� That poetic dude Amar, Wednesday

(I wrote this Friday afternoon but could not get through to post until now.)

The position did get approved and re-listed as a Level 3. The new job req makes clear that there�s no monkeying around at Level 3, no sir: Prefer bachelor's degree in a field such as business management or equivalent experience�and knowledge of a second language. While I could go on for hours about incredibly wrong and bad and counterproductive the first part of the statement is and what a scourge is the national ethos that you�re nothing without a college education and/or that only by getting one can you become a mature and fully functioning adult � because the more people who buy into this and go to college, the more a college education becomes (a) diminished; (b) meaningless, I mean in a deconstructionist sense; (c) a mere commodity, which can be bought by some and not by others and therefore contributes to the shrinking of the middle class; and (d) a weed-out prereq for dumber and dumber jobs, like for instance this one, in which the aptitude in general of their practitioners can only determine, in directly proportional fashion, the degree to which they will become demoralized and bitter and prone to reflections along the lines of For this I went to college? � it�s the second part that slays me. Like this is the fucking U.N. or something, like anyone in the history of this job from its inception until the end of time is going to have to use French or Spanish or Italian or Latin or Greek for anything but the crossword puzzle. Ha ha ha ha ha wait that�s not funny. Seriously, though, it is, when we scrutinize it from the perspective of sociocultural analysis that we got in college while we were also learning the Greek and Italian that would be such a boon to us in our later capacity as PowerPoint mavens: it�s interesting to note that one of the hospital�s demarcations between Level Twoness and Level Threeness is the foreign language, no matter how irrelevant it is to the functions of the job (another is that not just any old degree will do, they can afford to be super choosy, ha, and only select from the rarefied pool of business majors) � and they must know that, so what�s going on here is that the hospital is tacitly acknowledging that for its purposes, college is a kind of finishing school, the things we applicants learned there a collection of flashy eye-catching trinkets. And then, by this logic and the admission by extension, Oh, but we like shiny things, what is the hospital saying about itself?

Nope, it�s still not funny. Sorry about that.

[Insert brief diatribe about how few jobs really require a college degree, by which I really mean the knowledge that is acquired on the way to getting one, to do competently; how it�s ridiculous to think that you need four years of study to learn the finer points of something like accounting, "business management," landscaping, or � lest you think I�m letting myself off the hook here � copy editing or tech writing, that when you see a job in your field listed for college grads only you should feel not flattered but galled; how part of the reason I fought against grad school was that I hated seeming to buy into the schema that since I was smart, that was necessarily where I belonged, with Others Like Me like it�s an elite internment camp, a boost I never asked for that was to lift me out of the world where people work nine-to-five jobs and have to stick to budgets. This is what�s so hard for me about deciding the what-nexts of my life: I�m going to have to go back to school, fine, but what if what�s waiting for me when I get out of it all specialized and with the pearly taint of liberal arts scrubbed off by more scientific discipline is just another set of jobs that require a B.S. to apply for but not actually to do? Lab tech. Clinical trials coordinator. Surveyor. Shoot me, OK? Then I�m either going to have to go through this intellectual self-flagellation all over again or else I�m going to say, No, fuck you, I�m going to get a job where the schooling has precise and direct bearing on the thing I get paid to do after it, I�m not going to let my credentials be superfluous � and then I am going to burrow further and further into school, specializing myself into a corner and setting fire to every shred of customer service and phone skills I ever had, and then where am I going to be? In grad school, and then a professor. Or else making money, the booster who boosted herself into the ranks of people she never wanted to be like. Oh good, you�re one of us now, they�ll say, extending their regal hands.]

Argh and goddamn. Anyway, I�ll apply for the new improved Level 3 Gastro job, and maybe for the genetics one too, why the hell not. I can�t tell from her e-mails whether the Wife of Bath is happy to have been helpful to me because she wants to keep me here or if my intractability w/r/t salary has pushed her over her own personal edge and now she�s going to use the excuse of having had to re-list the position to dredge up someone who�s allegedly a better fit than I am. The people in this office like me, I know, but the Wife of Bath has ultimate veto power and can hire someone without any of them ever having met her and, presumably, could shitcan her over their protestations. She sent the application to me on Thursday night, and I wrote back today saying that I�d gotten a bit busy today � you�re soaking in it � and will turn to it on Monday. Here is something that the hospital sent out yesterday via global e-mail:

Hearing or seeing news about current events may be disturbing to some people. Please make sure that televisions in public areas are not tuned to news or other programming that may be upsetting to people nearby. If you feel the need to check the news, please do so in such a way that it doesn�t disturb others or interfere with your work.

And this, I don�t even know where to start with. It hurts, it causes me pain. I know that to some people, keeping track of Bushcroft is the same thing as watching pornography and reading the news akin to self-pollution; it�s kind of an extension of silence-is-death, a suggestion that knowing about something is the same thing as endorsing it. Smugly: "Oh, I never read the papers." (For this they went to college?) I listen to them say this and I let them defend whatever it is about themselves that they�re defending � and I have my ideas � but I do not agree. I do not agree.

I sound crabbier than I am.

When I tell people about the bugs and the fruit, their reaction tends to be to bust out laughing. This disturbs me, and in a way I know I�ve got no right to, hurts my feelings. Can someone tell me what�s so hilarious? Because, honestly, you don�t have to read the story to understand the context. Latest gut-buster was Number Two Wednesday night, where I didn�t feel like I got my money�s worth and the reason for that is that, walking in there, I felt so integrated and emotionally settled and cautiously comfortable with myself that an hour of shrink talk seemed superfluous. I had even done the little homeworky tasks I�d assigned myself when previously we�d met. And in a bizarre turn of events, she convinced me that the schooly things I�m inclining towards are not just the solution to a whole set of problems I have with myself but also to a good many of those I have with my father. Could it be so simple? Could life be � see, I said I wasn�t crabby � this hospitable to me? Also Number Two finally woke up and smelled the Ovaltine with respect to my personal life, when after I�d mentioned him she said, "Hmm, so it sounds like you�re seeing a lot of Steve. Is this getting serious?" And then, more casually, having read my expression and presumably having made a fast (correct) assumption that I didn�t want to get into all of it with her: "I mean, whatever serious means."

It�s an uncharacteristically big weekend for your humble correspondent. I was invited to four events on Saturday and will go to two of them and maybe something else with Mr. Serious on Saturday night, plus I have to shop and cook and clean for the OP on Sunday including go to the liquor store plus, yes, I am feeling the need to check the news, thank you, in every medium I can get my hands or eyes on. I have to be here at Gastro next Monday and Tuesday, but I think I might try to take off Wednesday morning to go get my driver�s license picture taken, drop off tax shit at H&R Block, maybe see a movie or something. Or Wednesday afternoon.

That May Sarton is so good, by the way. And our bracket looks better at this stage of the tournament than it did last year, though Matt P. keeps calling me up when the close games have two minutes left and keeping me on the phone, both of us breathlessly clicking Refresh at our respective sports sites, until the action�s over and I can either circle a team or cross it off. I swear I�m going to have a heart attack.