The first one was just a phone bill. My May bill also had the total from April that I already paid added onto it. I had just graduated and didn't feel like hauling it down to campus on a weekday morning to explain to whoever that I shouldn't have to pay twice, so I put dealing with the bill off a day. And another day. Then August came, and while other people got big envelopes with parchment inside, I got a little one with whatever sort of $1.99 a bin computer paper campus phone bills get printed on, with a (here's a surprise) correctly modified phone bill in it. I paid the new bill (five bucks or so) and waited in ignorant bliss for that big envelope.
There's a story behind the second delay. It started the Wednesday after classes ended and we all went home. I was ready to go to New Hampshire and stay overnight to pick up my sister from school. As I was literally stepping out the door, the phone rang. It was Dr. Cole, my journalism professor. He had never received my internship packet.
My internship packet (if 41 pages single spaced and 10 space font can count as a packet) was written over fall semester, printed out and placed in his mailbox back last December. It detailed just about everything I did at the school paper that semester, despite nothing I normally did there counting as journalism. I registered for the class spring semester, and I didn't have any classes with Dr. Cole spring semester, so the internship packet didn't come up much in discussion the times I saw him. Not at all, actually. I had assumed that he had received it, graded it, and I'd find out the grade on the report card.
The internship credits were a requirement of my major for graduation, so I was being told, essentially, that I had a semester's worth of empty space between me and my diploma. If I didn't go to New Hampshire, my sister's stuff would still be in the process of being loaded in to the van, and I wouldn't get back from there until Thursday night. And the graduation ceremony was Friday morning. Poo.
It wasn't quite so bad; I had the internship on disk, and Dr. Cole said I could print it out again and get it to him Friday morning. It wouldn't interfere with the graduation ceremony, much like those kids from high school who didn't graduate but got to march anyway. (I was one of those kids. I just got a shiver.) I'd get an incomplete when grades come, but that would be rectified as soon as the internship got graded.
New Hampshire lasted until 7:45 Thursday night. If you've got your May 98 TV Guides out, you'll know that this was the night of the final Seinfeld. And I missed my opportunity to view one of the historic television broadcasts, to do my homework as punctually as I could that last time. OK, I sat there and watched the last Seinfeld. And the ER afterwards. Give me a break; I had just crossed five states. But right after that I went straight up and did my homework, honest.
The homework wasn't brain surgery; all I had to do was print it out again. While I was preparing it I figured I'd save Dr. Cole probable blindness and bumped the font size to 12. And I double spaced it. The problem with double spacing on my word processing program (Wordpad, the do-nothing lump of goo that comes with Windows 95) is that there's no double spacing option. No spellcheck, either. But the recent documents you used come up when you go to Documents on the Start menu. Sadly, I had been using Wordpad over Word just for the Documents option. All double spacing I did by hitting enter every line. Which, for 41 pages of then-single spaced text, would take a while.
It ended up taking six hours. I probably could have whittled it down to an hour and a half, but reading it turned into a flashback of fall semester. It was still the daily record of most all the things I did worth remembering that semester. Several of them I completely forgot, others reminded me of personal memories I didn't put in the journal. If you've ever kept a diary of some sort and went back to read it, you know what I'm talking about. It was six hours, but a very enjoyable six hours. Nice way to spend my final night as a student.
As I was slowly reading it, I had a creeping suspicion that this would turn into an all-nighter. I thoroughly enjoyed my all-nighters as a student, but for the most part had an idea when they'd show up. Book report on that late antiquity book I haven't started, that'd be an all-nighter. 15 page report on Antonin Scalia due 9:30 A.M., that'd be an all-nighter. Half page art history assignment and Brazil on cable, that'd be an all-nighter. I liked them, mostly because I spent the night on a whirligig of e-mail, the radio, various internet novelty sites, making Ramen Noodles, CDs I hadn't heard in a good three weeks, and the late hours of MTV when they actually show videos. The homework part of the night would log in at just over an hour. So long as I was enjoying the time, who needed efficiency?
But this was a hard all-nighter. My computer in my room isn't hooked up to the internet or e-mail, the rabbit ears for my cableless TV didn't work, and I was huddled in a corner of my bedroom with just the desk lamp and no music on, afraid of anything else waking in the house. This was what all-nighters were supposed to be. Luckily all I had to do was hit enter a bunch of times, or else I might have needed another night. Sensory deprivation whacked me a good one.
After the horror of reading long passages written by me, I had only to print it out. Two more hours. My printer has a tendency to jam when it gets more than three pieces of paper at a time in the feed slot, and since this turned out to be 93 pages in the end, I had to stand over it and feed the damn paper into it sheet by sheet.
When I was done, it was six in the morning. I'd be leaving for school in just a little bit. I swear my bed was talking to me. "I'm so soft and warm, lie down on me. You're just going to rest your eyes for a minute." Experience told me a few minutes of sleep was worse than no sleep, so I stayed awake, licked the coffeepot clean, and stayed awake during the car ride down by filing my fall semester clips into their respective weeks of the packet. The poor condition of Route 1 also helped.
