The Pains of Printing

Being a graduate student can be isolating at times. People just don't understand. You're not a normal student with a life and hobbies and friends. Normal students gawk at your ability to sit for hours on end reading books the size of the dictionary. They marvel at your ability to live off of energy drinks, coffee, and chips. Privileged undergrads snicker when you discuss your Spring Break plans of heading to the beach with a stack of research, or your exciting Friday nights of grading. Grad students are odd beings with an almost mythical aura surrounding them, like a rarely seen species thought to be endangered, or nerdy academic rock stars. But what people understand least of all are your research needs.

For instance, I remember one afternoon when I went to the library for assistance. I was using an obscure short story for part of my thesis, and because it's obscure, finding an affordable copy of it had been difficult. Of course, one can always borrow such books from the libraries of larger schools, but they really hate when you underline, take notes in the margins, or highlight in their books. Plus, they get testy if you keep a book for too long—something I'll never understand. After all, I'm probably the first person to have touched much less read this book for at least a decade. Why the rush to get it back? It's not like there's a line of people waiting for it. (Exactly how many people are researching male Victorian homosexuality and its relationship to nineteenth-century marriage laws at any given time in the southeast US?) Whatever. Suffice it to say, I wanted my own copy.

I finally tracked down a viable electronic copy of the text using GoogleBooks, but since I can't read without marking up a text—something that is a highly-contagious side effect of grad school (and you should see what it's done to my kiddie lit collection; you've got it bad when you're underlining quotes in Dr. Seuss)—I wanted to print a copy. I hit the library, thinking the fancy thousand-something dollar printer would be lightening fast, or at least faster than my personal Lexmark breadbox 3-in-1.

I was painfully wrong.

When I first planned to print the story, I wasn't aware that it was 90-something pages long, but I had to have this, so I sent the job to the printer. At the printer, I swiped my ID card, selected my job, and hit the print key. The machine did nothing. I waited. Nothing. I hit the print key again, but realized it was frozen. Five seconds later, the printer screen changed, indicating that it was now unfrozen. It groaned, a noise that brought me a sense of relief as it was indicative of life. Sickly life, but life all the same. Like a primeval beast awakening, I waited for the colossus to stir. Finally something in the machine whirred and after much clanking and growling, a whole two pages slid out. Then the machine stopped. Minutes passed, then the machine spit out three pages. It paused, then gave me two more. In three minutes I had five pages—five pages out of ninety.

As I stood there contemplating whether it might be faster to copy the text by hand (with a quill and parchment, or a chisel and slab of granite), a man walked up behind me and smiled. He twirled his ID card in his fingers; he was waiting to print. Crap.

I smiled the guilty way you smile when you know you're about to really, really piss someone off and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. (If you've ever worked retail, you totally know the look I'm talking about.) I turned back to face the printer, hoping it would be struck with a sense of urgency.

The man behind me crossed his hands and rocked back and forth on his feet for a few minutes. He gave me a quizzical smile. How much longer? his eyes asked. I glanced down at the growing pile of paper, then back at him apologetically. My eyes answered, A really, really, really long time.

He sighed heavily, impatience growing. I began feeling guilty as a line began to grow. I reached out and gave the decrepit printer an encouraging pat, hoping that no one in the line would notice.

Then it dawned on me how ridiculous this was. Here I felt like a horrible, selfish person for printing something I needed, yet there were three other printers completely free! Why was it that everyone must necessarily use the same printer as the over-loaded graduate student? How was that fair? Who made the genius decision for the whiney undergrads with their “too-long” six-page articles to get behind and harass the overworked grad student?!

Finally, the man behind me stormed off in a huff. And as he turned the corner out of sight, the printer made a final groan and spit out my last two pages. Thank you, karma.

In Which I Become a Fashionista

My second year of grad school, I was promoted from a research assistant to a teaching assistant, which meant I would teach two classes of English 1101, Beginning Composition, and would be completely responsible for fifty freshman and sophomore students—God bless them.

At the first TA meeting of the year, the professor who directed us discussed the department’s expectations. At the end of the meeting, the department head looked at each of us, beaming, and said, “We’re delighted to have each of you. We know you’ll make us proud.” But as he looked us over, his smile faded slightly. What was that look of disappointment stealing over him?

He cleared his throat. “Some of you might want to invest in some, ahem, new clothes. Something…professional.”

