My current answer is", Beats the crap out of me," which is, truth be told, an accurate reply that is deceptive through omission.
Let me try to fill in some gaps...
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My completed application to the University of Missouri School of Journalism master’s program was delivered, in person, on September 1, 2005. Those of you who had been monitoring my lack of progress on this website know this is one day later than originally planned.
This delay was alluded to, but never spelled out in direct terms until now.
The threefold reasons why I had to burn another day in Columbia were:
One) I’m an idiot.
Two) The Columbia Missourian got a new printer.
and Three) There was an additional form and fee required in addition
to what I as previously aware.
While the first point is fairly straightforward, and too often proved true, once again it looks like the following two points could use some further explanation.
I don’t have access to a printer in the Jefferson City apartment. In fact, due to space and other limiting factors, I’ve only worked on a computer once before dissembling it and returning the components to their respective protective containers. I had to look elsewhere for printing options.
Since I am no longer enrolled as a student at the University of Missouri – Columbia, my print quota has been terminated, so while I can log on to regular computer terminals as MU, any printing requests I send are automatically cancelled.
This was not a problem in my book, because I was still entered in the computer system as the Columbia Missourian. There was a massive hardware and software upgrade at the end of the supper semester. So much time was spent putting mine, and other’s names, into the system, I figure my login will continue to work there until the next major upgrade comes, by my estimate, in 2012. And until such a time comes, I will always get free printouts at the Missourian.
For all my time and service granted to the publication over the years, at the least I figured the paper owed me a free ream of paper. I have previously worked hard not to abuse printing, copying, or long-distance calling privileges for personal gain. If I, belatedly, pressed this advantage for the sake of potentially returning to the newsroom and extending my indentured servitude, I figured it all balanced out, quid pro quo.
When I first dropped by the Missourian that original afternoon, to collect a letter of recommendation, I quickly printed off two of my three required essays. I wasn’t fully final with the final, most complex one. I wanted to tweak it some more before finalizing it – especially the end, beginning, and parts in between. I had some other appointments to make, but I figured I still had time to catch a pinch more revision time in the campus computer labs before swinging back by the newsroom printer and racing across the street to turn in the whole kit ‘n caboodle.
Clever, I thought. An easy roll, really.
Right…
Sometime between my afternoon meetings and a late, rushed spin in the Pershing computer lab, a brand new, state-of-the-art printer appeared in the Missourian newsroom.
And, as is tradition with all new technological arrivals, no one could get it working in the first day.
Snake eyes. Ghost essay stuck in the machine. Drat!
Denied, I crossed the street to make sure I could still turn in my forms the next day. The difference between “applications must be received by” or applications must be received on” September 1, can be quite nerve-wracking when all you’ve got is your strained memory, and you’re already second-guessing your intellectual skill.
Anyway, I did confirm I could turn in the form on Thursday (SLOWLY RELEASE LUNGFUL OF AIR AND RELIEF). However, (SHARPLY DRAW BACK IN AIR ALONG WITH ADDITIONAL ANGST), a form I was not required to complete the previous time I applied to graduate school was now required. Based on the gap between my completion of undergraduate classes at MU (Aug. 2005) and my projected new entry date (Jan. 2006), a previously waived form and fee were now necessary.
This $45 processing fee – an amount that would trump my underbalanced checking account that had already taken a hit from the fees required to get copies of my transcript (apparently, the watermarked printing stock and the perforated stamp they use are 100 times more expensive than what the typical dime-and-a-quarter per page printing joints typically use) – was simply more than I had.
It was also around this time I discovered that I had an incorrect copy of the Jefferson City’s apartment phone number. When I attempted to call home to relate my lateness and unexpected troubles, I got the answering machine of some computer repair place. No solace was to be found there; only another brick in the wall.
So, $45 bucks and an essay short, I gave up and headed back south for the day, dejected and quite a bit irked off.
It is a testament to my personal strength that I did not roll the car out of frustration, as was my original urge, when the Phil Collin’s version of the song ”You Can’t Hurry Love” began to play on the radio, which such mocking lyrics as,
“No, you’ll just have to wait
It don’t come easy
But it’s a game of give and take.
So I made it home alive…
[And here the story will now pause. My time on the computer is about up and will have to wait until another day to finish – potentially after the weekend where the Smith family, hopefully, concludes their whirlwind pickup/packup tour of the Sullivan homestead. Stay tuned, please.}
