JavaJennifer

Although there is no genetic link to my Kansas City family, we are close in a way that ideologically, I’m fortunate to have taken many of their personality traits as my own so great is their influence. The one I wish I’d developed either through osmosis or practice is this: they never cry. In the 30 + years I’ve known them, I’ve only known the false auntie to cry twice and my niece only once and that was 3 summers ago and it was terrifying.

Then there’s me. When I’m happy, I cry. When I’m angry, I cry.

And when I’m frustrated? Anyone? Bueller… Buellrt?

I cry.

And, so this afternoon, on my 2nd day of training in Lexington, after scoring a 14 out of 20 on a quiz and a 9 out of 20 on a demonstration, on the heels of having scored an 18 out of 40 on the entrance exam, I was, in a word, devastated.

I have a long history of poor scholastics which to those who know me professionally typically comes as a surprise. My family and certainly my friends from high school and college will tell you stories, many of them funny in retrospect of my lackluster career in academia.

It’s true: In 8th grade History I did ask with my best level of intellectual curiosity, “who won the American Revolution” immortalized forever in our high school yearbook.

When I got my score, I immediately felt my eyes start to mist. And that’s when some guy from the Philippians having never seen a fire alarm trigger on a hallway wall, decided to pull it. The class, all 23 of us leave en masse into the rain and wait to be cleared for return to the building.

I decided to use this opportunity to approach one of the troll-like instructors who, just the night before admitted to me that his son had 10 years left on a 20 year sentence for murdering an alleged gang leader, regarding my overall performance up to day 2.

I managed to get one word out before the tears spilled:

Dennis.

I could tell that this is a guy not used to emotional women and I hated to hell that that’s what I was was. Hated even more than the bad test scores. Wished I were thin and cute to make up for both.

Somehow despite my rigorous packing standards, I landed in Kentucky without my make-up bag and having arrived day one without make up, it becomes an act of both vanity and the absurd to run out and blow even the smallest amount of money on cosmetics. Although a married DC colleague of mine assures me that I look great without it, I’m about as vulnerable as I’ve been, well, you know since you-know-what happened 3 years ago.

Kentucky-speak is peppered with “all y’all”, take a “pitcher” of me instead of “picture” and “yous guys” and the food on campus includes venison meatballs, pimento loaf and (I’m not making this up) spam on rye. I’d planned on cooking my food and I have been but even still, just the smell of it gags me.

The days are impossibly long here. Up at 6am, on campus by 7:30. Daily quiz from 7:30 to 8:00am. 30 minutes for lunch in windowless concrete building that doesn’t transmit or receive cell-phone signals.

If there’s a lesson in all of this, I wish I knew what it was. Is that I’m supposed to fail at this supremely so that I can become the writer I’d rather be? Is it to motivate me to super-achievement? To try harder? Am I trying hard enough now?

The half-joke around here is that you can be sent home on a Greyhound bus at any time. As it turns out, no so funny.

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This entry was posted by javajennifer admins on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Blog Blend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.