Writing on CollegeSwimming

Just a shameless plug for an article I wrote for CollegeSwimming.com. It's a first in a series designed for recruits and their parents. For the recruit, the process of selecting the right college can be extremely intimidating and complicated. For the school, they would not like to gamble on a potential athlete, so they are looking for specific things right from the start. Read about it here.

Post-Grad Post

You know, I started this post with a little background information, but then I just reread this post from March 2011 when I got into grad school:

A writer’s ego is a very fragile thing. Sharing about the rejections over and over again, I felt like I was announcing through a large megaphone from the top of the world, “My writing sucks and no one likes it.” It’s hard to describe how that shattered my motivation and made me dislike—even hate—things completely unrelated to my attempt at getting into grad school.

I decided to stop with the background information after reading that. It is a painful story still and more painful that I occasionally dream about what it would have been like last week to walk across a stage and receive my MFA. But I did not. I received my MA in International Studies and spent the majority of my time at DU studying international security, the Middle East, and political theory. Apparently, I did pretty well at that. Grad school taught me a lot of things. A resounding lesson, for me, is that I can excel at something that is not my first, second, or even third passion. I can excel at something that I never thought I would excel at.

There is not much I have to say here. I loved my time at DU. I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but it just wasn’t an MFA program in writing. I kept telling myself over the last two years that I was at DU for a reason and that things will pan out, that this will all be worth it. That has yet to happen, so I’m still praying that it does. 

An Incomplete Summary of 2012

I found a nice corner of a coffee shop a few days ago and wrote out a summary of 2012. Month by month, I put down what came to mind without the help of pictures or a calendar. Here is some of what I have.

January

Despite having a 6-week break between fall quarter and winter quarter I did not feel ready or excited to return to graduate classes at DU. Maybe it was the 26-27 books I had to read in the first ten weeks of the year. Maybe it was the realization, once again, that Korbel isn't an MFA program and thus, not where I truly wanted to end up. Or maybe it was the unease I have about going through all of this, accruing debt, and the inability to see how this is going to pay off. 

I remember ringing in the new year with my parents and having dinner at Bistro Vendome on NYE. We walked Larimer Square after dinner. It was around 20 degrees outside. We marveled at all the hoes lined up to get into clubs. Many were in mini-skirts and low-cut shirts, which conflicted with the sub-freezing temperature outside, but aided in what has become the goal of NYE for so many. Get dressed up. Go out. Get drunk. Meet someone. Go home and have sex with them. One can't be blamed for disliking much about NYE. 

February

I began the last year of my 20s. There was a joint birthday party in Fort Collins at my grandparent's house. My mom and my aunts were there. It was a good time. I missed my dad. 

March

We went to Kauai with Kate's parents. The trip provided so many moments that will be with me for a long time, but a few of them will be with me forever. One of the them was getting to Kauai ahead of the in-laws and exploring some of the island and our hotel with Kate. We took pictures of a beautiful sunset, had appetizers and drinks at the hotel bar and even had a nap before we had to go back to the airport to pick up her parents. 

I'll never forget snorkeling there even though it wasn't a great time to snorkel on the south shore. I dove down deep enough under the frothy surface and I kicked fast with fins directly toward the largest fish I saw. I surprised him and he bolted away and his tail made a noise that I could clearly hear. I didn't expect that. It was like a short burst of gunfire under water. I floated right there for a few seconds in silence watching the fish disappear into the murky distance. 

There was also a memorable attempt at boogie boarding at Brennecke's Beach, or break-neck beach. The waves here form very quickly, they are steep, and they dump you in shallow water. It's a horrible wave to ride. We tried a couple times, but I'm glad we stopped. One wave managed to take both Kate and I out. But before leaving a sea turtle popped up between Kate and I. It was just out of arm's reach. Kate's face was classic, scared, and proof of what was on her mind, "What the hell do we do now?"

April 

We drove to Farmington for Easter. My parents were overjoyed and we were too to see them and to have beautiful weather for the drive there and back. 

May

We went to Cincinnati for the first time. We were celebrating my college roommate's wedding. Cinci was pretty cool, which was surprising. However, I would never want to move to Ohio. I just couldn't do it. It's flat and boring for the most part. The summer air is sticky. Lots of fat people too.

Another couple of good friends were married this month too. I went to a bachelor party in Boulder. A shot of whiskey, bike rides into Boulder, Mountain Sun food and beer, and there were awkward moments in a shady basement club with a bunch of undergrads listening to Tom's story about how I was in the Olympics, but lesser known because Michael Phelps was a teammate. Then there was almost a scuffle with some very drunk people on Pearl St and a 3am bike ride back to north Boulder and a hard floor to call mine for the night. 

June

I finished my first year at DU. I spent way too much time planning our August vacation, but luckily, I made all the best choices. 

Kate and I celebrated five years of marriage with a dinner at Salt in Boulder. We found it underwhelming, but still good in some ways. It just didn't meet the reputation that precedes it.

