Eat the Damn Cake

First we ate a lot of food.

Zachary’s pizza, in Berkeley.

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Post from Fraylie! I’m working on an article for Brazen Careerist right now about college and why it might not be a great idea, so this post works perfectly for me today. Plus, she calls academia “sexy,” which I kind of love:

Higher education has made a monster of itself. It’s lurking under your bed, in between your dress pants and behind your medicine cabinet.  Higher education is in there, rearranging your prescriptions.  It’s got your entire life savings held hostage in a snarling mouth, pennies and all.  And now it’s asking for your first-born child.

I am having second thoughts about graduate school.  Let me explain.

College was a gift. I received a merit scholarship, and my parents paid the remaining tuition in full.  While I was gallivanting through apple orchards, sticking my hands in hazardous photographic chemicals, reading essays by dead white men and learning to smoke Camel filters, the bills collected in a pile I could not fathom.  Between tuition, books, photographic supplies, food and rent (not to mention all of those weird fees for “activities” and “the president’s stable boy,”) my parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.  I cannot thank them enough.

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Our flight is delayed. We’re sitting in the airport in Columbus and it is raining. Cars slide around a curve in the road below. We have a layover in Detroit, on the way to San Francisco, and it looks like we might miss that plane and be stuck in Detroit. Which is not really the place I would choose to be stuck. But hey– it’s an adventure, right?

(Bear, being frustrated at the airport, and my terrible, terrible Dell laptop with the touchpad that is STILL not working. DELL– WHY?! ANSWER ME!!)

A woman nearby is talking in Hebrew on her phone. I am trying to remember the Hebrew I learned in college. I was never fluent. I understand these words: “this” and “they” and “want” and “house” and “I know.” I almost understand a lot more. I think that she is a realtor, because she says “two bedroom house” in English.

I am not actually bored. I’m just suspended.

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This is the first time I’ve been to Ohio.

(Bear, waiting at the airport, when we arrived)

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Because I loved Fraylie’s ability to write gorgeously and wryly about transitioning between college and the rest of life (see her last post here), I invited her back. We’re experimenting with the idea of making a regular place here for her on ETDC. Here are some of her thoughts on coffee shops:

David Attenborough, the celebrated voice of great nature documentaries, would probably enjoy narrating the interior life of the coffee shop.  Think of this:

The young male, upon sniffing the woody perfume of the approaching female, arches his neck in common cafe battle stance.  He mops a ring of coffee from the oak table to make his territory more inviting.  She, aroused, ruffles her collar and enters his domain.

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Florida is weird.

(Bear and I, at this little fast food waffle place, where a lot of stuff on the menu cost a dollar. Imagine that!)

Who looked at the endless stretches of flat swamp and thought to build houses? There’s a highway that everyone calls Alligator Alley. There are signs along paths that say “look out for snakes” and Bear’s uncle reports, in a satisfied tone, as though proud of the Everglades, that there have been python sightings in the neighborhood.

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