Oh!  Hello.  Didn’t see you there.

Okay, yes I did, I’ve been extremely aware of how much time was slipping by without an update.  It’s kind of rude of me, yes, but don’t worry — my thank-you graduation post cards are finally in the mail, and I think I have some decent reasons for staying quiet.

There’s a law of physics that not many people know about, but I do because I’m a doctor.  It says: Moving to a new country will be batshit crazy for at least four weeks.  You might think I’d be excused from this, seeing as I’ve already conquered Ireland once before.  I have to admit, I THOUGHT SO TOO.  I knew the Irish were slow as hell at getting public service things done, so I would just get them done early and be done with it.  But is anyone ever really done with immigration?

I suppose I am now, as of yesterday, but that’s only after I’d gone to the Dublin bureau for a few hours only to find out I’m not living within their jurisdiction at the moment.  I was going to tell a long story about the whole thing, but THERE’S NO TIME.

I sit at a computer all day long but I still have no time to update anyone about anything.  I’ve been typing this entry progressively for a week or two between work and getting the bus and writing up letters and going to bed.

Work is going well, I enjoy it, although my eyesight doesn’t.  Straight after work, I bolt into the city (or as fast as a bus will take me) in order to view apartments that disappoint me time and time again.  (Although, we saw one yesterday that I’m crazy about.  Let’s all work together to will this one into happening.)  By the time I’m home, it’s 9:30 pm, time for heating up dinner, finishing up some part-time work, and going to bed for work at 8 am.

I’m exhausted, although since it’s from bountiful work and progress — and not, you know starvation or poverty or illness — that’s really nothing to complain about.  Sometimes I just need to go into an empty room by myself, cry it out, and then get back to lobbying my old landlord for a reference, or my bank for a reference, or my employer for a reference.

Oh, and also enjoying the fact that the last 9 months are completely over and that I don’t think about them at all anymore.  It’s like I never left.

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When I named this site, I thought I was being pretty clever — striking on a Simpsons quote while covering my ass in the future.  Either I actually was going to be a big wheel in my figurative cracker factory or else I was just going to be making fun of myself for not managing to get a job before anyone else could make fun of me.

I’m still not sure which way it’s going to swing, but for now, let’s just say: Molly 1, rest of the world 0.  I’ve landed a job, in Ireland no less, and it does indeed involve a degree of writing.  I’m happy and excited to get my life moving, where I want to be.

The one issue standing in the way?  The visa.  It’s hopefully not going to be in my way much longer, but it is going to take about two weeks to process.  This is problematic, as I sleepily booked my ticket for the start of June before doing the math and realizing that that is not going to give me very much wiggle room (if any).  I’m at once hoping that time slows down just enough to let them process my application in time, and stomping around willing time to go faster so that I CAN GET OUT OF THIS PLACE.

I don’t have time to write well on this thing at the moment.  There’s too much to do between now and then!

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Look, I can stomach rejection all right, as long as it’s disguised as something other than COMPLETE AND UTTER rejection.

Thank you for your application for the recently advertised position of Editor.  Having reviewed all applications you were not successful in being called for an interview.

Unfortunately you didn’t make the shortlist for interview and our vacancy has now been filled.

Can’t you just say thanks but no thanks?  No need to tell me how far I DIDN’T make it.

Okay.  That’s out of my system.  Back to the drawing board.

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No, nostalgia is definitely not what I got.  Not nostalgia for Ireland, anyway.  I got some old and some new instead.  Went to some new restaurants — went to some old pubs — saw some new castles — saw some old faces — scoped out some apartment developments — waved to my old house at Beechwood — saw London for the first time — couldn’t wait to get back to Dublin after — saw an inch of snow shut down two of Europe’s most prominent cities — saw Irish kids building an army of snowmen like never happens here anymore — spent an inordinate amount of time in the airport — spent even longer snuggled up inside.

It was a really great trip all around, something I needed badly.  First semester was a rough time.  Nothing in particular was rough about it — nobody died, lost their job, or broke up — but personally, I never seemed to get on my own two feet for very long before something would trip me again.  By the time December 29th hit and I boarded my flight, all I could think was, FINALLY!!!

The three weeks flew by, as I knew they would, but approaching the end wasn’t as DREADFUL, ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL as it was the last time I left Ireland, or the consequent times that my boyfriend left Boston.  After sitting around most weekdays while my boyfriend went to work, I grew pretty restless and ready to jump back into my own work.  I sobbed like a baby in the airport for a few minutes, and then I composed myself and felt okay.  It was maybe the fastest recovery time I’ve had since leaving him.