It was a very hot month. The A/C went out twice. 

July

My DVR was getting overworked by recording 10-16 hours of Olympic coverage a day. I remained glued to the television for most of two weeks and reveled in Michael Phelps' performance, which started off a little rough, but by the end he had proven to the doubters that he still was the best swimmer in the world and certainly the most capable when it comes to performing on the world's greatest stage. 

August

I've written about our big trip elsewhere, but here's a little more about it. 

London: hot, muggy, crowded, expensive, tough to sift through all the thousands of restaurants to find a great one, but damn, I still love this city more than any other. 

Train ride: first class; I already had breakfast when we boarded, but I didn't know we were served breakfast on first class so I had another breakfast and the alcoholic beverages were on the house for the next four hours; leg room; cruising by the North Atlantic; Instagramming while on the train going 100+ mph.

Edinburgh: crowded, cool, damp, expensive, funny, but so awesome and old. Great dinner at the Dome. One great comedian. One not-so-great comedian. 

The Highlands: Stressful driving for both of us, but Kate did a great job, unbelievable mountains, glens, waterfalls, midges, dunking my head in a creek, watching Kate enjoy Scotland, the meals at the Lovat, Loch Ness, Balmuirfield House (our first B&B), the drive into Edinburgh, St. Andrew's golf course tour, and the sense of accomplishment and safety after turning in our rental car. 

London again: cooler this time around, Apex Temple Court (amazing hotel), lots of walking, and almost, in a way, getting a little tired of touristy London in the summer, chocolates from Selfridges, and a fitting service at St. Paul's and a great last dinner of dim sum at Ping Pong near the Jubilee bridge on the south side, and the priceless real food market in the same area. 

September

DU starts up again. Senioritis. SecDef...sucking. I'm not a social scientist. 

One bad football game in Laramie. Cowboys sucked again. But great company. 

A surprise trip to Vegas to meet Guy and Liron at the Venetian. We had a great time, but we both wanted one more night there. 

October

Kate interviews for a new job and gets it. 

I continued to slog through the fall quarter, feeling uninspired and bored by most of what I am studying. The Islamic political thought course is by far my favorite class of the quarter. 

November

Kate starts her new job. I finally finish the quarter at DU, getting three A-s, my worst quarter at DU so far. 

My parents come to Denver for a good long visit over Thanksgiving. Van Gogh exhibit. Ate a lot. Played Oh Hell quite a bit. Monte was here too. We saw Lincoln. 

And Obama wins again. I jump up from the couch, attempt to do the moonwalk across our wood floor, fail miserably, scream a little bit, peak into our bedroom where Kate is trying to fall asleep and I yell at her (out of joy), go back to the couch, collapse, sigh, one more yell, turned the TV off. 

December

We go to Dublin, California to spend time with my sister, her husband and family. Our niece had her 5th birthday party while we were out there. 

Kate's family is in town for Christmas. We tour Stranahan's. Eat at Sushi Sasa. The guys go to the Bull and Bush. 11pm service at Montview. I was moved in December. 

Kate and I close out the year at home with prime filet mignon, good wine, creamed spinach, and truffle mashed potatoes. It was probably better than any steak we could have ordered here in Denver. I stay up until midnight, but I'm in bed. Nevertheless, I still nudge Kate, sit up in bed, and yell, "Happy New Year!" Then, head to pillow and 2013.

Election Eve 2012

I have really missed being able to blog about this election season. The other day I looked back at how many blogs I was writing in 2008. It was a lot. On average 28-33 blogs per month leading up to and during the month of the election. 

I just went back and looked at my election live-blogging from 2008. I don't think I will be doing the same tomorrow, as I don't have the kind of audience that I did four years ago. Nor do I think I'll have much to say, but we'll see about that. 

I haven't read the live-blog from 2008 since, well, November of 2008, so there were definitely things I forgot about. Like this:

7:15pm - A CNN correspondent at the McCain celebration in Arizona says, "It is a much different mood here." Yeah, like a funeral. 

8:23pm - MSNBC calling Ohio for Obama. Self-protective denial is wearing very, very thin. And with that, Josh Marshall isn't live blogging anymore. He is "F--k Ya Blogging". Priceless. 

8:59pm - Via TPM, the Rocky Mountain News calling Colorado for Obama. [Remember the Rocky Mountain News?] 

9:23pm - The shots of Grant Park are extraordinary. I'm a little nervous about such a huge celebration. I hope people are smart and safe. I hope Obama is safe. Meanwhile in Arizona, it looks like a singalong for McCain fans. 

9:50pm - Fox calls Virginia for Obama. 10 minutes out from calling the whole race? Possibly. Tap the keg. Sullivan writes, "You drinking yet? Stupid question." 

10:00pm - Called it for OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA! I can't believe Americans just did that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

11:19pm - I've said all I can say at this point. What a night. What a night. All is not wasted. Goodnight.

