Tag Archives: college

My 2019 Reading Stacks #4: Our Dismal Double Date with Heathcliff and Catherine

December 27, 2019 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Wuthering Heights!

I imagine the book designer going to the publisher in tears: “I’m sorry, but there isn’t a single scene worth illustrating on the front cover. Can I just photograph the wallpaper in my grandma’s bedroom?”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

At the beginning of each year I spend weeks writing year-in-review entries that cover the gamut of my entertainment intake, including capsule reviews for all the books and graphic novels I’ve read. I refrain from devoting entries to full-length book reviews because 999 times out of 1000 I’m finishing a given work decades after the rest of the world is already done and moved on from it.

As time permits and the finished books pile up, I’ll be charting my full list of books, graphic novels, and trade collections I’ve read throughout the year in a staggered, exclusive manner here, for all that’s worth to the outside world. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text. Novels and non-pictographic nonfiction will pop up here and there, albeit in a minority capacity for a few different reasons. Triple bonus points to any longtime MCC readers who can tell which items I bought at which comic/entertainment conventions we’ve attended over the past few years.

And now…it’s readin’ time. Again, finally, after a plethora of topics I felt compelled to cover first, not to mention dozens of criminal instances of going to bed before midnight instead of writing. Tally-ho!

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Words of Advice from a Two-Time College Dropout

June 2, 2019 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Graduation Cupcakes!

High school graduation parties can be cool, but what if life seems all downhill from there?

Like anyone with a working Internet connection, from time to time I find myself completing online surveys about various companies or products, whether for fun, for freebies, or in hopes that the survey will include an essay question that you can use as a soapbox to unleash a thousand-word tirade about the last time their services ticked you off and ruined your day. “That’ll show ’em!” you think to yourself as your carefully crafted vitriol is forwarded to the survey company and assimilated into the results database containing hundreds of thousands of other surveys, someday to be skimmed by a distracted HR rep who might raise an eyebrow at your poison-pen screed, if you’re lucky.

Every such survey has the obligatory section whose questions are designed for demographic pigeonholing of your results. I don’t mind revealing my ever-advancing age, blissful marital status, or conspicuously dull bloodline. My least favorite question is always, “What is the highest level of education you have completed?” It sounds simple and uncomplicated, especially if you earned a degree. Sometimes I wonder if those who attended graduate school and/or who hold multiple degrees receive a little bonus from the survey company in return, to thank them for bolstering the results with certified demographic classiness.

Mine is the humble ignominy that requires me to check “Some college”. It’s always a multiple-choice question, never a write-in field, so you can’t fall back on the standard glib answers such as “school of hard knocks” or “school of life”, joke answers such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” or “Hogwarts”, or even obscure answers such as “School of Fish”, in hopes that someone in the survey company will agree how cool a song “3 Strange Days” was. Every time I spot the bland, undecorated phrase “Some college” on a survey, I wince for a second and have to shake off the reminder of a young adulthood that wandered astray.

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Empty Nest Update #3: Handling Our First School Shooting

January 21, 2014 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Purdue shooting black ribbon, 1/14/2014

For Andrew Boldt and family. Our prayers and thoughts are with them tonight.

Today during the course of one of our usual workday back-‘n’-forth email volleys, I thought it odd when my wife sent me another, separate email with a new title: “Purdue Shooting”. She knew she’d have my full attention.

Within the same minute that I opened her email, my son the Purdue freshman texted me. In case I heard about a shooting at Purdue, he wrote, he wanted me to know he was fine, even though he’d been in the same building where and when the shooting occurred.

That disrupted my concentration for a while.

In case you missed the news…

Empty Nest, Week 6: a Mission of Mercy and Meat

September 28, 2013 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in mid-August my son moved into his own apartment up at college, living alone for the first time. Naturally we underwent various bouts of grief, panic, pacing back and forth, imagined scenarios of endless possible disasters, and a sort of loving numbness that I wouldn’t necessarily call acceptance.

Last weekend my wife and I paid him a visit and took him out to lunch at a local joint recommended by people we trust. Thus we declared Saturday burger time at a local oxymoron named the Triple XXX Family Restaurant.

Triple XXX Family Restaurant, West Lafayette, Indiana

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Three-Week Progress Report from Our Newly Empty Nest

September 5, 2013 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

moving van, moving day

Three weeks ago on a milestone Monday, this was the scene in our driveway. Our morning was spent using our combined physical forces and my amazing Tetris powers to cram all my son’s possessions into a U-Haul truck for his big move up to college. (We also tossed in a few pieces of bonus ugly furniture for his meager quality-of-living peace of mind that we won’t miss anyway.)

Instead of the standard dorm experience that I’m told millions of Americans thrive on each year, his domicile of choice for the next four years or until catastrophe strikes will be a modest, off-campus apartment. This sort of drastic lifestyle change would require more than a few suitcases and tote bags.

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Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Monsters University” End Credits

June 24, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Monsters University, Disney, PixarHonest truth as of this evening: Midlife Crisis Crossover calls Monsters University “the Best Film of the Year”! So far. Yes, the year is young. Proclamation subject to change without notice, possibly during Oscar preseason.

