Admissions and Donkeys

Today I applied for admission to UW-Madison. It was a quick, online application. Since I'd already been a student there once, in the olden days, I got to skip a few questions, but only a few. I still had to answer questions about my parents.

Is your father living? No. What is his present address? Brandt Cemetery, plot number unknown, Stockbridge, Wisconsin.

I didn't actually answer the question of his address, but I was tempted.

I also loved the one about the last time my mother registered to vote. How in the name of...am I supposed to know that? As though it mattered. I did not call and ask her.

There was also the question of my ethnicity, for which I checked, "I prefer not to provide this information." When I applied at age 19, I checked "other" and wrote in "human."

I had to write a "concise statement" with important information for the admissions committee to consider. I wanted to write something clever, utterly unrelated to school that was just a little glimpse of me. But profanity is likely frowned upon in an admission packet, and I wanted to get the damn thing done, so I just wrote platitudes about moving into the next phase of my life and showing my growing girls the importance of dedication and higher education. I also mentioned my 4.0 GPA since returning to MATC and my job as editor of the school paper. Gotta suck up once in a while. My nose and lips are a shade of brown tanto de la moda.


Drop The Dead Donkey

Today I watched some of season five of Drop The Dead Donkey. I haven't watched much TV since school started in the fall, so it was nice to watch a few episodes. I'm still chuckling over George saying "motordyke" instead of "motorbike" to Helen's girlfriend.

DTDD is a show about a television newsroom in England. They wrote a rough script, and as things happened in real life, they wrote a last-minute script, incorporating very current events into the show, so as it aired, it was remarkably up-to-date. It was done in the 1990s, so the "news" doesn't have any immediacy to it anymore. Much of it, of course, was very Anglocentric, and I don't know who a lot of the people are they're talking about. I'm up to 1996. Clinton is about to get re-elected. I think anyone who's worked in any kind of newsroom would appreciate the show.