I looked around. Do we really look that bad? I wondered. Behind me, a girl was wearing a faded, stretched-out shirt with some of the beadwork missing from the collar. One guy sat in the back of the room in a graphic T with cartoon characters on it. Even Elaine, who is usually dressed impeccably, and who usually refuses to leave the house if her makeup isn’t perfect, was looking a bit thrown together. I was wearing a pair of baggy jeans one size too big, sneakers with the soles peeling away, and a t-shirt with my college’s logo. My hair was windblown and my socks didn’t match.

I would give some excuse for my appearance—say I was running late or hadn’t done laundry lately –but the truth is, that’s pretty much my look. On any given day, I’m wearing jeans and sneakers, and the times I’m not wearing a t-shirt, I’m probably wearing what was a nice sweater—when I bought it back in high school, and before I carelessly washed it with socks and towels. To make matters worse, I’d lost around forty pounds since starting grad school, which meant that all of my old clothes now looked like they could either fit me and my conjoined twin, or double as a pup tent on an impromptu camping trip.

There are lots of things in life that I don’t enjoy doing. I don’t enjoy cleaning toilets in public restrooms, for example, which has been a part of every job I held until grad school. I don’t enjoy being outside in the South Georgia sun at three in the afternoon when the humidity is in the nineties. Nor do I enjoy trying to fall asleep after finding a spider in my bed. But of all these things I don’t enjoy, one of my least favorite is shopping for clothes.

What made clothes shopping so difficult back then is that I had no sense of fashion. I didn’t understand a good versus a bad fit, or know how to coordinate colors. I couldn’t tell if different fabrics worked together or not. Beyond the no-white-socks-with-black-pants rule I learned in high school orchestra (which may or may not apply outside of concerts), I was at a loss.

My mom sent me a check for my birthday, so the weekend after the meeting I steeled myself and went shopping, but first I called in reinforcements: my roommate, Elaine, and Stephanie, our neighbor and fellow English major, both of whom, unless they are blind, would be better versed in fashion than me. Little did I know that mentioning that I possessed “Kohl’s cash”—completely foreign currency to me back then—would unleash a frenzy worthy of the Viking Berserkers. Elaine was off digging through rows of cardigans, her favorite essential item. But Stephanie was the star of the day, finding and pillaging the sales racks in the Petites section, which proved as fruitful as Valhalla is full of mead. I swear, these ladies should have helmets with horns.

You know those little buggies that Kohl’s provides? Inadequate for the likes of Elaine and Stephanie; it was so full that they were piling things on top as things were tumbling out. By the time they were ready to send me into the dressing room, I could barely walk under the weight of the things they had selected.

The first shirt I picked up was an unfortunate choice. Pretty, but unfortunate. It was blue with a white camisole underneath. I tried taking it apart, thinking it would be easier to put the pieces on separately, but the cami was sewn into the shoulders of the shirt, forcing me to put them on simultaneously. No problem, I thought. My thinking, however, was wrong. As I pulled on the shirt, it began to twist, the cami going one way, the shirt going another. There were too many holes for my limbs to go through, and somehow I put my arm through the adjustable part of the cami strap, then through the neck of the shirt. I untangled myself and started over, only to have things go awry again, my arm going through the right arm of the cami, but the left arm of the shirt.  By the time I finished trying it on, I felt I’d wrestled unsuccessfully with an octopus.

The next item I tried on was even more difficult. At first glance it looked normal enough, but once on my body, I discovered the shirt had a strange, stretchy band along the bottom. What was that thing, and where exactly was it supposed to sit? On the waist? Where was my waist? The band seemed to sit right along my hips—the widest part of my body—and by sitting where it did, it created this funny bulge that suggested “second trimester.” Who thought that was flattering? No one outside of a fertility cult, surely.

Finally, I pulled on a fitted brown sweater. I liked it immediately, mostly because I knew how to operate it. Good clothing should not require an instruction manual.

There should have been music playing when I stepped out of the dressing room. Judging by my friends’ faces, it was like one of those Cinderella transformations from the movies. Stephanie and Elaine gawked, and Elaine cried, “Brittany, you have a waist! You’re adorable!”

“We’re just not used to seeing you in nice clothes,” Stephanie said.

What, because I usually look like I dress in my great-grandmother’s rejected hand-me-downs? I wondered. (It is psychologically impossible for me to accept a compliment.)

If I could have, I would have buried myself under the swell of clothing. At this point in my life, I still spent most of my life trying to be invisible, but now I was the center of attention, and not just the attention of my friends, but of the other women passing through the dressing room. (One of the women suggested I get a nice pencil skirt because those are very “teacherly.” I didn’t tell her that I’m pretty sure dressing up my writing utensils like Barbies will encourage my students to mock me mercilessly.) 

But my friends were not yet done amazing me. “Want me to do a quick add?” Elaine asked.

