I just called Yale Graduate Housing to see what was up with them, because they were supposed to begin assigning spaces in the third week of April. Which was two weeks ago. So I started to get nervous that they'd already run out of spaces, and I would have to do one of the many, many things I don't want to do, like go to New Haven and find a place to live. And when I started to add up how much time, effort, and capital that would take, I wanted to put my head down on my desk.

Crisis averted, at least temporarily. I talked to a lady in the office a little while ago, and it turns out that they haven't notified anyone of anything yet, which just goes to show that even the Ivy League can be late. She also told me that they got 120 applications on the first day, most requesting my #1 choice, the Hall of Graduate Studies (HGS). HGS houses 171, but current residents can stay if they want to, and it's not yet clear how many spaces will be open in the fall. Which is why they haven't notified anyone of anything yet.

Things going my way:
(1) I applied within 1/2 hour after the application was available, and they offer places in order of time/date stamp. As in, applications were accepted beginning at 12 midnight on April 1, and I got my confirmation email at 12:22am. Joshua Jackson Rule, baby. (See earlier post, under "Barack Obama" label.)
(2) I am a GSAS student (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and for HGS, GSAS students get priority over the rest of the rabble.

It was a good thing I called, too, because I had neglected to send confirmation of my admittance, which they need before they can offer a space. This made me imagine how many people have applied for graduate dorms at Yale who haven't been admitted. Or more likely, want to get into one of the graduate apartments, which are very reasonably priced. Because who would want to live in a dorm with graduate students, if not a graduate student? Especially students in the arts and sciences? The pretension would be stifling.

Lesson reinforced today: Follow-up calls are FABULOUS. I'm going to start doing more of them, in all areas of my life.

In other news, I'm going to the theatre (thee-a-tah) this evening! There's an Arthur Miller festival going on at the Arena Stage, and I'm off to see A View from the Bridge! For $10! I love discounted theater so much.

I am a few days away from having a subletter! But you know what I don't like sometimes? Having to choose. I put the post up on craigslist at about noon yesterday and had four replies within an hour. I got eight more by this morning, when I pulled the posting.

The thing is, all of these people need a place to live this summer, and none of them is transparently crazy. And since my roommate's friend is signing the lease in the fall, this person will only be living in the house for 10 weeks or so, so the issue of "fit" is not the biggest deal. I did ask everyone to fill in a short survey, which I prefaced with an apology for reducing them to three "scales of 1-10" (in the areas of cleanliness, loudness, and gregariousness.) It did help, though. I struck out one woman who was a self-described "1" on the cleanliness scale -- that is, "obsessively neat in private and common areas." That's just not how we roll on Dahlia St. You can't be on top of Becky for leaving her dishes in the sink. But among the others, I guess I'll just go by whoever emailed first, and go down the list until someone commits.

The beneficial thing about the subletting arrangement, from the capitalist standpoint, is that I get to do a little price-gouging. I had intended to rent the place out for what I pay for it, but even my public-servant roommate is jacking up the price for the summer. So I'm going to probably end up a few hundred dollars ahead of myself. I feel slightly guillty about this, but it doesn't keep me up nights, and I will be cashing the checks.

A short conversation this afternoon.
Me, kind of embarrassed, handing my boss an envelope: Here's my leave notice. I'd like leave at the end of May.
Anissa, unsurprised, brightly: Okay!
Me: I've gotten into grad school, so I'm taking time off to prepare for that.
Anissa, still brightly: Well, we knew you were too smart for us and would leave. It was just a question of when.
Me: Is there anything I need to be do to prepare for the next person?
Anissa, still brightly: Just keep doing what you're doing, because you're doing a good job.

The conversations with my boss around leaving UMD are proving to be much less painful than those I had when leaving DC Prep.

Postscript to the UMD letters to the editor of last week: The author of the original piece wrote a thoughtfully-composed response in today's paper, recognizing that his detractors have a point. I have more faith in men today.

Today at work I’m trying to find professors whose research interests align with the business interests of an alumna who works in consumer electronics and home devices. You know, TVs and toasters. I was given this assignment because I support the Engineering department, and I figured it shouldn’t be too hard, because the School of Engineering has a very developed website, and information on professors’ work is easily available.

I neglected to consider the problems of translation. Consider this description, which comes directly from Department of Mechanical Engineering:

Research interests: Mechanics of the micro/nano structures in flexible macroelectronics, innovative micro/nano scale patterns as general platforms for flexible macroelectronics, deformation instability of thin films and multilayers, and mechanics of biomembrane and cytoskeleton in the cells.

Does that have anything to do with toasters?