I think what's clear about the election this year, is that we probably won't have the race called by 9pm Mountain Time, like it was in 2008. I have a busy day on Wednesday so I am not prepared to stay up very late tomorrow. I might have to call it quits at midnight if nothing has been called by then. But, if Obama would somehow manage to win Florida and Virginia or Florida and N.C., the race could easily be called by 9pm. However, that's extremely unlikely to happen. Even if Obama manages a victory in Florida, it'll be too close to call tomorrow. At least that's my view. Nevertheless, I remain hopeful for a called race sometime tomorrow evening. I still think this is a possibility because of Obama's appearing to hold on to Ohio, PA, N.H., Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and maybe Virginia. If his margin of victory is great enough in those states for them to be called blue tomorrow night, then Obama will get his four more years. 

To me, the choice couldn't be clearer tomorrow. If you paid attention from 2001-2008, what makes you think returning to those policies is a good idea? That's what a Romney presidency is, a return to the past. The economy was in free fall when Obama took over. We were losing approximately 750,000 jobs a month at the time Obama moved into the White House. It took him some time, but he started to reverse that trend and he still is. It's a slow recovery and I understand some of the frustration out there. But I don't understand American impatience with the recovery. This impatience signals to me that these people never grasped the severity of the economic crisis. I generally don't understand American impatience with nearly everything anyways, but when it comes to the idea of just returning to the same old policies because four years of different policies haven't dug the country out of the deepest economic abyss it has seen since the 1930s is preposterous. This is to say nothing of Obama's other accomplishments like the Affordable Care Act (which actually does insure 30 million people who otherwise wouldn't have health insurance and who won't if Romney is elected and successfully repeals ACA, don't believe me? look it up), ending our atrocious, misguided war in Iraq, and concentrating on the only one that mattered and putting it to an end in Afghanistan, and killing Osama Bin Laden (something Bush had lost sight of ever since his obsession with Iraq truly took ahold of him in the wake of 9/11). 

I have never believed in a President who is going to solve all of your problems. No such President exists. And I think too much of America doesn't know that, which is certainly a contributing factor to the impatience I referenced above. However, I truly believe that there is an honest, caring man in Obama who cares for the greatest number of Americans, far more than Romney does. And because of this I am not choosing the lesser of two evils. 

I voted early last Friday for the man who has expressed deep and passionate concern for working-class Americans and their plight, who actually has the guts to ask for a tax increase for the very wealthiest in the country. If I was in that "wealthiest" category I would gladly accept the tax increase, but I'm not, and I don't feel bad for anyone in that tax bracket who would be asked to pay 3-4% more. 

I still believe in Obama. I don't believe a vote for Obama means a vote against America, but that's exactly the meme that the Right has pushed over the last two years of campaigning. This idea that America is becoming un-American, that our opportunities are slipping through our fingers, and that Romney represents the "true" American spirit is simply vacuous. 

I am hopeful for tomorrow and I believe there is clearly a right and a wrong choice on the ballot. I hope America makes the right one.

DU Debate Debacle

For almost eight years, this blog has been a place for me to share stories, articulate my opinion, post pictures, post video, and to share what little fiction I have written. Today it serves one of its most important purposes, that is, a place for me to vent my frustrations. The topic: the first presidential debate at the University of Denver (where I currently am in graduate school), happening tomorrow (if you've been living in a hole in the ground). 

When I first heard of DU hosting the debate, I was excited and happy for the university and its students. Now I know the error of my thinking, that the debate is brought to a university to expose the most important people on campus, the students, to a historic moment in the election season is what I thought this was going to be. Having never been on a campus that hosted a presidential debate, I didn't know any better. But a few months ago as signs started to appear all over campus about impending closures, event cancellations/rescheduling, and class cancellation for October 3rd, I began to have my doubts.

Now, one day away from the event, it is clearer than ever that the debate is not, and has never been handled as an event, to benefit the students. Reported this morning on the local news, Magness Arena, in the Richie Center, is going to hold 1000 debate spectators. DU students will occupy approximately 92 of those seats. The students lucky enough to attend were picked in a lottery yesterday morning. All students and 2012 graduates of DU were automatically entered into the lottery. Knowing full well that only a small section of the student body would be able to attend the debate, DU designed an on-campus watch party called Debate Fest. The initial introduction to Debate Fest was an email that called the party a ticketed event available only to DU students, faculty, and those living near the campus in the university hills neighborhood. An email invited people to register and reserve their spot for Debate Fest, where they could enjoy the festivities, feast from Denver's best food trucks, and enjoy a show from The Lumineers, who will play prior to the debate. I, along with hundreds more, registered for the event. Shortly after registration opened, Debate Fest reached capacity. This should not have been surprising to anyone, but it seemed to have surprised DU. 

