Straight No Chaser

Znarl

can't come up with a z word and too lazy to care.

car problems, again. i'm parked on the first level of the parking deck, where residents are not allowed to park, because stefan is too fucking retarded to climb to the second. i am actually beyond irritated. it's more like my feelings are hurt--haven't i always given him (almost) everything he ever wanted? and now all i want is to go to krystle's house, to watch evita, and pretend it's been a good day rather than a very very bad one, and he's mutinying now, at just exactly the wrong time. the fucker.

so far, in two days of tutoring, i've come up against two criers, a new record for me. they warned us about this in training. their exact words were, "you are an academic tutor, not an emotional therapist." meaning, basically, that we shouldn't try to speculate from the content of our clients' personal essays, and that if during the course of our superficial proofreading we accidentally triggered something deeper, we should just pass the student along to the appropriate professional.

the first girl knew her essay was shit before she even sat down. "i wrote this in like twenty minutes," was what she said. "so it's sh--it's bad." she giggled, because at that point the paragraphs before us were still a distant memory, for her. an essay she'd written and turned in pre-winter break, and had handed back splashed with violent red ink upon her return. first three sentences were, just, terrible. thesis statement was nonexistent. ensuing paragraphs were shit. the whole thing was shit. she started to read it out loud--our policy, which still doesn't help to save my voice, most of the time--and just, totally broke down, halfway through. "--is everything okay?" i asked, timidly, looking around for backup. krystle's tears i can deal with, but with strangers...i. am. not. equipped. "it's just so, so, so bad," she said, and then jumped up and fled to the ladies' room. boss sent me after her. it was a long morning.

the other girl, today, it was pretty much the same thing, minus the bathroom part. we talked it out in the little computer alcove and she left smiling. i felt like a superhero, until i didn't anymore.

i am going to absolutely die if the guy coming cannot fix my car. dad has already said we're not putting any more money into him, that at the next sign of problems (i.e., this one) we are just going to replace him without a second thought. but that could take weeks, months when you factor in the obvious fact that my parents are six hundred miles away and that they've got all these weird reservations about letting me drive home from atlanta alone, and i do not want to be without a car until then. brat brat brat. but i don't. i don't.

and that's not even the worst thing about my day.

i am kind of tempted to enter jessie's journaling contest. more so, though, because that seems pretty narcissistic, i am wishing she would allow nominations rather than just self-entry, because i'd feel way more comfortable saying "i nominate so-and-so's journal" than i would saying "ahem, my journal is the best."