I’m not going to do a good job with this assignment.

I went to get boxes yesterday. You know, for moving. I had a really ambitious plan that involved me sending things home over a period of weeks, so that I didn't have to do everything in the last two days in town. Then I remembered that (1) I'm gonna want to *use* a lot of my *stuff* because I'm still *living here*, and (2) I don't own a car, so it will be troublesome to make many trips to the post office/UPS.

WAIT! I JUST REMEMBERED THAT UPS WILL DO AT-HOME PICK-UP! I HAD TOTALLY FORGOTTEN UNTIL RIGHT NOW! MY LIFE JUST CHANGED FOR THE BETTER! Okay, then, maybe I can send things home in shifts, because UPS will pick things up whenever I ask them to! Awesome.

To return to my story, I borrowed a Zipcar after work because "I need to get boxes" became shorthand for "I need to do everything I need to do before I go," and it was causing me stress. So I told myself that I needed to just go ahead and do that thing, and even if I end up being slightly ahead of myself and staring at folded boxes for a month, I will also be ahead of the crazy, and that's critical.

Now, I'm not the most experienced driver, and almost all of my experience comes from driving in Houston, which means that I can handle freeways but I don't know much about intersections without left-turn signals. Which is how I almost died yesterday. It was maybe the first time I've looked up to see a car heading straight at me. That is terror, my friends. And that was only one of the three near-death experiences I had yesterday. The other two:
*Getting stuck in a roundabout. Twice. Don't ever ask me about it.
*Flashes of hard rain that made the car windows steam up. I pressed as many buttons as I could, but I couldn't figure out how to make them de-fog, and I just had to keep wiping down the windshield. I'm calling this a collective "near death" experience, because who knows how many times low visibility compromised my personal safety.

I don't know a better way to do this, so please tell anyone you know who was driving in DC yesterday the following: "The girl in the red Nissan Versa with the Zipcar sticker is REALLY, REALLY SORRY. She was not trying to be a jerk, but ignorance and inexperience made her obnoxious and dangerous. THANK YOU for your defensive driving. You saved the life of someone about to go to YAAAAAAAAAAAAALE."

I change the subject now to something not involving death but rather affirming life: I think everyone knows about NKOTB reuniting, so I'll just say that I just watched a video clip on their website, and I saw a woman in her 20s tell the Today show camera, "Jonathan, I'm legal now. Call me." Hehehe. She was 85% kidding, and I appreciate both the part that was kidding and the part that was *not*.

As the days pass, new reasons why I need to leave Maryland continue to reveal themselves. Today's reason: Students. Particularly the asshole ones who write the letters to the editor in the student newspaper, which I read every day as part of my job. Yesterday, this appeared in print:

Waiting not-so-patiently for Skirt Day

Attention beautiful women of College Park: We men are disappointed in you. It is April 17 and you have yet to deliver our favorite spring tradition: Skirt Day. Yes, the return of baseball is great. True, I'm enjoying the opportunity to grill out back. And of course, birds returning, trees blooming and all that nature stuff is cool too. Those things are all fine and good, but for me, spring does not truly begin until Skirt Day has occurred.
I understand some of you may be confused; "What the hell is skirt day?" Well, your buddy Johnny is here to explain. Every spring, there is one day that is so beautiful, it seems that every girl on campus decides it is time to free her legs from the denim dungeon of winter and don a skirt.
I have no idea how y'all instinctively know when Skirt Day is, but, for the past three years in College Park, Skirt Day has, without fail, come calling before the tax man arrives. I assume all girls are implanted with a chip at birth that tells them when it's Skirt Day, as well as other things designed to both bewilder and attract men. Or possibly there is a College Park Secret Hot Girls Club (if you're saying to yourself that there isn't, take a look in the mirror … maybe you weren't invited).
If there is such a club, please do schedule Skirt Day very soon. Now for the past few weeks there have been gentle rumblings of a possible Skirt Day. Yet still, no Skirt Day. This is not a mere request but a biological imperative. Just as in nature many female animals give some sort of demonstrative symbol that its mating season. We're ready for the signal. Let the hunt begin!

Johnny Mathias
Senior
Government and politics


Awesome, right? A column appeared in today's paper in response. Well-intended, but I wish more people understood that snark is not a good foundation upon which to build compelling arguments. Not if you actually want to convince someone of something:


Guest column: I Will Not Be Hunted

The Diamondback has made Johnny Mathias a lucky man by giving him, for who knows what half-brained reason, the opportunity to "holla at" every woman on the campus ("Waiting not-so-patiently for Skirt Day," April 17). Now I can't respond for every woman on the campus. Some, on the 100 percent positive gender relations end, may be flattered by the celebration of their sexuality. You say, "Work it, ladies!" They respond, "Damn right, I'm gonna work it!" Power to them.

