#17

Today I had my last basketball game. An open court, really, not specifically a game. There were some highs and some lows. The jumpshot was pretty good. They game was tied 9-9 when they came in and kicked us out. I raced to the three point line, and launched…

Hey, I’ve had some big moments in my life. Sometimes you go out on a skill-appropriate note, rather than a high one.

Anyway, I figured it was as good a footnote as any to write you all my last dispatch from the green isle. This time next week I’ll be in Rome, then Jerusalem---because that’s the route crusaders take, and I’m taking it back for Christendom—and thence in the great iron-winged bird across the sea back home.

Try not to get emotional, okay?

Actually I’m getting kind of emotional. My old foe, Irish bureaucracy is not letting me go without a fight. It’s sweet that it cares. Kinda brings a tear to your eye.

Of rage.

Two days ago I set out to do three errands, as usual in Ireland, expecting to complete one. Well, of course I’m not disappointed. Things I need to do: Get a paycheck, close my bank account, ship a box.

So I go to pick up my paycheck, and of course, it being a Friday, the office is closed. And of course, Monday is yet another holiday. What was I thinking? So then I can’t close my bank account because I can’t cash a check without a bank account. Great, two of the three impossible already. I go to the bank anyway, just to see how much money I have left. They say [insert paltry sum here].

Then I go to ship the box. It’s not an enormously heavy box, 15 Kg or so, which is like…3…5 pounds? But it’s a couple blocks walk so I try, brilliantly, to put the box in a suitcase so I can roll it there. It doesn’t work , but I like to think a blow was stuck for innovators everywhere.

Anyway, I go down there and tell them it doesn’t matter how long it takes, I’d like the cheapest way possible to send this box. They say, actually there’s only one way to send the box, it’ll get there in a week and be far too expensive. And I’m like, fine, whatever, I’m going to Rome and Jerusalem, I can’t have all this stuff with me. And they’re like we only take cash.

So I need…actually, you know I was trying to be decorous and not mention money but this story isn’t going to work, without numbers. So I have a little over 100 euros in the bank and I need about 60 more to make this payment. It’s alright, I have more in an offshore account—you know what I mean—but that’s complicated. Anyway.

So I leave my package sitting in this crowded post office and run to the only ATM for blocks. And of course, it’s out of everything but 50s, so there goes my account anyhow.

So I go out that night with a couple friends, have a pretty good time. Come home, it’s late, and I’ve got a nice email in the ol’ inbox…

See, I’d been offered a job teaching English at a community college in Dallas. Great, frankly, not only would it be a good experience for me on its own, but applying to PhD programs with a masters AND experience teaching undergrads? Money in the bank.

But the lovely woman who runs hiring says, a couple of days ago, she would like me to send her a transcript from my masters program to just complete the process. I make some inquiries and discover, somewhat to my surprise, that though I will be done with all my work by the time I leave here, and that everyone MUST be done with their work by the end of September, Trinity won’t be willing to hand out the ol’ degrees or confirm anyone until, say, January. So I can’t get a full transcript. Until at least January.

So I have to tell the community college folks I’d love to, but actually I can’t get them a FINISHED transcript till much later even though I’m done. I can get you a transcript so far and a letter from my advisor. Don’t suppose that would be alright, would it? And, as I suspected, this night as I’ve returned home, they’ve responded “Oh, yeah. No thanks then. But feel free to apply again to teach second semester in October.”

Actually, I won’t have my degree by October either. In fact, I won’t even have it by December, when I apply to PhD programs. So THAT’S cool. Rather than applying to PhD programs as a student with a masters and undergraduate teaching experience, I won’t actually have either. Although I think it’s likely I can get something official by December. I’m just afraid of being more than cautiously optimistic at this point.

The really exciting part about all of this is my mother and I spent a long time, before I came, trying to figure out when exactly they would get around to graduating me. As it turned out, we guessed wrong, and for all intents and purposes a six month program has been turned into a two year program.

So there I am, simultaneously seething and touched that Ireland cares enough to take one last whack at me. As if I could ever forget you darling. So I wake up in the morning and go down to get lunch. Pick up a sandwich, a coke, a muffin, carrying it back in my arms to find…oops, they’ve accidentally deactivated all the key cards for my dorm building.