Yesterday, DU re-opened Debate Fest registration. It once again closed shortly thereafter due to the remaining spots being filled up. Then, last night, DU sent out an email with tips for Debate Fest. Here, I highlight point number three from the email:

3.) Please note that registration does NOT guarantee entrance to DebateFest. The number of people admitted to the event will be limited based on space constraints due to fire laws. We recommend that you arrive early.

What this means is that any student or faculty member or neighborhood resident can show up as early as they want tomorrow and get in line for Debate Fest. The doors open at 3pm and space is now on a first come, first served basis, thus guaranteeing that many of those that did register for the event (read: students) will be denied entrance to their campus and "their" debate. There are many reasons why this is frustrating. To mention one, I am a graduate student. I have reading to do tomorrow. I can't devote my entire morning to standing in line for a party I am not even sure will be a good place to watch the debate from. My plan was to walk over at 3pm, stand in a short line, have my name scratched off a list because I registered for the event, and then walk inside. I am one of many students who planned to do that tomorrow. 

The DU Presidential Debate is for DU administration, big-time DU donors, and the press. It is not for the students, nor is it for the Denver community or undecided voters. By yesterday, campus was crawling with members of the media from all over the world, while fences continued to sprout up everywhere to keep the students away from the most important, high-profile event that will ever happen on their campus. This event is a sham and it is embarrassing how DU has handled it from the start. 

Penn State Collapse

If it wasn't, essentially, my finals week (the next 9 days), I would have a much, much longer comment on the Paterno/Penn State disaster...lots of thoughts there. I'll say this though, Paterno said he will retire at the end of this season. I would be very surprised if he is allowed to do so. I wouldn't be shocked if he coached only one more game, this Saturday, vs. Nebraska.

Racing Clean

I just watched the documentary Bigger Stronger Faster*. There are hundreds of documentaries on Netflix and this one, above most, hit home with me.

I thought about a lot during the movie. First, about my body and how, for all of my life, I’ve always been the tallest, but as others around me seemed to catch up a bit I felt insecure that I wasn’t by default the fastest and strongest. Because, for much of my childhood, I was all four: bigger, faster, stronger, and taller. When people started to close in on me in terms of strength and speed it really hurt my confidence. I started to believe I couldn’t compete and run with the guys like I used to. Had I not fallen victim to this silly belief, I think I would have been much more successful in collegiate athletics. I started to shed this lack of confidence in the immediate years after I graduated college. I moved back in with my parents for a year, then I got married, moved to Milwaukee, and was really far away from everything I had ever known. But throughout this time I kept training. I was running, doing stairs, pushups, jumping rope, and, sometimes, getting back in the pool.

I was beginning to realize that the playing field hadn’t really been leveled all that much by my peers getting tall and muscular. I imagined it had, but I still had the same advantages and glimmers of talent in the pool. It wasn’t until I took a job coaching collegiate swimming that I regained my confidence in areas of fitness and realized I was still in excellent shape and could still compete with, and sometimes beat, the athletes I was coaching. After that realization, I easily shed any doubt I had in my physical ability as an athlete in the pool and on land. I would run and swim with the athletes in the spring practices. When I ran with them, there were two guys who could consistently beat me if they were in the race that day. In the pool, it wasn’t the same, I had to work quite a bit harder, but I could bust something out that was fast enough over a distance of 25-100 yards that I could beat some of the guys.

Swimming, lifting, and running all throughout college put me in the best physical shape I have ever been in. Having that physique once is like a drug sort of. You want it again, but as soon as your athletic career ends you truly realize how hard it is to get that body back. In a way, I’ve been trying to get it back since 2005. I love being in shape, but I admit, it’s also a body image thing. In a lot of scenarios I am the strongest guy in the room. That’s not what’s most im

portant to me, though. I usually value being the fittest guy in the room more than the fastest, strongest, etc. And part of that is being able to look in the mirror and see a six-pack or, at the very least, feel one hidden by no more than a thin layer of skin and some insulation. Sometimes it is hard to walk the line between being in great shape and being vain. And with the influence of advertising and other aspects of capitalism in America, one has to be hyper aware of what is possible in fitness and what is clearly fabricated—helped by Photoshop or a slew of performance enhancing drugs—and this documentary was acutely aware of that.

Bigger Stronger Faster* is, first and foremost, about steroids. However, by the end of the documentary the director and star of it, Chris Bell, concludes steroids isn’t his problem or his family’s problem, it is just one of many problems or side effects of being American. He interviews many people in the film, professional athletes, body builders, politicians, porn stars, students, musicians, and his family. And, surprisingly, he maintains a very objective stance in all interviews considering he comes from a family with three boys, two of which have been heavy steroid users for a majority of their lives.

One thing Mr. Bell makes very clear is that steroid or performance enh

ancers are present in nearly everything we do in America. What, you’re nervous before a concert? Pop some beta-blockers. You need a boost before you take off in your fighter jet? Here’s some speed. You need some help blasting through that test tomorrow? Well, here’s some Adderall.