Now, for the next three weeks, I’m just going to do homework and make bank.  This semester is the beginning of the end, but let’s be honest: College was never what was important to me.  So really — and more importantly — this is just the calm before the next beginning.

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About a month ago I quit my English senior honors thesis.  I’m not sure where I got the idea that I had to do one, because it is entirely optional and only a handful of English students take it on, but I suppose since high school I’ve done a lot of things I never had to do.  I never had to take all those AP classes, or all those instruments, or all those internships early on–I’m pretty sure I was enough without them.  But they were there, and I could, so I did.

Going back through the Pretty Big Wheel archives, I see now why I decided to do the senior thesis:

So as to not totally close the doors on this, I need to set my sights on a senior thesis. And for ideas I have approximately… hmm, two and two is four… carry the one… oh, NOTHING.

(I’ve really only included the second sentence because I love realizing that I was funny once upon a time.  I crack me up.)  The pressure of graduate school is big, and I’m still battling with people who seem to think that I should be going when I’m fairly certain that I do not want or need to go.  If you’re going to be a doctor or a teacher, yeah, you should really go, there’s a lot of textbook learning and exams and special degrees and specialization involved.  And you’re also going to be pretty lucky because when it comes to gaining beginner experience, you’ll get clinical and classroom placements.  With publishing, not so.  No publisher would give a shit if I said, “True, I don’t have 2+ years of editorial experience, but! I know the history of Harper’s Magazine.” I’d get met with a big fat, “Who the hell cares?  Do you know what you’re doing when we sit you down with some copy or not?”

I just have to get into it.  It’s extremely tempting to put it off another year or so, and actually it would solve my immigration issue so fast because students are the luckiest people in the world.  But I would accrue more debt than ever and be nowhere closer to the top of the publishing food chain.  It’s a business where you just have to prove yourself, and I should stop getting so clammy about the fact and just get into it already.

All this to say, the honors thesis was a joke of an idea.  While other students were already beginning their research last spring, I was in another country, sort of toying with the idea of this one author, Flann O’Brien.  I’d enjoyed An Béal Bocht and thought I could like his other work too.  Oh, ho-ho.  Who knew this guy was an existentialist/post-colonialist/absurdist/meta-fictionalist master?  And everything else in between?  At Swim-Two-Birds took me ages to get through, because it is a book about a narrator writing a book about a character writing a book in which his characters can write back at the author.  I’d start that sentence again from the top, if I were you.  By the time I’d finished The Third Policeman (easier to digest, harder to discuss), my thesis proposal was due.

Oh, right, the thesis part.  The part where I explain very clearly which critical approach I am going to take with this author, and what threads I will use to tie his works together.  Let me just refer back to my notes from last year and the year before where I wrote down all the different types of literary theory and OH WAIT.  THAT’S RIGHT, I DECIDED ABOUT TWO WEEKS BEFORE TO RANSACK MY ROOM AND TOSS OUT EVERY SINGLE NOTE I’VE EVER TAKEN, BECAUSE COLLEGE IS ALMOST OVER, WHO NEEDS THIS NONSENSE ANYMORE?

So with that, I was off to an excellent start, one which made my advisor look at me with a withering gaze that said, You’re shitting me, right? He put it slightly nicer: “You have a very long way to go and I don’t know if you can do it.”  There’s that inspiration I was looking for!

I struggled throughout September, well aware that I had two months to write 30-something coherent pages on a topic I’d yet to narrow down, about an author who notoriously resists the application of all literary theory because THAT IS HIS POINT.  My other classes were not off to a good start either, with C’s and B’s on my first few assignments and quizzes.  I simply had no time for them, with 15-20 pages of thesis rumination due every Thursday.  And that’s all it was–rumination.  There was nothing solid about anything I was writing, nothing that made me go, ah, I’ve figured it out, I know what I’m discussing now! I got more and more confused, more and more frustrated.

I called my mom one night in early October bawling about how much work I had to do and how stupid it was to be doing it, how my professor thought I was stupid, how I thought I was stupid, how my whole stupid paper was stupid and pointless and optional and yet I was killing myself over it.  ”Why don’t you just quit?” she said.  ”That’s what I would do.”

