May 24, 2012

• Irony Defined

  Back in college, I was up for a scholarship in my Senior year…at the time it was a matter of ego…or so I thought.

   

  Reagan came in office and axed the HELL out of college aid…which forced me to quit school for a while.

  I always thought it was a stupid move. I was one semester shy of graduation—and instead of landing a job as a college graduate, with a decent rate of pay they could tax me for, I ended up working for minimum wage for several years. The amount of Aid they cut from me was less than 2k….which would have come back as taxes probably in the first year after I graduated. I’m 51 now…and while I worked to finish that degree, I’m still two classes short.  I’m still limited in employment options because “almost a graduate” is not a “graduate.” What happened to me happened to hundreds of thousands of college kids 30 years back…and no one talks about it.  The money that might have helped us finish our degrees was spent on “Star Wars technology”…which we never used, and is now obsolete.

  But that scholarship…for creative writing? A friend of mine won it…and the profs told me later it had been between he and I up to the last instant. I never knew why they gave it to him.

  Oh yeah…the ironic part. I kept writing. I had a book published in 2005, which is now part of the collection of the Library of Congress. My work is offered in several schools around the nation as an example of “contemporary American poetry”,which is a kick, I admit. But I’m pretty sure the guy they gave the scholarship to never published a single thing.

  Yup…ironic.

  Currently Jagged Little Pill By Alanis Morissette see related

   

  • 8:11 am
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