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How to Be Ambitious Without Really Trying
Or, why I’m not getting a PhD
I canceled my GRE today. Went to Barnes and Noble to return the prep book I never opened. I never took the damn test before I got my Master’s — it was in the U.K. so they didn’t care — and I never thought I’d ever need to take it. But frustration with the social justice world drove me to an obsession with how trauma shapes culture and the place to study cultural trauma is the sociology department at Yale.
Yale. I can feel some feeble part of me purr. “Yeah, I go to Yale,” I’d say. I wouldn’t even have to toss my hair over my shoulder. I wouldn’t get a Yale shirt, but I’d get one of those Kale shirts — you know, as a joke. That broken little part of me, she loves the sound of this. Finally, I’d have the clout to prove to the world that I’m just as smart as I think I am.
I can feel the hunger stirring. The animals are waking up. It’s been a long winter in my soul. What I mean is, it’s been a while since I’ve felt ambitious.
For the past few years, my main ambition has been to heal from chronic Lyme disease and find a home I don’t have to leave after three months. Those who’ve never had a chronic illness will never quite understand the way it all-consumes you. That gap in my résumé? That’s when I was battling a microscopic minotaur through every turn…