Cool. How about the rest of us? Those of us who struggle, for instance, or at least have boundaries? I have had men yell out of their car windows at me since I was 12. I didn't (and don't) tend to dress in a particularly provocative way. Going to CVS because there's nothing better to do in the suburbs at age 12 is hardly soliciting oneself. I get the stereotypical Latino guys catcalling in pickup trucks, sure, but I also get middle-aged white guys positively staring at me instead of looking at the road. Am I attracted to a balding, probably married man driving a mid-life crisis convertible? No. Did I step out of my house for the sake of his sexual gratification? Hell no. Can't I just loosen up and take it as a compliment? Well ... forgive me for being difficult, but no.

Now you listen, and you listen good: When I bare my tattooed, au natural dancer's legs to the world, I am doing it for my sake. I choose when and where not to work my sweet thang based on my own inclination, not some universal biological cue. And when I feel compelled to attract a "mate," I will do so on my own terms. Mathias used the word "hunt." Another word for hunting is predation. Let me get this one thing straight, Casanova: I will not be hunted.

Finally, it was very sweet of you to suggest that any reader who didn't find your "hot girls club" joke funny is ugly. Go get 'em, tiger. Gotta love a man who thinks he's entitled to define female beauty and make suggestions to facilitate his exploitation of it. I will obligingly show you my middle finger, sir, and suggest to you as I have wished to suggest to so many men driving by: Go f--- yourself.

Now I wonder what kind of flattery that little gesture will earn me. Bitch? Dyke? Man-hater? Ugly? Frigid? I've heard it all before. That doesn't make it true. Or perhaps you'll take the other common route: "Ooh, I like it feisty!" If that's the case, I'm afraid I'll have to tell you that I don't like it feisty. If you were really trying to be a nice guy and give us all a compliment, I apologize and recommend instead that you learn how it's done respectfully. Start by thinking of us as people with multiple layers of identity even as we shed our winter layers of clothing. Assume we all have different needs and desires. Because you know we have them, but you don't know what they are and can't find out by looking at our legs. You can think before you speak. Keep your appreciation to yourself, or express it with the whole woman in mind.

Speaking of whole women, I would like to quickly address something that has been grinding my and my guy friends' gears. Lately, I have overheard different girls calling themselves fat in a disparaging tone at least three times a day. I turn around to look at who's speaking and for the life of me can't find the fat girl. Please, fat girls, if you're going to announce yourselves like that, stop hiding when I turn around to gawk at you.

Otherwise, I just might have to assume that there are no fat girls, and that you are in fact skinny, healthy or moderately plump girls suffering from poor body image. Ladies (and gents): You are beautiful the way you are. I mean it. People will be mean. That's their problem, not yours. Given all the crap you've ever taken about the way you "should" look versus the way you do look, it will be difficult to stop being mean to yourself. That's okay. You're worth the effort.

Rebecca Ogle is a sophomore English major who is a presiding officer of the Hot Girls Club. She can be reached at answer42@umd.edu.

I want Yale to send me more stuff. There's nothing I love more than reading viewbooks. And learning about orientation events. And going over (and over again) checklists called "what to bring" and "what not to bring" and "before you arrive." So I need Yale to send me more stuff.

Yesterday, I bought my plane ticket home! I leave on Wednesday, June 4. Which means that I will need to find a subletter before then. A couple of friends of friends are coming over this week -- fingers crossed.

Also yesterday, I smelled of toasted cinnamon-raisin. No one was around in the morning to wonder why, though.

Things I am learning about at work this week, when not busy counting down the days until I leave:
1. Reading about the Black Panthers.
2. Learning about COINTELPRO.

Those two are connected. The following is not directly connected, but it's heart-breaking:

Through an article in the NY Times today, I learned about the Orangeburg Massacre, which happened in April 1968 -- before Kent State -- at a historically black college in South Carolina. Three young men were killed, and twenty-seven persons wounded, when police fired into the group of protesters. This is how crazy it was: The only person to be held responsible was one of the fired upon. The police were acquitted for excessive force; Sellers was given a one-year sentence after being convicted of inciting a riot.

I've recently gotten into the habit of stopping into the Coop before work and purchasing a bagel and cream cheese (ONE DOLLAR!) to eat at my desk. (Helps waste time mornings.) I then tuck my breakfast into my purse for the short walk to my desk. This morning, someone entered the building just as I did. I wonder if he wondered why I smelled like toasted banana-nut.

