When all else fails, just say Fuck It.

Okay, I’m a little distressed at the policy of my school. I’m a comparative lit graduate student, and our department is only allowed two TA positions each year. That means that the head of our department has to pick from all fifteen of us the two students that will get the opportunity to teach Comp. I, then Comp II, and then someday World Lit. He told me that I am third on the list, which translates that no Comp I TA position for me this fall. The next year, yeah; but, he says that I might get a Latin TA spot. That was before I pissed him off, not meaning to piss him off, but I was under stress from my son’s being in intensive care, my husband having a broken knee with an unidentifiable lesion, and me having an ulcer the size of my thumb, which isn’t that big, but in the scheme of digestion, it hurts. So, I say, well it’s hard to understand this TA position thing. I mean, I read where we all would get a chance to teach Comp. that’s why I’m here, and I don’t understand why we can’t move into those spots and let the new students wait it out, he reminds me that he gets only two spots a year. Two spots. So, I say that financially I am hanging on and might not be back, and then because I’m really stressed, I say that it’s not really fair that three men decide the fate of so many students, especially when it comes to the female students and especially the non-traditional female students, who by the way have no voice and are discriminated against in almost every aspect of college life from undergraduate to the end of their PhD. Not so much the males as much as the females. I know, we got together and compared stories of professors and the administration. Anyway, my department head tells me that he will recommend me for a Latin position, but then he reminds me that he has all these other students who have been here longer, and I’m just going to have to be patient. I think I may have pissed him off and in graduate school that is the wrong thing to do. ON a brighter note, I am making better in my Latin class than the guy who made straight A’s last semester. He has not made over 60 on any of his quizzes, and I have made A’s, B’s, and one C. So, I’m grooving right along. Here’s my philosophy: I don’t give a shit, I’ll take my classes, get my grades, and when I’m at a point where I can, I’ll apply to another graduate school for my PhD. Yep, that’s what I’m going to do. No more of this putting me on the back burner for younger, cuter, students, who by the way, don’t come to class and when they come they put their work off and put their work off with the most lame excuses. Then they barely make their grades and are still getting to teach. Tell me where there is any justice in all of this! Fuck them, I say.