May = A Month of Chaos and Celebrations

I've been negligent the last month. I'm backdating these so posterity has no idea (despite my mentioning it right now) that I'm actually writing this on June 20th. The world has been spinning so quickly I've been sprinting to keep up. Because lovely T would be in DC with her husband and I had finished my MA we went out to dinner to celebrate. Nothing says celebrate like a huge pot of melted cheese, right?

So that is exactly what we celebrated with. Followed by a huge pot of melted chocolate. Doesn't get much better. It surely kicked off a month of festivities and bedlam.

It is finished

At least I hope it is.

Monday was my last graduate school hoop. The comprehensive exam. Three hours to write responses that demonstrate I've actually mastered something. Would you like to see the two questions I had to answer?

1. Construct an argument that examines and compares the significance of sight, the process of spectacle, and/or the visual arts in three different texts from your list. In your answer, you may want to discuss the irony of text invoking the visual, questions about epistemology and how we best know our worlds, and/or any other questions brought up by this topic. 

2. Using two works from your list, consider and compare how subjects in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction confront the limits and constraints of the social formation of identity (e.g. by class, gender, race, place, or space) and employ other modes of expression (art, music, language) to augment or circumvent the narratives that have been scripted for them. In your response, you may want to address how their aesthetic choices are contextualized by the literary movement or historical moment in which they were produced.

Yeah, so...hopeful I passed. Perfection was not reached in my responses, but I was able to at least write a few pages for each question. Thinking about it still induces a certain tightness between my shoulder blades.

DC Part III

Last Tuesday I came out of a meeting to discover unexpected voicemails on both my office and cell phone. It suddenly became imperative to find my supervisor. I had ten frantic minutes of preparation before informing her my days working at the university are numbered. Numbered with a big number, like 75 to 175 days, possibly more. I managed to catch her before she listened to the voicemail message she received - success.

Happened faster than I expected. I did not anticipate mentioning anything until late May or early June. Now that both my supervisor and boss are advised of the situation I can share without chance of the news surprising anyone it shouldn't. The remaining issue being that nothing is yet certain - formal approvals, budget constraints - all things that could significantly delay or prevent my departure from the university.

The good news:

I passed my oral assessment for the U.S. Department of State. Which means I have a "conditional" offer of employment with the foreign service.

My security clearance interview was last week. I know a few of you readers had interviews with various Diplomatic Security personnel. My medical forms are in. I passed the additional certification test I needed to pass on Wednesday. At this point I just wait, and wait, and wait some more. My score is fairly solid. I will brag that I did score higher than diplomat C, but it wasn't exactly the same OA, so we'll say his was harder. My good friend J who took the OA for the same position thinks he scored a 10 - the scoring system must have changed since right now it is out of 7 points and you must score a 5.25 in order to pass.

Needless to say, Friday, March 15th I was quite a mess. The commencement of this DC trip was quiet tense. Testing started at 7am EST. A rough start time for a California girl who flew in the night before. The oral assessment consisted of a 45 min online skills assessment test. Followed by a 45 min written case management section. Then I had a 60 min interview which had three distinct sections of its own. At the end, after an excruciating wait, they call you back into the interview room and tell you if you've passed or failed.

When I walked into the room and began to sit down the lead questioner stopped me, "They are not even going to let me sit down?" I thought for a moment they were going to tell me I failed and send me directly on my way. Instead there was a flood of relief.

After exiting the building I walked the National Mall in a daze. It took several hours for the shock to wear off. This changes almost everything about my life. It is fantastic and frightening.

Reminding myself it is not yet official keeping me sane. I still have time. That, and the fact that I have a masters program to finish this month. Which may not be making me more sane, but is completely distracting.

There isn't much more to do, the boss has been informed, hoops have all been jumped. Life may look quite different by summer's end.

DC Part II

One of the slightly strange thing to do on my list involved a man buried in the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. The one who donated drinking fountains which ran afoul of art lovers. There is one in DC. I planned to find it. During a moment of shock (to be explained in part III) I needed something to do. I was standing on a street corner somewhere in DC and decided to look up the Temperance Fountain to see how far away it might be. I became rather frustrated with Google Maps when it kept showing me where I was with no other markers. Finally I zoomed in enough on my tiny phone screen to see it wasn't directing me to exactly where I was standing but just across the street. I looked up and there it was. It was hideous.

But seriously? I decided to look it up when I was standing directly across the street from it. At that point in my day I was so happy to have anything be easy that it seemed a miracle.

I will admit, I had hoped the fountain would be slightly more garish and flamboyant. It's ugly - but I don't know that I am repelled by it enough to disassemble the thing in fury as the mob in San Francisco did.

But judge for yourself.

The thought of getting drinking water from the mouth of a fish with teeth like that is not appealing. With this marketing strategy it's no wonder the temperance movement didn't take off the way Cogswell anticipated. It he wanted to get people out of the bars he should have followed French style - exchange the fish for a naked woman with a jug that the water flows out of. I wonder if Cogswell left an explanation of the fountain's design somewhere?