neat neat neat
New York is the biggest, coldest, scariest, best place I have ever been, probably. I have been to a lot of places. The process of flying over New York was really exciting and satisfying, perhaps moreso than any of the component parts of the trip. Except that I was sick as fuck for all of the trip. That's the other thing. It started with a trippy, vision-altering headache on Thursday I think or maybe Wednesday of last week, and progressed steadily from there. Sinus headaches, voice-losing, disgusting mucus coughs, oh my! Being at the Greenleaf retreat was important I think but probably did me in, because I should have been resting, and that's when my voice started to go.
Then when I was driving back from the retreat, my mom called with The News. It was fucked. Small envelopes. I was fairly shocked--it doesn't make sense for me to be on the waitlist for both Skidmore and Swarthmore, as the latter is so much more selective than the former, and Vassar just doesn't know what the fuck is good for them. So, utterly dejected and with nothing to do in Greensboro, I tried to write a pantoum, walked to CVS with Matt and Andy, smoked cigarettes, and generally wallowed. My pantoum was shitty, and the weather in Greensboro totally enhanced the wallowing. I eventually went to Diya's and tried to get some sleep but couldn't, and woke up at 4:30 or something to get to the airport. Armed with only Dayquil and a foul attitude, I started my New York travels.
I mean, the school was alright. I met a bunch of Stepford NYU kids who are really into NYU and they were very friendly and that was fine. I waited around at the airport for roughly a million years for the other kids who were flying into La Guardia. A large tea was $2. I could not really talk. I am not very good at meeting people anyway, or any of that social shit. It takes me a while, and I usually don't like people when I meet them. This phenomenon, coupled with the fact that I had essentially been robbed of my sole tool for winning favor, through snarkiness or argumentation or what have you--my voice--colored the whole weekend in a Big Way. Plus I felt shitty the whole time. I mean. Damn.
So myself and some other kids walked around SoHo for a while looking at fly sneaks which was great but I couldn't bring myself to shell the money even for those Adidas Lo Originals that I have been obsessed with for months. I am pretty into sneakers, and being able to see so many limted edition cool-as-shit ones in person was pretty great. Then we went back to some NYU building for a parents-invited brunch thing. I sat at a table awkwardly with a girl from the city and uhh some other people, all of whom had their families with them. Never mind the fact that I would have been awkward and sad if I had been on top of my game--I felt pretty awful and my ability to interact with humans was pretty much shot. I felt an intense appreciation for all moms when one of the moms at my table advised me to drink tea and gave me some mints which I think she thought would act as lozenges. The food was okay and the service was fancy which I was totally into.
So, some information on NYU and the thing I'm in and everything: NYU has 40,000 students and probably six or eight separate colleges. It is the biggest private university out there, I think. The College of Arts and Sciences is its liberal arts college, to which I was accepted. The DEAN scholarship is only offered to about 60 kids a year. There were other scholars there that weekend: the Rudin scholars, who are from NYC, and the MLK scholars, who have done something to reflect Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ideas in community service or something. The other scholars are pretty much the cream of the college admissions crop--the top 8th percentile of NYU or something, and no one seemed to (1)have heard of the DEAN (or any other) scholarship they were receiving before or (2)be planning on going to NYU. Uhhh.
The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences talked to us, and he was a fairly adorable old man who appeared to be winking a lot but I think actually just had a tic. He was emphatic and meandering, but what troubled me was his emphasis on success in the classic sense--that is, starting a career through the connections you can make in New York. This is not what I want, necessarily. Also in all the propagandizing speeches given to the scholars, there was this definite ambivalence about whether NYU was the right place for us. I guess they were being real, but being asked over and over whether I could handle NYU made me fairly certain that I probably couldn't. Then Dalton Conley spoke and he was a serious cutie and I was impressed by the questions the kids asked and his answers to them. Nothing about his speech or the questions really offended me, which was cool.
