I think I’m dead.

Deep-sixed by a Little Bitch called Business Math in all its unit contribution margin glory, my last words being, ”THIS!! THIS IS WHY I NEVER WANTED TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL!!” I should’ve known it would be the math. I’ve never trusted anything that has ONLY ONE correct answer. Just one. Nothing rings more false to me.*

And when I’m trying to figure out what in the hell is happening in a discounted cash flow, I am deprived of my strict, life-sustaining regimen of teen fiction, girl pop, blog writing, beautiful blue eyes and everything else that keeps me putting one wedge heel in front of the other. And every time I face yet another sum-of-years depreciation, I can already imagine the obituary of the girl with 6/39th of a Master’s Degree.

WAIT A MINUTE. To allow this Little Bitch to kill me? Hell, No. NOT the only answer.

I am not dead. Because right before Strategic Advertising Management and its evil Little Bitch partner Business Math muscled their way in, something happened. I began to breathe again. That’s what happens when you think you’ve finally found the work** that you never even knew you wanted, but for which you know you’ve lived your entire life to do. Where the concepts resonate with everything you’ve always thought and felt and you feel like you’re coming home. Little Bitch has nothing on that.

But more importantly, in the case that creative advertising doesn’t end up being home after all, at least I know that Little Bitch can never take away the blog writing. This I know because the only way that will end is in the event that I really am dead. And look at me now - writing for the blog. Not dead yet. But when I am, it WILL NOT be because of Business Math.

You can go ahead and tell that to the coroner.

*Ok, Ok, I’ll admit it. Nothing rings more false to me except, that is, when it comes to spelling, dangling prepositions in writing (even though I strongly believe that every other grammar rule in the book SHOULD BE BROKEN) and the correct usage of words. I have been known to come out of a sales meeting muttering, “FOR WHICH we are shooting. FOR WHICH, FOR WHICH.” and remembering nothing except that the written agenda had 2 misspelled words, a dangling preposition and that someone described a coincidence and called it "irony."

**Creative advertising

Laughter, love and sounding stupider because I’m trying to get more smarter

When you’ve been surrounding yourself with close textbooks and good business journal case studies while basking in the warm glow of the laptop screen and sharing joyful moments of underlining and page-turning, you get really good at having one-way conversations. Even with other people.

As evidenced by 3 recent exchanges:

Verbal Exchange #1

Friend: I don’t ever want to live in Dallas. It’s too highway.

Me: Really? I don’t think so at all. It’s nothing like Austin.

Friend: Are you serious? You think Austin has more than Dallas?

Me: Hell, yeah. Austin is totally hilly.

Email exchange:

Friend: hooray for friday. today is chill.

Me: So it's already starting to get chilly over there?

Friend: oh it's still warm here...i think i meant "chill" as in relaxed.

Verbal Exchange #2:

Me: I just found out that my dad has a connection to someone who works at The Martin Agency.

Friend (who used to live in Virginia): Where is that?

Me: Richmond, VA.

Friend (making a face): Ooh, Richmond is……

Me: I know, is really cool right? I have a friend who lives there and he says it’s awesome. It might be worth looking into for an internship opportunity.

Friend (looking confused, but trying to be tactful): Well, I mean, I guess it’s… Well, some people……

Me: Oh no, wait. He lives in Charlottesville. Actually, I think he told me once that Richmond sucks.

Pause of realization

Me: Like you were saying…

And in return, I tell her that C-O-M-M-I-T-M-E-N-T -phobia is perfectly normal

My friend Carena* is the one who taught me that holding something (an apple, a book, a puppy, but not a goldfish- that’s cruel) directly on top of your head for a minute or so is very calming when you can’t figure out how to organize your thoughts on paper. And that singing your To Do List when you’re trying to write a paper, study for a final, practice for an audition and find a place to live next year is a lot less stressful than writing it down. (Or as was more commonly practiced, keeping track of it in your head).