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten won the Pulitzer Prize this week, for a feature piece on a stunt he planned with concert violinist Joshua Bell. On one morning in January 2007, Bell took his Stradivarius to L'Enfant Plaza, one of the major transfer stops on the Metro (subway), and played for about an hour during rush hour.

Sure, the article was well-written, but the entire piece struck me as uncomfortably elitist, and classist in its elitism. Weingarten seems almost self-aware about that when he writes, "Let's accept that we can't look at what happened on January 12 and make any judgment whatever about people's sophistication or their ability to appreciate beauty." But Weingarten's underlying tone (distant, but not objectively so) suggests that that is exactly what he is doing.

Weingarten and his confederates seemed to expect crowds of commuters to surround Bell to listen. And of course they didn't. Weingarten himself notes that Bell regularly plays for audiences where the median price per ticket is $100 -- who, exactly, did the Post expect to recognize the violinist? Anybody of any class can appreciate classical music, certainly; but like so many of the arts -- ballet, opera, even theatre -- classical music is not a regular part of most people's lives. The "fine arts" are simply not mass entertainments -- largely, I think, because (a) the price of going to live events is prohibitive for all but the most enthusiastic, and (b) the scarcity of arts education (and therefore arts exposure) means that we are not creating potentially enthusiastic audiences. I bet that people would have stopped if Chris Brown was singing, because his brand of entertainment is widely available and therefore more immediately relevant to a much larger group of people. And there's no objective reasoning that can legitimately value Bell's performances over Brown's.

Further, a weekday morning is not necessarily the best testing ground for this type of experiment. A working man or woman, a parent with a child -- these people don't have ten minutes at 7:45am to pay attention to what a busker is doing in their subway system. Not when school starts at 8 and work starts at 9.

I like the idea that Weingarten eventually dances around: Our lives are not structured so that we are able to, or so that we choose to, take time to appreciate the many forms of beauty in our lives. We need to slooooow doooooown; I agree. But let's not pretend that a solo violin performance on a busy morning is the best sample from which to extract a universal hierarchy of values. I am inclined to reject a perspective that considers what should be important in people's lives without considering what IS important in people's lives.

(Another note: Weingarten -- or the copy editor at the Post, whatever -- titled the article, "Pearls Before Breakfast." As in Matthew 7:6: "...neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." I get the play on words. But I don't like the implications.)

I love Paul Simon so much that I wonder if my heart is too full to love anyone else as well as I should. Like my parents. Or Mos Def. Once I think I've been appropriately exposed to the man's music, I hear something new, or in a different way, and the world opens to reinterpretation. (Most recently that song was "American Tune.") How can one person manage to be so great?

Things are moving along...
I'm leaving DC at the beginning of June, rather than stay at Maryland and continue to flirt with imperiling my mental health. So I'm going home for the summer! I expect to:
1. Fold sweaters.
2. Watch the movies I REALLY should have seen if I'm going to be a "film student." It would be good, I think, to have seen one French New Wave film. Some of these are going to hurt. There's a *reason* I like movies produced for the masses. Foreign films can be so weird.
3. Read some stuff. Maybe.
4. Learn to embroider!

I'm leaving DC before my lease is up, but the rest of the house is staying put, so: If you know anyone who is moving to DC and would like to live in an inexpensive basement of a group house in Takoma, DC, send her my way! Five total in the house (all very cool people), the basement has its own 1/2 bath (that is, toilet and sink), and it's a very safe 3-4 blocks to the Metro. Available the first week in June!

Also yesterday, I finally got my rejection letter from NYU. Oh, NYU.

This afternoon, I returned from my visits to Yale and Brown, and I carried with me my final decision: It's YALE, BABY!

To my surprise, Yale is not totally full of itself -- at least, American Studies is not totally full of itself. (I think that the history department believes that they invented the past.) The students were open and friendly, the faculty was excited about us, everyone appeared to like one another, and film studies professor Charlie Musser walks into walls, which is great. (It's important to remember that superstars of academia are really just huge dorks with published books, and watching them do something like walk straight into a wall helps to maintain that perspective.)

I met a bunch of cool students. My #1 favorite is Ryan Brasseaux, who is from Lafayette, LA; and since my mom is from New Orleans, we are probably related, which I told him. Also, he has two little babies! They are 2 and 4. I didn't get to meet them, but Ryan appeared to like me, so I am fully expecting that a benefit of going to Yale is that I will get to play with babies without having any babies! Yay!

I do consider that a side benefit. The main benefit is that I'll be going to YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALE, BABY!