Now stereotyping is wrong, but let’s face it, there’s a truth behind most stereotypes that explains their existence. Case in point: it’s a stereotype that English majors can’t do math, and generally, as super-fabulous-awesome as we are, we are mathematically impaired. I’ve been to meetings of the English honor society where it took five of us to calculate the tip. So imagine my surprise when Elaine and Stephanie both calculate within ten dollars of the final cost—without the aid of a calculator.

Not only did I stand in awe of my friends, but I did so while looking awe-inspiring myself.

Amo, Amas, Amat, Homicide

My freshman year of college, I walked into my first day of Latin 1102. A few moments later, in walked a red-headed, freckle-faced, bespectacled guy who plopped down two seats over from me. As he unpacked his books, he glanced at me and grinned. Over the next few weeks we began talking regularly, and as we grew better acquainted, he moved closer and closer until finally we were sitting side by side. I enjoyed our conversations. He was interesting and funny in an absent-minded way, but not altogether unintelligent, and genuinely good-natured if a little dorky.

Finally, he asked me to meet him for coffee before class one day to go over our homework together; although he made decent grades, he often asked me for help, which I assumed was a ploy to talk to me. We met at an on-campus coffee shop, and after having gone over our homework, we talked about our other classes and our jobs. Multiple times he remarked on how nice a time he was having.

As we left the coffee shop, he looked deep into my eyes, beaming, and said, “I really enjoy spending time with you. It's uncanny, but you—you remind me of my wife.” My jaw hit the floor and I could feel my cheeks blanch, then burn crimson, but apparently he didn't notice because he just kept talking. “You have the same sense of humor as she does, and you even look a lot alike. I wish you could meet her.”

The next class meeting, when I walked into the classroom, there was my friend, and sitting next to him, between his seat and mine, was a girl my height with dark, shoulder-length hair, a round face, oval glasses, and really, really angry brown eyes that were just like mine, only angrier. As I sat down, she glared at me and fingered her wedding ring pointedly. If I could have, I would have melted through the floorboards.

Red looked up at me and waved, revealing a gold band on his finger that he had never worn before. “This is my wife!” he said excitedly. Then he pointed to me, smiling, and said, “Honey, this is the girl I told you about, the one that helps me so much with my homework. She says the funniest things! And doesn't she look just like you?”

“Honey” was not amused. She attended our class for the next two weeks, during which time I hardly looked up from my textbook once, and during which time I could feel her eyes boring into the side of my face. Although I had never had more than a mild interest in her husband, and had never so much as flirted with him, I have never felt so penitent for a sin I did not commit, nor served a better penance than quailing under her stare.

Graduate School Axiom One: Selling Organs

I was sitting on the couch one day when Elaine came in and took a couple of Tylenol. “Make sure you’re taking the recommended amount of that,” I said absently.

“Why? Does it really matter?” she asked.

“Yeah, actually, it does. That stuff builds up in your tissues and can cause you to O.D.”

“Really?” When she’s surprised, Elaine’s eyes get huge. Her eyes were huge then. “How much would you have to take?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably a lot. And probably over a period of time. But it happens.”

She looked really concerned, which made me wonder why she was asking all these questions.

“How much have you taken?” I asked, feeling a little uneasy.

“Just two, but I took some yesterday…what if I’ve been taking too many too often?”

I sensed she was going into panic-mode. That usually follows the big eyes.

“I’m sure you’re fine. You don’t take pain meds that often, do you?”

“I don’t handle pain well! I’m a total wimp! Of course I take pain meds often!”

“Look, I’m sure you’re fine. It would take A LOT for you to overdose. Besides, you’d probably have liver damage first.”

“Oh, that’s ok then,” she said, a big smile taking the place of her big eyes.

“Wait, wait,” I said. “You’re ok with liver damage?”

“Sure. I have two, so if one’s damaged, I’ve still got another one.”

I stared at her with that special look one reserves for moments when you’re not sure if someone is serious, or seriously misinformed. You’re wondering if they really think you’re stupid enough to believe what they’re claiming to believe—or if they actually believe whatever they’re saying.

“What?”

“You told me the other day that I’ve got two livers, right?”

“Nooo, I think I said two kidneys.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yeah. You’ve got two kidneys, but only one liver.” I reflected for a moment.  “You’ve only got one liver, but if part of it is damaged, it can grow back. That’s pretty cool, huh?”

Elaine looked puzzled. “Will my kidneys grow back?”

Yes, she was serious. I could hear steam issuing from my old anatomy teacher’s ears.