A decade later, she is still imparting refreshingly unconventional and effective wisdom - most recently when our phone conversation developed into a very detailed exchange of cricket horror stories. The thing is, as my recently found courage has been rapidly diminishing in this, The City of Never-ending Floppy Legged High Jumpers, I’ve been desperately seeking out advice in an effort to renew my valor. And during this conversation with Carena, as she proceeded to tell me about one that landed in the middle of her friend's forehead, she unwittingly gave me the best idea of all. You see, I’ve been calling them "crickets." She, on the other hand, calls them “C-R-I-C-K-E-T-S” because as she explained, to actually say the word is a bold and personal invitation for them to appear.

!

It was like the moment I realized that water is actually CLEAR (so why had I been using my blue crayon to color water?). Only Carena could give me such a brilliant, irrational solution to a completely irrational fear. From now on, they are C-R-I-C-K-E-T-S.

And now you might be thinking, That? Makes you feel better?

Yes. It does.

Carena understands. Which is just one of the reasons I am so lucky to have her as a friend.

*not her real name

Dixie bebe Me: Ashamed that Blue Bell is from Texas

It’s true. I hate Blue Bell ice cream. The very ice cream from Deep in the Heart of Texas, beloved by so many here in my great state.

But even more than I hate the ice cream, I hate the ad campaign. The romanticizing of the “good ol’ days” in American culture. You know, when people sat outside on their porch swings after sweet little mama spent all day making homemade lemonade and apparently, churning out homemade ice cream while she hung laundry on the line. The kids running around outside catching fire flies, swimming in swimming holes, waiting for “Mama hollerin' through the screen, 'would you kids like some home made ice cream?'”

Oh, and listening to Daddy belittle the Black man across the street.

Back in a “simpler time and place.” When kids could be kids FUTURE BITOGED BASTARDS.

How much fun did I have at the first home game last night?

So much that I discovered what happens to my beautiful ring after 3 1/2 hours of TEXAS FIGHT clapping:



Turns out my finger is not perfectly round.

But it can still form a "hook 'em" sign with the rest of my fingers in a heartbeat:



And my lungs can yell forever.

TEXAS FIGHT!

Guess what is in my refrigerator’s fruit drawer right now? Filled. To the brim.

If someone were to ask me which months I’d choose to come out of hibernation if I had to hibernate for 10 months out of the year (someone might TOO ask me that), I wouldn’t even have to think twice. I’d choose mid-July to mid-September. Why? Two sacred words:

White nectarines.

This being the season for that sweet, luscious Ambrosia of the Gods. This alone, my friends, is reason enough.

But since I’d be out already…

I could also load up on the second best fruit in the world – white peaches. Plus, I’d catch the tail end of watermelon season and sneak in as much NOKA chocolate as possible before slipping back into hibernation with a tummy full of heaven and some lovely new winter boots on my feet.

As long as I'm not trying to ride the pig's wings to instant stardom

As students at that music conservatory that I love to mock, we never talked about its reputation. We all knew about it- we knew it, the faculty knew it, U.S. News and World Report knew it. But we never felt the need to say it aloud. Of course, it could have had something to with having a deep-rooted sense that if you’re not a child prodigy performing at Carnegie Hall, you’re still not good enough. Or the implicit social rule that serious, cynical artists must reject anything so simple as school spirit. But mostly, it was because talking about it would’ve made us the equivalent to the kid in school that is almost cool, but never gets there because she is trying too hard to prove it.

Now that I’ve been in my current program for the summer term and have been through orientation and the first week of the fall semester, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard in the most explicit of terms that we are in the BEST ADVERTISING PROGRAM IN THE COUNTRY. And I’m beginning to have to resist the urge to gasp dramatically each time yet another faculty member says it and say, “What? OMG. I had no. idea. Why didn’t anyone say so?”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m Texan, I’m proud and I will HOOK ‘EM until the day I die. But being proud of your state and your football team is one thing. You know that none of that actually makes you better than anyone else.

And I am remarkably thankful to be in this program and I fully agree that it really is an extremely comprehensive and solid program with relevant classes where people are actually very nice and down-to-earth. I know that they remind us of the reputation over and over again with the hope that it will motivate us to do well. But please. Give us a little credit. I mean, anyone who really does need such educational ego feeding to do well will probably end up as the 55-year-old stuck in a career rut, wondering why the BEST PROGRAM IN THE COUNTRY didn’t catapult him to stardom.

For once, I wish things were a little more like the music conservatory.

Wait, did I really just write that? Was that a pig flying past my window?