Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

selfy-stuff

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Of course, becoming someone is a two way street. When someone gets famous and says “some school rejected me and it changed my life” to some random interviewer, ten different thoughts shoot out in ten different directions depending on who the reader is. The most basic reaction is probably something akin to “wow, they got rejected by school. I’m shocked!”

What follows is the part that matters… is it more important that the school is that much more prestigious for turning down your favourite actor or singer, or is the school pathetic and shallow for not seeing their potential when it had been so obvious?

The thing with me was that nothing was obvious. I somehow had the idea that i could trump everyone else’s comparable scores with a slew of activities like acting and writing and volunteering, and while schools do claim to care a lot about all of that but they honestly don’t really seem to mind either way. Unless you’re submitting a portfolio, they like to hear about competing, and winning – not showcasing and performing … unless you were winning while doing that.

I was a special challenge because i was undecided about my academic major when i was applying to colleges, which was surely one of the biggest strikes against me. At Drexel, we invite undecided students to apply. We encourage it. We can help them work it out. But, some schools have no use for the indecisive, and would only take them if they’ve proved themself to be a potential nobel prize winner no matter what they major in. So, honestly, i would have had a shot at splitting my rejections in half if i had just arbitrarily picked English or Literature as my major. But, i didn’t. Oops.

The thing with me is, i’m inconsistent. I mean, i have 10 simultaneous projects up in the air at any given time, none of which are ever really getting finished or resolved. In high school, this translated into a hodge-podge of activities and B+’s instead of A’s. In retrospect, i don’t think i did anything before the age of 13 or 14 that had any definitive effect on my academic future. What it comes down to is that i need something to light a fire under me before i can be excited about anything, and back then the only things i had really were comic books and video games and reading books and nothing serious and enjoyable. As it is now I need PuppetMaster or 25/24 or taking the minutes at a big admissions meeting to light a fire under me. to keep me motivated.

However, now i have the weak excuse of passing these fires off as my continuing exploits in DIY journalism. If i didn’t have this to refer to as my way of honing my writing skills and narrative voice, what the hell would i be doing with my free time? I’m very jealous of you science types that can quantify what they’re learning and their goals so clearly. I just need to have an enthusiasm for something, and at the beginning of this Summer i said i’d ditch my guitar if i didn’t start playing this summer – for people in places other than my apartment – and i played a few times. But, it took up no effort on my part, so the guitar is getting tossed in the backseat. I have songs and voice and image but i have no drive or fire, and i don’t have anyone else to light one for me because hardly anyone else has heard these songs because i never play them because i obviously don’t have enough attention to pay to it unless i combine it with things on the internet. 25/24 was a rousing success for me even if i find the singing hideous and unlistenable; even if i somehow still haven’t finished the Best-Of CD because i keep pulling “bad” songs off of it and putting “good” songs on. But, i have failed my guitar and i feel like suddenly our little interlude has ended, and so now it is just another tool … a weapon if i hold it right.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5119833/

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NYU is who they reject, and i was rejected by them. Somewhere in that exchange of $50 and a heavy manila piece of paper with my essay about intolerance and growing up attached we agreed to define each other. NYU already knows exactly what it is because i am just one tiny speck of rejection on the wide face of their thirty thousand plus applications every year. But, i have yet to define them. To this point i have just been “peter, who did some theatre and took some advanced placement tests and didn’t get into NYU.” And, so, now i feel like i have to be something… something that represents what NYU passed up when they passed on me.

Of course, Mr. NYU didn’t really mean “You are who you reject” with any sort of positive intent other than increase in reputation. He never gave the indication that students could use their rejection to define themselves better or that they should realize that they were only being turned away because a fine institution is as much about who they admit as they are about who they don’t. There isn’t any reason to wonder about such things, and that’s why his school can afford to be nearly the most expensive place to get a degree in the entire country. He said his catchphrase and then launched into how the school targets their mailings at specific grade levels and about how they guarantee four-year housing to all students from outside of the five boroughs because none of them could ever afford to live anywhere near the school on their own.

And i was stuck on instant replay in my head, taking the meeting’s minutes down like an automaton while i wondered. He didn’t mean it as a key to self help, but i’ll be damned if i don’t use it that way. Because, i do not want to visit drexel in 10 years and hear someone say in some faceless heartless presentation that i’m the kind of student that they gobbled up 15 years ago but that now i would barely even meet the criteria to slip in the back way through our local community college. The thought of it makes me sick.