If the film focuses on one area of steroid use more than any other, it’s the use of anabolic steroids by professional athletes. The obvious sports with offenders are mentioned: football, baseball, weightlifting, cycling, and track and field. But not swimming, and I wonder, why not? Personally, I never knew anyone who was taking any steroids while I was swimming. But I was at a D1 school in a mid-major conference. I wasn’t competing against the likes of Cal, Texas, Auburn, and Arizona. Those schools are where the Olympians swim, you know, just for fun, just to stay in shape. But we were all tested and the faster you swam, the more you got tested. By that I mean if you made the national team, the drug testers started knocking early and often.

The last swimming steroid scandal I remember is when a Chinese woman tested positive for some illegal substance. It was a while ago and not really shocking because her lats looked like albatross wings and her deltoids attached right below her ears. But honestly, I am shocked there hasn’t been more scandal. We love to see super human

beings doing super human things whether it’s on the court, on the track, or in the pool.

It is articulated in the movie that if one country, team or athlete is using performance-enhancing drugs, then everyone is likely using them. You have to “level the playing field”, right? Theoretically, that is what is going on. So, if it is going on, some level of drug use or another performance enhancing technique is being used in swimming. Again, I have never directly observed someone taking a drug to perform better in the pool, but I feel like it is inevitably happening throughout the sport. Just like in other sports, not everyone is doing it, but there must be some. Everyone wants to be the best. We love to cheat and take things that will work to our advantage. Whether it’s trying out Muscle Milk to see if it does anything (I am currently guilty of this) or making regular testosterone injections, it is all, to some degree, unnatural.

I began to think of what I would feel if a large steroid scandal broke within the swimming world. Obviously, as a former collegiate swimmer and a bit of a purist, I would be disappointed with all those involved. However, I arrive back at the likely truth that if one country’s athletes are taking them then athletes from other countries are on them too. And if everyone is on them, than is it cheating? Does it really change anything besides decreasing swim times across the board? Maybe. Maybe not.

In the 2008-2009 collegiate swim season, body suits had reached the peak in popularity and drag reduction. Speedo and Blue Seventy made suits that not onl

y reduced drag, but the Blue Seventy one especially made you feel like you floated right in that sweet spot on the surface of the water, which is very hard to achieve naturally. These suits cost anywhere from $150 to over $400. If you didn’t get one before your conference meet you were setting you and your team back. Even teams with the smallest budgets had to break the bank to outfit their conference teams in these highly specialized works of art which, I have to mention, are pretty much shot and useless after one week long meet.

Records were broken across all conferences and at NCAAs in the winter of 2009. It was astonishing to watch someone drop over a second in the 50 or two or three seconds in the 100 over the year before. The NCAA outlawed these suits in the 2009-2010 season. The current suits are a drag, literally, on the swimmer compared to their hyper evolved brethren of season’s past. But it was a joy to see a swimmer discover that they could go just as fast and faster after a $500 suit was taken away from them. This was one of the joys of the 2009-2010 season and, of course, hoisting a trophy over one’s head and jumping into the pool afterward.

At a major swim meet last year, the top eight swimmers agreed to race their championship heat in the traditional brief. They marched out on deck to a standing ovation. The crowd roared and applauded the swimmers’ decision to revert to the purest form of racing suit. I smiled the first time I heard the story. That’s great, I said. I hope, perhaps naively so, that everything else is pure too.

Sort of Old News

Most of you know this already, but I committed to the University of Denver in April. I’ll be attending the Josef Korbel School of International Studies to get my Master’s in Spring 2013. Sounds pretentious, doesn’t it?

Earlier in April I attended an event at the school for admitted students. It was extremely helpful in making my decision. There were opportunities to talk with current students, professors, alumni, and would-be classmates (most of whom had only applied to Intl. Studies programs). I was the recipient of some very weird looks when I explained what programs I had applied to. Really, none of them are related. International Studies, English Literature, and Journalism are the three. English Lit and Journalism aren’t too distant, but I was struggling through justifying the jump to International Studies to my future classmates. I could see their consternation.

The easiest explanation of the wide variety of programs I applied to is this: I didn’t want to move for grad school. Applying to and attending another Intl. Studies program of DU’s caliber would have inevitably meant a move, most likely to the east coast. That’s precisely where I don’t want to be at this point in my life. Perhaps later, who knows? But not now.

Obviously, I am not going off to get my MFA in the fall. Until I get underway at DU, I will continue to struggle with that truth. Attending DU feels like abandoning my dreams of writing or, at the least, putting a long-term hold on that dream. So, it is with excitement that I think about writing graduate level papers. It won’t be the writing I thought I would be doing in grad school, but the topics will still be of great interest and I will be giving my writing mind and my keyboard loads of exercise.

That makes me happy.