After I woke from the coma the commencement speakers put me in, it was August. Everyone else's diplomas had just arrived in the mail. The phone bill/imcomplete combo platter would hold my diploma for, oh, say a month after the norm. No reason to yellow some t-shirt's armpits with worry sweat yet. But after that month, I got a wee bit nervous when someone asked me when I graduated.
To clear this up and knock my dipoma out of the hopper, I'd have to make it down to campus during working hours on a weekday (not happenin') or call. And going through several divisions of a college bureaucracy through a phone is like playing Beethoven's Fifth with mittens.
The pattern of the several phone calls I made was 1. Call the information desk from memory and get the number for either the Bursar's office or Records and Registration. 2. Get transferred from the President's Office, which my memory switched phone numbers with the information desk, to either the Bursar's office or Records and Registration. 3. Get put on hold by the B/R+R receptionist for thirty seconds, then have the same person answer and not know who I was. 4. Get transferred to either Records and Registrations if I was calling the Bursar, or to the Bursar if I was at Records and Registration, since the other guys were the ones I wanted to talk to. 5. Leave a message with some woman where I plead my case until her machine cuts me off.
After enough of these calls to know I was just making calls just for the sake of getting long distance time during the expensive business hours, I knew for sure that the phone bill was not a problem, and I already had received credit for the internship. So I should have already had my diploma back in August. Thanks for the help, I knew I had nothing to worry about.
Once every month in September and October I got the feeling people get when the lottery tops $100 million, and called thinking today I'd get lucky. And I'd leave another message.
This month (November) I did get lucky. My step 5 was replaced by that woman actually being there. Within two minutes, she mailed both diplomas in the mail to me. I figured the Trenton State one would come with its own separate haggle, especially considering I wrote a good half dozen pieces whining about the name change. And they got here on Friday.
I could have saved you several paragraphs by not writing anything save the first sentense of this. Just like I could have saved myself several hours by hitting enter as quickly as possible for the packet. But it was fun writing this, so the extra time was worth it. (Plus, you probably skimmed anyway.)
So, what the hell am I getting to? Well, with the dual realizations that 1. I've officially graduated and no longer have an excuse for sitting around and 2. I like writing these, I'm going to start up the commentaries again.
Q: Who are you?
A: Oh, I thought you knew. I'm Sean Ryan, recent TCNJ graduate and shin jin rui (Japanese term for 'new person', someone right out of school. There's no equivalant expression in English, so Doug Coupland made the phrase 'Generation X'. That's what it means, by the way). I also enjoy trivia.
Q: Will this be any different from With a Grain of Salt, that one you wrote and bothered everyone with in college?
A: Moderate length answer: I'm looking to focus more on personal issues with this series, autobiographical stuff that's amusing and has something relevant to say, or at least stupid things that have happen to me (I wish I had the commentary idea when I went through all the pop culture I knew to get a decent Juno name without a number behind it). I wrote a couple commentaries over the years that I just felt no attachment to. All of these were the impersonal ones, writing about some aspect of the political or social world without much of a useful or unique viewpoint, just a stretched joke every other line and no conclusion. So I'll get rid of those (I figured they were also the most of a drag to read) and just do the ones that are fun and worthwhile across the board.
Short answer: no.
Q: Are you going to learn to type?
A: I already type at 60 words a minute (62, but I don't want to brag) but most all the typos are the fault of Wordpad, the previously mentioned lump of goo, not having a Spellcheck. I'm weaning myself off of Wordpad onto Word. So I'll run these through a Spellcheck from now on. (This act might bring great sadness to those of you collecting all my typos and hoping they're a secret message.)
Q: Can I go to the bathroom?
A: After class.
Q: Will the commentaries be on e-mail?
A: You bet your sweet Baboo! I threw everyone from my stupid crap forwarding list on here. If you don't want to be harassed by my sending several Ks of text every week, just say the word and I'll take your name off. Reversibly, if you want to spam someone or otherwise get them signed up, just have you or them e-mail me and I'll stick your names on here. (Proof of me spellchecking: I had Reversely at the top of the last sentence, and it told me to go Reversibly. Word.)
Q: What's the name of these commentaries?
A: I dunno yet. I'm toying with Reality Schmality, but I want to save that one for something else. It'll probably be some Simpsons reference, though, so just Jeff and Serge will get it. Any suggestions, send them this way.
Q: What's the capital of South Dakota?
A: Pierre. (Five bonus points to anyone save Jeff who knows where that's from. It's not what you'd think.)
Q: When are these coming out?
A: Probably weekly. I'll just have to wait and see. There might be a week with two, there might be a week with none. I dunno.
Q: You really don't have a name for them?
A: No, and it's annoying me. I'll find something by next week, though.
Q: You realize all these generic mass forwardings and no personal ones get a little annoying.
A: Send me something and I'll send something personal right back! Promise!
Q: I can't think of anything else.
A: Well then, class dismissed. Go pee.