Scratch Tickets

After another night of fitful, but oddly not stress inducing sleep, I found that I was late for my first class - again; So instead of walking into class late - which, for this particular professor, is act comparable to throwing your desk out the school window, or setting fire to the overhead projector - I walked though our small town and bought yet another in a series of greasy hamburgers (ugh - fast food again.) On some level, I'm sure that I could write biography of my entire life as told through the many hamburgers I have ever eaten. My plan is to plead for forgiveness for my abject transgressions during his office hours, but only so I can get the homework and see how well I did on Monday's exam.

Yet, before my ill-considered lunch, before my somewhat pleasant walk through town, I got the mail and discovered that I was not accepted for the Teaching Assistantship (T.A.) for the college I was waiting to hear from. Their phrasing, "we are not able to offer you a position at this time," based as it was on an explanation of tight budgets and "worthy applicants," was not terribly surprising. As I told a friend later, I figured that applying for a T.A. was like buying a dollar scratch ticket from the grocery store: you're not likely to win the lottery, but what the hell - you'll never know unless you try. (By the way, this is an odd metaphor because I never buy scratch tickets, play for the lottery, or gamble.) The way that they write these letters always depresses me, because the unavoidable implication is always that the college has many "worthy applicants," but obviously I am not one of them; it's a platitude I'd rather do without.