Why I Didn't Tell You

This time around, if things went the same way they did last year, I didn’t want to tell anyone about not getting into grad school, not even my in-laws. I just didn’t want to deal with that public failure again. Last year hurt, a lot. Going into the process, I didn’t think I wouldn’t get in anywhere, but after 4 or 5 rejections, I realized 10 rejections was possible, even likely.

A writer’s ego is a very fragile thing. Sharing about the rejections over and over again, I felt like I was announcing through a large megaphone from the top of the world, “My writing sucks and no one likes it.” It’s hard to describe how that shattered my motivation and made me dislike—even hate—things completely unrelated to my attempt at getting into grad school.

After months of recovery and having to focus my attention elsewhere, it was autumn in Colorado and with a lot of support and guidance I reevaluated grad school and my interests. I chose a few schools to apply to, all of which wouldn’t prevent me from doing some writing, from letting me develop my voice, and share my opinion in some format. Essentially, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to grad school just to go to grad school and because I didn’t get in the first time. So, I committed and vowed to give it another go, telling only my wife, sister, and parents. No one else.

However, doing this again meant dealing with this menace from my past. The GRE. As you may recall, I first took the GRE in April 2009, prepping in advance for my first attempt at grad school. I wrecked my car on the way to that test and was seated for the first part (the essays) less than 40 minutes after a four-car accident on the interstate. I managed to do okay on the test, or at least I convinced myself that the results were good enough, especially given the situation. That held for a while, but for me, applying again meant doing everything better this time around. I signed up to take the test on December 9^th.

Shortly after the New Year, I wrote a brief summary of 2010, mentioning the highs and the lows of each month. For December I mentioned, “I celebrated a private accomplishment.” That accomplishment, improving my score in every category of the GRE, gave me a helpful dose of motivation to finish this round of applications. I did so in the first couple weeks of January. And I did so with no expectations this time around and with no sense that I deserved this. I guess that was more me protecting myself than wholeheartedly believing I truly didn’t deserve to get into grad school.

And last week I opened an email and I didn’t have to worry any more about weathering another round of rejections. I admit to taking a little pleasure in keeping this all a secret until now. It was a storm I was prepared to face privately and now it’s a little piece of success I am happy to share publicly.

It is my pleasure to inform you that…

I don’t have to spend another year wandering and wondering what if?

The eleventh letter doesn’t begin with “I regret to inform you…”

I don’t have to file this letter away with the other ten I still have.

Perseverance pays off, which is good, because I apparently had some to do this all over again, to take the GRE…again, and to pay the application fees again, to contact professors who may or may not remember me again.

I didn’t have to look up at the sky and curse. I, instead, closed my eyes and sighed, releasing burdens taken on long ago.

The first word I read was, “Congratulations!” That one word, I don’t know why I had to see it so badly, why that combination of letters could change my thinking in a split second, but they gave me hope, a smile, laughter, and tears.

I read the first paragraph over and over again before moving on to the second. “It is my great pleasure” (to eradicate doubt for the time being it could have said) “you have been accepted to the Master of Arts in International Studies program” and “I would like to invite you to be a part of the University of Denver community.”

I still feel like Michael Phelps, Jordan, Usain Bolt, and Arnold. But all for different reasons than last year. All for different reasons.

Laramie Days

Kate and I were in Wyoming over the weekend. We ate out at a couple of our favorite Laramie establishments, one of which was host to our first date. We caught a swim meet (Wyoming vs. Air Force). The men and the women won. It was an exciting meet on the men's side and I spent some time on the pool deck trying to get good pictures of swimming, which isn't an easy task. I got a few, but to really capture the speed and to keep the noise down in pictures I would need a much more powerful lens than I currently have. In the meantime, I've never been able to capture shots like this with any camera I have had so I am happy with them.

Go Cowboys!

Airing Out 2010

I want to sit down and churn something out about 2010. I want you to read it and be astonished at what you’ve read, be in dismay about the year I had because maybe it was boring, but I made it sound like so much more than that.

2010 was anything but boring, but I don’t know if I can convey that anymore. As it did like the year before, 2010 started off with a trip to Florida, but through January, February, the birth of my nephew, and a conference championship my mind was with my MFA applications to ten schools. I had labored over them for almost a year and I felt like I applied to the entire spectrum of writing programs out there. Starting in late February, or was it early March, the rejections started to trickle in. First, was Wyoming. Then I can’t remember who came next. But I do remember there were nine more and the agony of going to the mailbox every day was sustained until the last letter arrived in April. I took it—the last letter—up to the apartment with me. The blinds were drawn. It was dark. I lied on the couch. I didn’t weep. I didn’t tear up. I yelled. I fucking yelled.

March is a blur. I had the whole month off. I don’t even know what I did. I wrote about the rejections. I did an annual spiel on the Oscars, self-published of course. There was a power outage and I wrote about, writing, what I believe to be, some of my best words in 2010. On the way to work one day I pulled over and threw the key to the Longmont house into Lake Michigan, cursing it in the air and hoping some feelings would sink to the bottom of the lake with it. And then Kate and I went to Wyoming and Colorado. It was cold and snowy and being in Laramie was tough knowing I wouldn’t be going to school there in the fall.