“No, Elaine, kidneys don’t grow back. As far as I know, the liver is the only organ of the body that grows back besides skin. Interestingly, you can live with only part of a liver or only one kidney.”

“Really? I only need one kidney, but I have two?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s like you have a built-in spare.”

Suddenly an impish impulse stole over me. “Have you figured out how you’re going to pay back your student loans?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, lots of people need kidney transplants. Maybe you could sell one of yours on the black market.”

Elaine laughed. “Are kidneys worth much?”

“Probably depends on the condition they’re in. I mean, a healthy, young kidney has got to be worth a lot more than one that’s old or been used a lot.”

“But what if I sell one kidney, then something happens to the other one?”

“Ah, good point.” I thought for a moment. “In that case, selling part of your liver would be the way to go. Less risk to yourself because it would just grown back—at which point you could sell another piece.”

“Wait, does drinking affect the kidneys or the liver?” Elaine asked.

“Both, I think, but the liver more. It has to process the alcohol or something.”

“Damn.  That means I won’t make much of a profit from my liver. I bet I drink too much.”

“Plus you’re overdosing on Tylenol. You probably couldn’t give your organs away,” I replied.

Graduate School Axiom One: Selling organs is not a viable way to pay off students loans—especially if you damage said organs before the transaction is complete.

The Battle of Starbucks

As a graduate student, I spent a lot of time reading. In fact, that’s pretty much all I did. I read, and read, and eat, and read; occasionally I made tea or fell asleep on my research. To break up the monotony, I liked to change study locations. Cafes and coffee shops are great places to work because they’re usually cozy, they smell nice, and there are people around; when I read at a coffee shop, I can pretend to be a part of normal society again. I am convinced that these places are what keep English graduate students from turning into nervous, twitchy, socially-retarded silverfish.

One particular day, I arrived at Starbucks hoping to curl up in one of my favorite reading chairs. There are only two of them and they can be hard to claim, but they’re definitely worth the effort. These chairs are firm, but not hard, with high arms and plenty of room to stretch out a bit. Plus, they’re located in an out-of-the way alcove, so while there’s enough traffic that passes by to keep you from feeling isolated, there’s not enough to disrupt your flow.

When I arrived, two men had already claimed my chairs. Disgruntled, I ordered my tea and sat at a table opposite them, hoping my seething glare would communicate that they needed to move—NOW. But the men remained, oblivious.

I began my work, keeping one eye on my enemies. The first man was juggling a fancy phone, his laptop, and a notebook that he scribbled on using five differently-colored pens. It all looked very complex. Begrudgingly, I conceded that, as stressed as he looked, his work might warrant a great chair. Maybe.

The second man was playing around with his netbook. I could tell by his glazed look that he was procrastinating; we grad students are experts on procrastination in its various forms. Not much is needed for procrastination, and certainly one should not waste a valuable reading chair for such. To do so is selfish. There are those around who genuinely need a great reading chair as they chug through mountains of academic verbal posturing. Wasting a great reading chair is like using a high-end sports car to drive to the grocery store, or wearing a tux to Waffle House, or eating Thanksgiving dinner in front of starving orphans in a concentration camp. Procrastinating in a great reading chair is an activity of the sadist.

Bravely, I struggled through my work, my pain made more acute every moment by that man’s selfishness. Please, I thought, becoming desperate. Please just move. I noticed a venti-sized beverage on the table next to him. It was almost empty, and I could see smears of caramel here and there along the inside of the cup and oozing through the ice. Hope dawned in my breast. A drink that size must contain mountains of sugar, not to mention the twenty-four ounces of sludge-colored liquid. This man has got to pee sometime soon. When he moves, I’ll seize the chair. I’m cute and youthful. If he objects, I’ll play dumb and pout. Besides, possession is nine-tenths of the law.

I waited, reading and underlining mechanically, my eyes focused on the cozy alcove. Unfortunately, Mr. Transformer-skin-on-my-nifty-netbook must have had a bladder the size of Brazil. My heart sank within me.

Finally, an hour-and-a-half after my arrival, I saw him close his netbook. Slowly he got to his feet to throw away his trash. In a flash I had my possessions in hand, poised to pounce. He had barely lifted his bookbag from the floor when I streaked past him and triumphantly seized the chair. He stared at me, startled, but I ignored him.

The remaining man glanced at me and dropped his five pens. He looked at me uneasily as I kicked off my shoes and curled up like a cat. I smiled at him. I was feeling generous as I arranged my books and research around me. My patience had been rewarded; all was right with the world. My concentration would be unbroken, my thoughts pure genius.