Pardon me, madam, but Molly Griffin does not quit her academics.  She may have shimmied her way out of basketball, and at some point while you were blinking she managed to not play the saxophone in the last two years, but her academics?  How dare you.

Really, that’s how indignant I got, all huffing and puffing about how I would never do that, can’t just quit, that’s just embarrassing.  My mom said, “Well I think you should.  And we’ll dance in the kitchen on Saturday.”  After we hung up, I sprawled on my bed and moaned and wept like I was deciding which child of mine I had to kill.  Then I wrote a quick letter to my advisor and emailed it.  This is the start of his priceless response:

Hello, Molly.

this has been a very busy day and i haven’t had a moment to look at your paper. indeed, as 31 papers are about to descend tomorrow upon me, our meeting on Friday looks uncertain.

to be honest, i have doubts about your preparation and progress at this stage.

I knew that’s what I’d hear, as he’d expressed doubt the entire way through (on top of never having read my thesis to begin with).  I can’t blame him: he was very busy and it was terrible work.  He’d never laughed or smiled once in my meetings with him, although he’s a laughing man, which suggested that he absolutely hated being involved with my thesis, which was bound to reflect poorly on him as well.  When I told him in person I really was not going to go ahead with it, he said, “To be honest, I still haven’t read it.”  I said, “Oh, don’t worry, it isn’t any good anyway,” and he let out a big HA!!  Then practically skipped away with joy of one less stupid thing off his shoulders.

This is all very long and perhaps more melodramatic than it sounds like it was, but I was wrecked that week.  How could I just quit like that?  I’ve never dropped anything before like this.  Every resource or contact I’d used for the thesis seemed very, very disappointed that I was not continuing, like it was a personal affront to ACADEMIA.

But what can I say: I don’t really care about academics anymore.  I’m going to end up with evidence of this withdrawal on my transcript, a great big W, something I really argued to avoid but accepted in the end.  So what?  I’ve been really, really good at academics all my life, and it’s what has defined me especially in these later years.  But I’m not going to be in school forever.  I could hang in there for another year or two and hide from adulthood a little bit longer (and I’m still not totally sure that I won’t make a last minute decision to get my masters if things get too hard).  But I’d really be a lot prouder of myself if I held my breath and threw myself into the job force, excelled, and carved out a new identity somewhere else.

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You want to go to grad school.

No, when I graduate this May, that’s it, I’m not a student anymore.

Oh, so you want to do a summer program abroad then.

No, I’d have to be a student to do that, and I won’t be a student anymore.  Besides, a summer wouldn’t be long enough.

Well, you could sign up for this program and it would give you four months in Ireland.

Mmm but that’s really not long enough.  I want to leave right after graduation and stay in Ireland for at least a year.

You could go to Australia for a year.  Or England for six months!

Sounds terrific, but they’re not Ireland.

Can I interest you in a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany?

Not in the least.  There’s a reason I want to go to Ireland specifically.  You should really read my blog.

Well, but work visas are hard to come by if you don’t already have a career.  You’d have to get a company to vouch for you over everyone else in Ireland.

I know, I know.  And like, I think I’m special, but probably not that special yet.  So I understand that, while not impossible, that’s extremely unlikely.  But!  Ireland and the U.S. have finally started a working holiday visa program.  Do you know anything about that?

…Summer program?

Nope, not a student anymore.  See, it’s a visa that lasts a year, and you don’t have to have a job organized before you arrive.  Except, I don’t know much about it.  Any idea who I should contact?

We have a great alumni program.

I know, so I’ve heard.  Do they know about this working holiday visa?  Loads of Australians take advantage of it, I met a really nice couple last year who were doing it and the girl was doing short-term contractual work at my magazine company for someone’s maternity leave.  That would kind of be perfect.

Short-term, eh?  Four months?  Lots of Irish companies want Americans, like bars and hotels.  There are even some secretary gigs!

Whoa, really?!  No.  Not a student anymore, ergo, not able to live off of my parents or my barista job.  I’d really like a year, and I’d really like a real job.  I just mean, I wouldn’t mind covering maternity leave here and there at publishing companies.  Enough of those back to back would be good broad experience with real world pay.

America has jobs too!  Maybe you could move internationally in a few years?

BUT WHY IS IT SO IMPOSSIBLE TO DO IT NOW.  SURELY THIS HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE.  RIGHT?  ANYONE?  CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP A SISTER OUT.

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