I wandered aimlessly through April, wallowing in failure (a little like I am now, but hey, that was a huge chunk of 2010). I not only coached practices, I did practices. I threw myself into them, destroying my body and finding out that I can still be fast in the pool. When I do my best in sports I tap a vein of aggression and I get lost in it. I had plenty of fuel.

The venting continued in May, one of the most stressful times of my 20s. We had made our plans for the next two years and they were denied from us. In the middle of it all we went to Mexico to escape it. We were successful in that, but the stress was waiting for us the day we got back. What next? What now? Then I went to Colorado and spent a few nights with good friends looking for our new home. Then, a wedding in May for two people in love. But it was tough and weird at times, stages of the healing process. Getting everyone together again felt right and wrong, stages of the aging and living process. Instead of a strong bond among all of us I was acutely aware of an aging history held together with feeble attempts to reestablish community. Honestly, I thought the shit was going to hit the fan this week. It didn’t so much. Some things went better than expected and for the other things, well, words went unsaid and feelings unshared, traits once rare among this group.

Like Milwaukee knew we were leaving, it threw us thunderstorm after thunderstorm in June, ephemeral, but breathtaking and humbling exhibitions of power. I searched everyday for jobs. I didn’t land one and started to doubt the wisdom in moving back to Colorado. My Mom visited us one last time in Milwaukee. Kate and I started watching Lost this month on Hulu and we never looked back. Concerning movies and TV, Lost was easily the highlight of 2010 for us. It was outstanding and our devotion to it was respectable.

July started with another vacation. This time we were off to California to see friends married, to see family, and to breath in some salty air. And then we were back in the Midwest for a few more weeks of packing and thunderstorms, one of them giving us seven inches of rain in three hours. Imagine if California got that? In our final days in Milwaukee we shed tears, took a lot of pictures of our apartment, and welcomed my Dad to Wisconsin so that he would help us move to Colorado.

I blogged twice in August. We settled into our new home, not the home we thought we would be settling into, but we thank God every day it wasn’t. We drove up our first fourteener. We went to Wyoming. The West opened its arms for us and we basked in its warm, dry, sunny climate. The proximity of friends and family helped ease the joblessness on my part. And after working for a week, Kate was offered a full-time job.

I wrote a love letter to Milwaukee in September. I witnessed Boise St. give Wyoming an ass-kicking. We finished Lost, with a blitz of 3 episodes, plus a two-hour finale, in one day. And then I got a job and we started P90X.

October: I worked some. Spent some time catching up with friends in Colorado. We had visitors. Colorado proved to be as beautiful as ever. Life went on.

A lot of people voted Republican in November. I didn’t. Are you kidding me? We spent our first Thanksgiving as a married couple with my parents and grandparents. Kate worked through the holiday and it didn’t seem relaxing for her at times, but my busy holiday schedule started at 4:30 the morning after Thanksgiving. November was warm.

In December I’ll tell you now, publicly, that I celebrated a private accomplishment. The month flew by with busy work schedules and the time to relax and celebrate our Creator was upon us in a matter of hours. We had a new camera to document it and the years ahead. The wounds sustained earlier in the year have partially healed, yet I still sometimes find in me a crushing doubt, chanting, “Failure, failure,” at me every time my hands rest on this keyboard. In the waning days of 2010, Kate’s family joined us as we welcomed 2011 into our lives, a year that can’t possibly contain in its 365 days what I want it to contain, but I will greet its every sunrise and toast its every sunset in search of it.

Boise State @ Wyoming

I'll be in Laramie over the weekend. We are heading up tomorrow to see Wyoming take on Boise State in football. You probably just cringed. I am used to the cringing and wincing, like you just got punched in the kidney. It is the natural reaction from hearing Wyoming will play Boise State, but Wyoming better get used to it because starting next year the Broncos are going to be in the Mountain West.

I don't expect a great, close game. But you never know what can happen at home. It's a night game. It's a sellout. Time to mount up, Cowboys. Don't let the Broncos buck you too hard.

With Regards

I read the words. I don’t read the sentence. I don’t get to the period. My eyes jump to the letterhead and I bore through the paper with my thoughts. I am not looking at the letter. The school’s signature and font merely screen thoughts of other schools from muddling this moment, the moment in which all my imagining of what getting an MFA from this specific school might have looked like—the move there, my commute, the surrounding city, the classes, the hours spent working on assignments, the time at the writer’s desk—is shattered. I don’t know why it is a wine glass, but it is, and it holds all of those hopes and my ambition and it is falling from a not so great height, because it doesn’t take a great height to break a wine glass, and it hits the ground and the thin stem folds under the weight of my future. It splits, breaking into sharp pieces of a dream that scatter along the floor into dark corners where sweeping won’t work.

