Something Not to Do For Fun

Write resumes and bullshit essays to snag swaggy fellowships. I forgot how bloody wretched this scene is. Well, it got me here. It might get me to Singapore or Paris next year!

Here's my April Fools, sent to a select group of family and friends (ie those I thought would panic the most).

[email] Hey everyone, I'm really excited but really sorry, and I think you'll all be angry or at least disappointed... I applied for (as a long shot!) this really amazing job teaching theatre in Singapore, and I got it, and they're going to pay me piles of money, but I have to go straight there from here and my contract is for 18 months!

...the part about applying for the job is true. The rest: hooey. The response: a few bravely congratulatory emails and a few to the guarded tunes of "are you crazy? Though I love and support you." One phone call in near tears (not naming names here). Now I know who really loves me. Anyway, the applications are in. The Singapore one, well, it's not really a job I want. Bad timing, contract too long. The Paris one: working for the UNESCO Education division, living in Paris, becoming fluent in French and of course impossibly chic, angling for the Lecoq school, going to London or Madrid for the weekend... working on international education! In cool places like Haiti and Burundi.

It's a ridiculously long shot, open to all Fulbrighters and there are only 10 slots. Also my essay, supposedly detailing a) why I'm qualified, b) what I'll bring to the job, and c) what I hope to learn, turned into a ghastly monster of a college-app-type "personal statement" chock-full-o'-nonsense about my educational philosophy and other blarney. Well, it's really my educational philosophy, but what do they care? They'll give it to someone who wrote about something real, existing, in the world, that they did. Given that I was finishing in the middle of the night, I started writing awful paragraphs of my own worst vocabulary excesses and insipid parallel structure:

"We strive, individually and collectively. We persevere against inertia; we succeed in tiny steps. "

Mercy. Well, it was due.

It's been pouring every day though not supposed to be monsoon time. Hard to do errands. Feels like April in Swarthmore, though, except with blistering hot mornings (til 2.30ish usually) and spicy food and lots of brown people. My hair is getting all shaggy but I am determined to grow it somewhat. I sort of forgot what the texture was like, so it's novel if atrociously messy-looking.

Does anyone know what happened to Bobby Berman?