Alright, so the people in New York. They were all straight hipsters. What we do down here to be hipsters is just an imitation of the way that everyone fucking is in New York. Down here we're unique when we try to be hipsters. Up there it's status quo. Scarves, tight pants, fly sneaks, peacoats, big sunglasses: everyone looked the same. Very few beards, facial piercings, or tattoos (although I guess I wouldn't have seen many tattoos anyway because it was so cold). TROUBLING? To say the least.
Also, the scholars themselves. One: total babycakes. Serious tiny little babies, on account of they are in high school and I am kind of elitist. Two: totally obsessed with college admissions (though I caught them at roughly the worst possible time for that--everyone finding out from Ivies on Monday). I mean, on the CollegeProwler messageboards with scores and admissions results, telling one girl that she was a "lucky bitch" for being Native American. FUCK. Three: no one the fuck wanted to go to NYU. I met one girl who applied Early Decision, and everyone else had one foot out the door, or whatever that idiom is. It would go like this: "So, you think you're going to come here next year?" "I dunno...I just got into Penn and Yale and I need to find out from Columbia, so..." FUCK. I met two girls who, upon my mention of being waitlisted at Swarthmore, said something along the lines of "Oh yeah, I got in there but I don't think I'm going to go." FUCK.
So the reason all of this got to me is because I have basically spent the last two years trying to divest myself as much as I can of that totally academia-obsessed mentality, and in many ways it has been working. But then I went and applied to really elite schools, who are going to--no shit--attract the kinds of obsessive students for whom I have little patience or interest. Being at Guilford has given me this incredible perspective and experience, but of course no one else in New York had a similar experience, and I don't know how to find a school that would nourish my love/hate relationship with academia the way that Guilford has allowed. I thought maybe Swarthmore would, with its dedication to ethical use of education? I do not know anything anymore.
So let's see we ate in a dining hall, which had a lot of...meat. But the food was really good. Then to an open mic thing for the scholars that also had performances by a bunch of NYU clubs. Lots of a capella groups. Definitely entertaining. Some burgeoning slam poets, only one of which was actually impressive as a poet to me. Singers, actors, etc. I wish I had been able to yell, because I would have been so into yelling snarky things, as I always am. I slept in a dorm, which was incredibly nice though a twenty-minute busride away from the central campus. I mean, a huge apartment-style deal with a common room and a sweet kitchenette. Fucking nice.
Then on Monday we did some stuff: walking tour of Greenwich village, which was really cool. We saw Emma Goldman's house; our guide could not remember her name, but on the mention of "Emma" I knew who he meant, because there are not that many famous Emmas. I went to a class, also: a Social History of New York. The professor was engaging but the size of the class (at least 100 kids) made actual one-to-one engagement of students pretty impossible. I kept almost falling asleep, which is apparently what all the scholars did during their various class visits. Seriously. Finally we went to a pretty fancy dinner at Chelsea Piers which was most delicious, and the President of the College spoke to us, again emphasizing that NYU may or may not be the right place for us, and advising us to think long and hard before taking out those many thousands of dollars in loans and coming here. Then: extreme bowling, which I just could not fucking take because I felt like shit and wanted to go to bed and had to get up at 4:30 the next to morning to catch a bus to another bus to La Guardia for my 8:30 flight.
Suddenly I was back in Greensboro and feeling pretty awful. I saw a doctor who says I have a sinus infection and probably some bronchitis. Baller. I have a lot of drugs but still feel like shit. There was an infuriating meeting at Noble's last night that I really shouldn't have bothered going to. Also, I went to my Greenleaf shift yesterday which was also a pretty bad call. I have not been to any classes yet this week. Hmm. Anyway I have no idea what I'm going to do about this college bullshit and I am having a lot of trouble dropping out of my life right now and trying to get better. I do SO MANY THINGS. Market starts this Sunday and I am fucked. On the other hand, Eric Lieu is indeed going to prom with me. I will probably shave my armpits for that. Maybe even my legs?