I feel like there are ten of me. We each have a door in front of us representing a school I applied to. Four of us now are lying on the ground motionless. I should only be 4/10 less hopeful, but I feel 9/10 less hopeful.

The schools that have rejected me are erased from my memory. I grab each vision of a future there and throw it in the trash. I file the rejection letter away. I don’t know why I am keeping it. Maybe I will frame them all in the end, a testament to a magnificent failure. Something I like to think of as being wildly motivational, but really, it is just depressing, what I received in turn for dreaming, “I regret to inform you.”

Detox in Florida

I sent the last of ten MFA applications out on Monday. I flew with the swim team to Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday. We are here until the 16th. The trip is a great form of grad school application detox and I am spoiled to have it.

I hope to be a consistent blogger again in the months to come. I've really missed it and I never thought weeks would pass when I wouldn't even think about what I will write on my blog next, but that happened. And you know, I feel good about that because just applying to these ten programs was the hardest thing I've done since being in Milwaukee. That seems hard to believe, but it couldn't be truer.

That's What I'm Talking About

New Mexico Bowl

Wyoming is on ESPN right now. They finished 6-6 this season and were lucky to get a bowl game. They are playing Fresno State, who is favored by 14-17 points, but nonetheless, the Cowboys are up 7-0 in the 1st. Wyoming isn't on national television all that much, so, I thought it was worth blogging about.

I promise more blogs in 2010. College applications are still taking up a lot of time even though my essay is done. I sent the first two complete apps out last week. Eight more to go. I hope to get some more in the mail before Kate and I leave for New Mexico on Tuesday. We will be there through Christmas. We can't wait to relax, spend time with my parents, and to see their new home.

Merry Christmas!

Back to the Brief

I am sorry if you just bought a $500 suit. You won’t be wearing it for any competitions…that count. FINA and the NCAA have new definitions of a legal suit. All materials must be textile, a.k.a. woven fabric. Men cannot wear a suit that extends above the waist or below the top of the kneecap. Women can’t wear suits that extend beyond the shoulder and beyond the top of the kneecap. No more polyurethane. I can’t imagine the huge sums of money that companies like Arena, TYR, and Speedo are going to lose with this decision. Of course there is probably a wave of lawsuits in the works, but all those fancy suits aren’t going to be sold if the records set in them don’t count. Never mind that, starting January 1, 2010, if you show up behind the block with one of those things on you aren’t even getting in the water.

So the new school is suddenly going old school in order to be legally cleared for competition. The time of the jammer and the brief is back and I think swimming will be better because of this. Let the current world records stand. They may stand for a while, but humans’ ability to swim is evolving, albeit slightly slower than the high-tech suits, but we are going to surpass those times eventually. And, I might add, we will look so much better doing it in a brief than a bodysuit.

Lingering Maxima Memories

Another post about my first car, why not?

The first drive to Laramie. Guy was in the passenger seat. U2’s greatest hits coming out of the speakers. Guy praises the music in between praising the car. “Oh, this song, this song is so good. You know this car is nice out here, man, but this car is very nice in Israel.”

The post-Thanksgiving snowstorm Guy and I drove in on our way back to Laramie. Guy pushing the car through the snow after we stopped at a Wendy’s near Cheyenne. Going 20 mph down I-80 into Laramie. Pulling the e-brake when we were going a little fast. It was supposed to be for fun, but it scared us both and Maxima hit the curb a little too hard. 

All the drives to Dining Out in Denver traffic. I listened to at least ten books on CD during that internship. Dodging potholes on a crappy side of Denver.

Showing off the Maxima to Kate. I remember her thinking it was a sweet car right away. That feeling never left her. Even up to the day the car was lost, she would get excited to drive it.

It’s 5:40 am. I am sitting in the Maxima in the apartment parking lot on Palmer Drive. I am waiting for it to warm up a bit before I drive it to weights or swimming. I do this four days a week. I wait until 5:45 am until I drive her. The temperature needle is just off of the ‘C’ mark. She sounds like a lawnmower driving in sub-zero temperatures. 

Driving the Maxima into the Snowies with Kate for picnics and just for the sheer beauty of Wyoming.

When the Maxima was clean, she looked stunning. The 17-inch, chrome rims made the car standout, even among far pricier vehicles. The shiny metal door handles and trim accented the rims wonderfully. When it was clean it looked brand new and it looked a lot nicer than one would suspect a Nissan Maxima to look like. After giving it a thorough shine, I would always step away and be astonished by its beauty. Extraordinary, the difference was, from before the cleaning to finished product. Mom always commented on how great the car looked.

Mom was right. 

The GRE

I took the GRE. I didn't get a perfect score. I wasn't expecting a perfect score. I wanted a score that would leave me happy. I wanted a score that would leave me feeling like it wasn't necessary to take the GRE again. I wanted to be over and done with the GRE last Thursday. 

That's exactly what happened.