I sighed contentment. Then I unzipped my bookbag, pulled out my laptop—and checked Facebook.

Solo and Ensemble

Middle school is a time when most people feel unusually self-conscious, and I was no exception. Always a shy person, I became so timid during those two years that I could barely tolerate any attention at all; I would blush when I heard my name during roll call, nothing could induce me to participate in class discussions, and I actively avoided social interactions with all but a very few friends from elementary school. But the thing I dreaded above all else was practice tests in orchestra. Usually for practice tests, the teacher will make each student play a portion of a piece by his or herself. The goal is for the teacher to hear and correct mistakes, as well as to scare the students into practicing extra hard. Playing tests were the fulfillment of my two biggest fears—being the center of attention and being judged.

My worst playing test was in seventh grade. I don’t recall the events that led to my emotional state, but I was feeling especially vulnerable at the time. I waited and waited for the teacher to call on me to play, my nerves building the whole time. My turn came and it was disastrous. I had practiced and practiced, but I was so scared that I kept making false starts. Frustrated and humiliated, I put my instrument down in my lap and told my teacher that I would rather take a zero than play. I felt like a failure.

Yet that failure was my first tiny step toward triumph. I hated the feeling of being held down by fear. I hated the way that anxiety made me feel small and powerless and oppressed. And I decided that the only way to liberate myself would be to do the thing in life that scared me the most—which is how I wound up agreeing to play a violin solo at a competition the following year.

Every year the school district would hold Solo and Ensemble competition. It was exactly what it sounds like. Middle and high school students from the area would decide to play either alone or with a group, and then they would choose a piece to prepare. When competition time came, students would perform their pieces for a judge from outside our school district who would rate their performance on a scale of one (the highest score) to—well, no one really knows what the scale ended with because anyone who didn’t make at least a two instantly shriveled up and died of shame, or assumed an identity and fled the district, or spontaneously combusted. (We string people are a little perfectionistic.)

My director, knowing how afraid I was of performing, and being the masochist she was, required every student to attend competition during my eighth grade year. She helped me pick out a piece—“Hunter’s Chorus,” and I can still hear it with perfectly clarity—and set me to work practicing. And practice I did. I worked very hard. Our student teacher and I devised a theory that if I just knew the piece well enough, I’d enter the solo room, become paralyzed with fear, but automatically begin playing perfectly. (We developed this theory based on a story we had heard that Cher used to be terrified of performing and required someone—usually Sonny—to push her out on stage. Once under the lights, she was so nervous that she didn’t know what to do, so she started singing and became rich and famous.)

For weeks and weeks, that piece echoed through my mind during algebra, during soccer practice, during lunch, during my sleep. My fingers started doing that weird twitchy thing violinists experience where their fingers move unconsciously as though playing. (Ok, not quite, but I was close.)

I played in a soccer match the morning of my solo. It was a particularly physical match, but I remained uninjured until a few minutes before the game’s end. I was running behind the opponent’s forward when she stopped suddenly. I crashed into her back, jamming my finger on her spine. Within minutes it was swelling. Why today? Why oh why couldn’t I have just broken my leg? I wondered. But as my mom drove me up to Solo and Ensemble a few hours later, I began to wonder something else more practical—Why oh why didn’t I get fully paralyzed? Why?

By the time I found the solo room and set up my instrument, my finger was purple, and I was mad. Why was my teacher doing this to me? Why was she being so cruel? Why was everything in middle school so horrible? As the door opened and I entered the room, I was too mad to feel anything else at all. Who cares how I play? Forget this. I’m just gonna play it the way I want to. If I make a three, or a five, or a ten, who cares? Serves everyone right for making me suffer this way!

I began. I played like I didn’t care. All that anger in my little twelve-year-old body came out in my music. I finished the short piece and scowled at the judge as he scribbled notes on my score sheet. Then he looked up at me, adjusted his little round rims, and smiled.

“That was very, very good!” he said. “Your playing is so spirited!”

My anger vanished as my jaw hit the floor. What?

I wound up making a one, which was absolutely the worst thing in the world for everyone. It was bad for my director because she lorded that over me until sophomore year of high school, once even telling the story to my classmates. It was bad for my student teacher because she continued believing that Cher holds the answers to the universe. (Undoubtedly she went on to eventually tell her students the story of how she cured my stage fright by singing “Do You Believe in Love,” which was quite popular that year.) But mostly it was bad for me because it taught me that I’m at my best only when I absolutely don’t give a damn about anything—a lesson that was confirmed two years later in high school, when I attended Solo and Ensemble in a positive frame of mind and earned a two.

At least it wasn’t a three.