea what other applicants to my program get, and even assuming that they out rank me, I am not entirely convinced that it even matters. But all in all, my scores today lined up with the best practice tests I have taken, so I guess today was representative of one of my better goes at this. After I finished (and my oh my, this is a LONG and exhaustive test at 3 hours) my test I sent the scores along to the new list: MIT, NYU, U Chicago, and Wisconsin - and without hestitation, I am not going to take this test again. In a perfect world where I have all the time, energy, and motivation to do vocab flashcards and relive horrid memories of high school algebra, I think I could tweek the numbers up a little, but realistically, any more time on this stupid test and my application essays, current class work, or extracurricular life would begin to crumble. I am not willing to give those things up right now and if I don't spend time on the app essays, I won't get in anyway and what good will slightly better test scores do? I guess the most you can hope from a standardized test is that it reflects your ability and I suppose that today's scores did. I need to wait for the final word on the writing section (it's hand scored like the AP tests), but I felt good about that it expect to do fairly well. So I suck at math, big surprise and there was only so long we could go on and pretend otherwise. At least I did better than the average GRE-taker, I guess that is inspiring :)

So a day of exhaustive GREs that didn't end in perverse and blinding drunkenness, my my, how you've matured young lady. The debate tournament bid (the official invite) should go out tonight and thus the open season for registration and email overload begins and lasts precisely two-weeks until the misery abates. Thankfully, most of this email will be diverted directly to TD O'Shea and my duties are far less rigorous and demanding. My goal is to not be stressed at this tournament, which would be a three-year first, but I don't want to have that heart-pounding running around thing going on, I want to savor, I want to laugh when things are funny, and enjoy being in the middle of an audience. The theme, rather toungue and cheekly, is "MIDD-night in the Garden of Edwin," Edwin is our benefactor. Should be great fun, the usual gourmet fare, an enforced semi-formal dresscode, a masquerade cotillion with rivers of beverage, and perhaps most importantly, a healthy gathering of Midd debaters past and present. More so than ever, I've been consciously establishing a legacy and passing down the royal oral story telling tradition to the novices. Essentially, this is the last classy hurrah in a long career... so if ever equal parts of ceremony and debaucherie were in order, Lisa's last debate tournament is surely a fitting occassion. It's exciting just the same...

Read Dan's clever little invite here

posted by lmjasinski at 11:35 PM