NYU and i are stuck together for life. And, if you want to get more compulsive about this than i’m being, every job and listener and reader and girl who turned me down is now saddled with me more than if they had just gave in and paid me some effort. But, the burden is on my shoulders. I’ve got to become somebody.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5119796/

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My mother had a sort of quiet depression about her in April when the decision letters started coming. To this day I feel bad for her because she didn’t know what to expect, and i think she had been convinced that i stood a chance at all of these schools because my all important gpa/sat was above their tiny averages. Despite my possession of these all-important numbers, one by one those important four rejection letters trickled in, and every one was another blow struck against that pedestal she put me higher and higher on every time some trivial score came back to us in the mail and it was a whole shade higher than she had expected on the tiny blue ETS graph. She threw out a wait list letter from one of the schools without ever even telling me because she knew that i would find a way, and that it would just hurt my pride to be left hanging by a school i might not even make it into even if we could forget the expense for a moment.

Finally we came down to two serious offers from colleges we’d been neglecting all along, and somehow she fought as hard as i’ve ever seen her fight, and after the dust had cleared i at least wound up with some pride(money) and a seat. She knew by then that the whole process was some sort of hilarious joke aimed at me and at every teacher and family member that had ever projected glorious dreams of schools vying for me and scholarships raining down from the sky. She had put herself through school and kept me smart and safe and got me into the best public high school in the state and saw my plays and bought me a guitar and paid for my ap classes and drove me to PSATs. And, all for what, in the end?

All for Drexel, of course. But, we never really said that, and we never really do. Drexel is an amazing school that’s affording me the chance to mold my own future as i choose my co-op jobs and literally redraw the curriculum as i go. But, we never intended for me to go to Drexel. No one ever did. It’s all been blind faith and dumb luck all along.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5119735/

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Today the former director of admissions at New York University was here at Drexel to talk to our admissions staff about our potential for growth in the coming year, and somehow i got myself into the meeting with him because i said i thought it would be “educational” (for all of the obvious reason, and since NYU was one of my top choice schools). So, i volunteered to take minutes and wound up choking down metaphorical bile through the entire chat.

You have to understand that when i say that NYU was one of my top choice schools that i really had no top choice. I was totally unprepared for college. I had no idea what i wanted to be save for that i didn’t really want to take any more calculus, and i thought that i was being savvy and intelligent when i said i had my school search narrowed down to cities that reminded me of Philadelphia. I knew nothing, and had no battle plan, and didn’t know how i was going to pay for college, and i could be accused of being silly and naive but i had honestly been convinced by Masterman that i just had to pick a school and apply and my SAT score and our reputation would step up and do the trick.

Of course, having worked in Admissions for a half a year now, i see how this was both true and false. If i had been told to target smaller sized colleges that were on the upper half of the second tier of acceptance rates, i would’ve done amazingly well. Those schools gobble up SAT scores like mine and are left wanting more. They love AP-inflated GPAs. They love over-involvement in extra-curricular activities. However, no one told me that, and so it was just my mother and i all alone against the admissions process.

My first four choices were Brown, NYU, Penn, BU. No one saw fit to tell me that even our top ten students wouldn’t necessarily be able to make a clean sweep on acceptance letters from those institutions, and one way or another none of those stories ended happily. APs don’t mean too much when over 70% of your entering class has them. Good SAT’s pale in comparison to a perfect 800. A single parent working as a nurse with no savings doesn’t buy you too far into a class of intelligencia and society that you never even met before let alone associated with.

And, so, i didn’t go Ivy, or even “little ivy.” Somehow, almost by coincidence, i came to Drexel. And i love it and the people are perfect and i still regret the fact that i’m here because i didn’t do all of my homework like i should have (on so many different levels).

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5119628/

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After work and dinner and rehearsal we all went out into a pseudo-suburb of Philly to swim in Howard’s pool. For a while we ran around its circumference in endless counter-clockwise circles to create a current, and then it carried us along on our own. The entire situation was weird because it was all in cliques and i wasn’t in any of them … the girls lead by my bitchy co-star, and the two couples, and the two endlessly warring factions, and any way you sliced it i was certain to be the odd one out of any battle or conversation. But, it was fun nonetheless… there’s something to be said for swimming in the dark with some of your most entertaining friends and the way my laugh carries for what seems like miles and miles because everything there is so flat. Afterwards i pulled on my cutoffs, which are technically my first ever pair of jeans, and marveled at the fact that i still fit in them, and at all of the legends this flesh has amassed in the intervening 6 years. And at that i still have nearly the same waist as i did before highschool. And that i do and see any of this day to day.

But, now my entire block is silently shut off save for the refrigerator staring at me from my neighbors window across the street, and swimming always leaves me feeling warm and breathless. No artificial air tonight … i’ll sleep just with what’s out there to begin with.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5098575/