See we all got emails about a week ago to the effect of “hey, you’ve all got to be out of dorms by May 31^st.” Why. Well, you see, for some reason all the dorms on campus have different dates as to when their leases run out. Very few of these, incidentally, are AFTER exams are complete, but no big surprise there. My dorm lets out on June 6^th.

I, like several of my friends, hurriedly emailed the front office with “what?!?!??! I thought I had to be out by June 6^th!” And they’re like oh yes, terribly sorry, our mistake.

But of course nobody thought that might mean that all the residents in this dorm are listed as leaving May 31^st. Sure enough, yesterday was may 31^st and we all got locked out. So I walked the fifteen minutes to front gate, my sandwich cooling, my coke heating up---“I know a thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, but HOW DOES IT KNOW?” to get a new card and fifteen minutes back.

And we ain’t even heard from my arch-nemesis here yet, the library. I’m expecting BRIMSTONE.

Ah, Ireland, you cheeky rube. I really am going to miss you. I know you’re just trying to say you LOVE me.

Let’s be real cats. I’ve had my problems with bureaucracy here. But these are inconveniences and, I hope, funny inconveniences, nothing more. I’ve had a lot of opportunities here. Presented some papers at conferences, met Seamus Heaney (check that one off the list. WOOOO.), had a lot of good times that I mostly remember. And I complain because I find my tribulations, post-fact, humorous.

Let’s wrap this up, huh? We all have work to do.

Le Denouement:

You know, midway through the application process to various English PhD programs, oh more than a year ago today, I sort of changed my mind and decided to try masters programs instead. I knew I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and I didn’t want to commit. It wasn’t just postponing my gap year, which will now be next year, this qualification will serve me well…it’s more my personality, the way I had to do it. As I work next year (the where, as noted above, still to be determined) and enjoy the company of my family, my crazy, not very bright little dog, and my girlfriend, I’ll be content because I know I’m aiming at something.

I NEVER could have spent the last year at home, while waiting for a good idea, a sure idea, of what I wanted to do next to strike me. I’d have driven everyone I know nuts. So the shape of this year, and next year, sort of my like my face, just couldn’t have been rearranged in any more pleasing arrangement.

I’m going to apply for PhD programs in Religious Studies. I’m getting ready. That’s something I can focus on.

The point I’m trying to make is that at the beginning of last year I was wrong about nearly every single place I thought my life would go from there, and wrong about why I was doing it. But I had fun the whole time, learning how incredibly wrong I was, and it was a better teacher than refraining , out of uncertainty, would have been. I’m blessed that I can backtrack, a lot of people can’t. But I’m going to. And it’s going to be awesome.

For someone who had such a happy and well-adjusted childhood, I think ,perhaps, a little more darkly than is normal, from time to time. Truth is, you never know how long you have to hang out in these parts below the sun.

And to my parents, and to Maggie, and to all my friends who are back in Dallas for however long they will be (not long for most of them) I suppose you could be glad, if you felt like it, that you’re getting me back when I’m not, in the words of a wise philosopher, all squirmy.

What I’ve learned is that I’m an adult and adults don’t have any more clue than any else, but I suppose they take responsibility for it, and they strike out on their own. I’m proud enough of myself. I lived in a—at times difficult—foreign country where I didn’t know a single person for nearly a year, and I made friends, and I had great times, and I learned a heck of a lot. The experiment was a success, and I think the more you challenge yourself the more you trust yourself. I’ve still had very few sincerely difficult challenges, but when you come through knowing you’ve survived, I s’pose you know a little bit more about your threshold for surviving. That’s neat.

I missed you all. I’ll be glad to return to some place that’s basically on the same time zone. You could call, and we could talk. That’s luxury, isn’t it?

And I hope I’ll never again be what I was before this, and I hope I never stay at what I am after this.

And that, my friends, will be about it. I don’t want to get too personal, but ever since the summer after my junior year, every six months or so there’s been another hard loss to deal with. They’ve differed in character, and scope, though each has been irreplaceable. I would guess the point is, though, is it’s an extremely lucky man who’s had, in such a short space, so many things worth missing. You just try to swallow hard, stand up tall, and on to the next adventure.

Onwards, and upwards, and, as always, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

Love, last,

Andrew