Month: September 2005

It’s time for me to start thinking about grad school applications again, since I still have a glimmer of hope that hasn’t been crushed yet. (It’s amazing how much mileage my morale got out of making it onto SVA’s waiting list this year.) Trying to get my act together, I’ve been sending away for course catalogs of new possibilities, and calling places to whom I’ve applied before to find out what I need to resubmit.

Now, if you’ve been following these adventures for a while (a sure indication that you’re a relative, have a high tolerance for boredom, or both), you know that I moped a lot when I didn’t get in last time, so it’s taken some pluck to give them a call again and set things in motion once more. I wanted to make sure they still had my transcripts and stuff on file, and whether anything I previously submitted would still count toward a new application. The very helpful lady on the phone pulled my file and said it was all in order, but I was free to resubmit anything I’d like to update. While she was checking through the recommendations, though, she mentioned that there were only two of the manadatory three. It seems that my boss from my old job never sent in her recommendation letter, which means my application never got a fair shot. Good grief.

OK, maybe the letter just got lost in the mail, but still…

That pisses me off, but at least it lets me believe that it’s less my fault and more someone else’s, and so I feel a little more confident about applying again. And I’m also reapplying to SVA, since I got as far as I did last time, and I’m looking at some programs in England and the Netherlands that just teach typeface design, because I need to embrace my true geekitude once and for all.

Going to conferences like TypeCon or the AIGA conference are always good for pulling me out of the day-to-day doldrums and reminding me just how passionate I am about all this stuff. Aside from the more pragmatic benefits of grad school (the pedigree will help my teaching career, and it’ll give me access to bigger jobs and better connections, blah blah blah), I get giddy thinking about grad school as a way to totally immerse myself in design stuff for an extended period of time, and worry about my own goals and parameters and interests instead of whether a client likes blue or feels like taking a chance on something.

By the way, if I get into a program this time, holler if you have an extra few tens of thousands of dollars lying around that you don’t need.

Oh, Ikea — how many visions of domestic bliss have been nurtured along your twisty pathways lined with plastic, particle board, laminates, and veneers? And how many more have been mourned later on, when all those things are nothing but reminders of the stuff left behind when those visions have faded?

Yes, I know that’s a bit melodramatic. It’s what we gays do. Seriously, though, I’ve been to Ikea more times than I care to recall during the last few weeks, and it’s always a little bittersweet. I don’t have much choice, though, since our Swedish Overlords are the most brutally efficient way to fully stock a brand new apartment when all you really own is clothes, comic books, and art supplies. (I own some bookcases, too, but they’re mostly hand-me-downs that originally came from Ikea in the first place, so they’re about to fall to pieces if I so much as look at them the wrong way.)

I’ve been wandering around the new apartment thinking things like, “Gee, I know I used to own some sheets,” or “What’s the best way to stock an entire kitchen all at once?” I’ve been running on nothing but stress, fumes, and sugar for the past few weeks, so I’ve tried to address those issues with as much one-stop shopping as humanly possible. Moving on Labor Day weekend didn’t make things much easier. I managed to survive a trip to Ikea on the Saturday morning of the long weekend, but I finally lost my cool at the Target in Downtown Brooklyn later that day. I had to abandon my very full cart in the ladies sportswear department and get out before I cracked. If I hadn’t had someone urging me to just walk away from the chaos I’m not sure how far I would have let it go.

But I think I’m done with the emergency purchases for now, and soon I’ll finish the unpacking and organizing of the books and art supplies. (The comic books were sorted out right away, naturally.) I’m settling into life on the Bed-Stuy/Crown Heights border (I’ve christened the my newly renovated loft building “The Cracker Factory.”), and getting back to mundane concerns like teaching, working, end even dating.

So things seem OK, at least until all the Ikea stuff starts to fall apart.