yes

It’s been a little while since I’ve been sappy on this site. But this, being the beginning of life as a grad school survivor, seems like a good time to spout a little saccharin.

The last time I visited my parents, I’d just gotten back from a week of hustling my name and my work to a handful of industry professionals. And their responses were enough to get me to look back again at the last two excruciating years - the gut-punching months of creative pain; the near-death moments of business math ; the bleak homework-fraught weekends and all those onsets of soul-encompassing panic.

Last year, at this time, the only redeeming thought I could draw from all of this was: “Sometimes it just sucks. And I still look ugly when I cry.” What I didn’t write on that day was that I’d spent several weeks working on that post because I'd really, really wanted to tell y’all that I’d come away with some small piece of salvation that made all the pain of that semester worth it. But I couldn’t do it. At least not with any shred of authenticity.

Which is why, this year, I let myself feel encouraged when all of those industry professionals, including the one at this agency, told me that they liked my work - that my work is smart, funny and up to par.

Then, one evening during that visit with my parents, my father asked me, “So you’re almost done with school. Are you glad you did it?” And I looked at him - the man whose emotional and financial support never wavered despite the night I called to wish him a happy anniversary only to end up sobbing and gulping that I “h-h-hated” school, despite the fact that I spent an entire summer telling him that degrees were overrated and maybe I just wouldn’t get one after all – and I answered with a genuine “yes.”

And now, six weeks later, I can still say, “Yes.” Not only because of the things that the professionals said. Not only because of what my teachers (even this teacher) said. Not only because I almost cried when another girl in my program told me that she looks to my advertising writing (mine!) for inspiration. I can say it because at least right now, today, I believe what they say. And I believe that I’ve come a long way and that even though the road ahead will beat down on my soul again, I believe that if I want to badly enough, I can keep going further.

And I believe that the last two years had something to do with that.

BAGEL: CREAM CHEESE:: MAN: __________ (you finish it because, guess what y’all? I never have to take another GRE again!)

Right about the time I wrote the last post on here, my last semester of grad school suddenly turned from spending weekends gallivanting around downtown (and spending weekdays planning said gallivanting) to a mad, mad blur of headline writing, PhotoShop fumbling, InDesign layouts, screaming at iWeb, stalking industry contacts, and a few token panic episodes. I had one foot in Austin and school and the other foot in Dallas and job networking. And straddling 180 miles of Texas country, it turns out, turns me into an even bigger ditz than the one I was that time I stood in front of the door to the stairwell, wondering why in the hell I couldn’t find the elevator down button.

Which means that I’ve spent the last two months on an extended, two-city ditz-crime spree. There was the day, for example, that I decided to stop by Einstein Bagels to pick up some cream cheese. It wasn’t the shop that I usually go to, but they’re all about the same, right? So you can imagine my shock to find that there were no cream cheese coolers in this one.

But I’d come to Einstein’s to get some cream cheese and I WAS GOING TO GET SOME CREAM CHEESE. So I went up to the counter to get it there.

Him: How can I help you?

Me: (brightly, of course) Hi, I’m just looking for the cream cheese.

Pause as man looks at me for a long time. So long that I start wondering if I have spinach AND lipstick on my front teeth.

Him: (totally straight-faced) We don’t have cream cheese.

The voice inside of my head: AN EINSTEIN’S BAGELS? WITHOUT CREAM CHEESE? Where do I call to get THIS taken care of? This is like a butterfly without wings, a car without wheels, a man without his-

Him: Now, there’s a bagel place next door. They probably have cream cheese.

(Which is when the God-given ability to evaluate and deduce that got me into graduate school finally kicked in. I looked at the food they were serving. Green beans? I looked at the menu. Rotisserie Chicken? I looked at the guy’s uniform. Boston Mar-)

I gasp and put both hands over my mouth.

Me: (like a genius) I walked into Boston Market!

And then the entire restaurant got completely silent and the diners watched in wonder while the universe pushed the slow-motion button and I skulked right out of Boston Market to go next door.

And that, y’all, was just one of the many, many events that could’ve ended with the graduate school police handcuffing me, throwing me into a big yellow school bus and putting me on trial for STILL TRYING TO ACT LIKE SHE BELONGS IN GRADUATE SCHOOL.