Seriously, though: looking back at my last several summer action blockbuster spectacular experiences, this Disney/Pixar reboot of Revenge of the Nerds requires less forgiveness of plot holes; boasts characterization truer to the original cast; doesn’t overwrite wide-scale urban destruction with perfunctory offscreen-slapdash-reconstruction happy ending; refuses to play bait-and-switch with its antagonists; and, like Toy Story 3, is a surprisingly top-notch sequel with its own topic to explore rather than acting as a hollow, superfluous extension of the original.

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Loner Dad’s Long, Proud, Awkward Day on Campus

June 18, 2013 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

college presentations

Consider, if you will, the following case of orientation disorientation.

This past Monday my son’s college held a special all-day program for incoming freshmen to undergo orientation, hear intros to their respective schools, meet their advisors, register for their first semester’s classes, experience an actual dorm food-court meal, and endure a self-guided campus walkabout to accomplish all the other activities at various buildings, only some of which are next door to each other. I tagged along to multitask the roles of chauffeur, navigator, sidekick, and personal ombudsman whenever he needed to question or vent about something. By and large, my parts were played with utmost competence.

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College Dropout Prepares to Pass on the Opposite of His Legacy

April 8, 2013 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , 5 Comments

This weekend’s main event was eighteen years in the making, an experience I never imagined because few parents want to daydream that far ahead in their children’s lives. Sure, we look forward to a few milestones — first steps, first words, first day of school, all the best parts of the cute years. I suppose some parents dwell on the long-term forecast and begin planning for the arrival of their grandchildren. I’ve taken more of a walk-before-they-can-run, crawl-before-they-can-walk approach when it comes to second-guessing my son’s future for him.

That being rambled on about: Saturday I drove my son up to West Lafayette for a tour of the campus of Purdue University, where he’s been accepted and is scheduled to attend this fall. Needless to say, our family is mostly thrilled (there’s always a naysayer, isn’t there?) and, having seen what’s in store for my former infant, I now feel ten years older than I did last year.

Purdue Clock Tower

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Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be College-Bound Slobs

March 4, 2013 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dramatic reenactment of the horrors we witnessed Saturday. (photo credit: Clevergrrl via photopin cc)

Dramatic reenactment of the horrors we witnessed. (photo credit: Clevergrrl via photopin cc)

When I attended college immediately after graduating high school, I lived at home because my generous financial aid package wasn’t enough to cover living expenses. I’ve never lived in a dorm, nor did I dare to live the bachelor’s life while taking 16-18 credit-hours and working 40-45 hours per week. (The results of that bout of madness were shared in a previous entry. Long story short: those were some of my most miserable years on record.) Since I also made no friends during my stay in academia, I never had the opportunity to visit the living quarters of a real, live college student. This past Saturday, I finally had my first chance.

My son is a high school senior preparing to transform into a college freshmen as of fall 2013. This weekend we took a road trip to the city where he’ll theoretically spend the next four years learning, growing, and becoming greater than his parents. Our family mission: scope out potential apartments for him. Due to the long list of issues that living on campus would present (on which we won’t be elaborating here — suffice it to say this is our family’s decision), his only hope for avoiding a seventy-mile daily commute will be to negotiate off-campus housing. To that end, I found a lead on a pair of potential pads at shockingly competitive prices in a wide market that’s nearly sold out as a whole for the upcoming semester. My wife and I, dutiful and curious folks that we are, drove my son up there for a pair of apartment showings to ensure we wouldn’t be exporting him and his possessions into Avon Barksdale’s prized Towers from The Wire.

Like first-world anthropologists stepping tentatively into the native habitat of an otherworldly culture, we three ventured into each of the two available cribs, whose current tenants would be finishing their current leases in time for my son’s arrival in town. None of us knew what to expect and hadn’t really prepared ourselves. Judging by the conditions we tiptoed around, neither had the tenants.

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How Not to Drop Out of College Twice

September 6, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 13 Comments

Like anyone with a working Internet connection, from time to time I find myself completing online surveys about various companies or products, whether for fun, for freebies, or in hopes that the survey will include an essay question that you can use as a soapbox to unleash a thousand-word tirade about the last time their services ticked you off and ruined your day. “That’ll show ’em!” you think to yourself as your carefully crafted vitriol is forwarded to the survey company and assimilated into the results database containing hundreds of thousands of other surveys, someday to be skimmed by a distracted HR rep who might raise an eyebrow at your poison-pen screed, if you’re lucky.

Every such survey has the obligatory section whose questions are designed for demographic pigeonholing of your results. I don’t mind revealing my ever-advancing age, blissful marital status, or complete lack of Hispanic bloodline. My least favorite question is always, “What is the highest level of education you have completed?” It sounds simple and uncomplicated, especially if you earned a degree. Sometimes I wonder if those who attended graduate school and/or who hold multiple degrees receive a little bonus from the survey company in return, to thank them for bolstering the results with certified demographic classiness.

Mine is the humble ignominy that requires me to check “Some college”. It’s always a multiple-choice question, never a write-in field, so you can’t fall back on the standard glib answers such as “school of hard knocks” or “school of life”, joke answers such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” or “Hogwarts”, or even obscure answers such as “School of Fish”, in hopes that someone in the survey company will agree how cool a song “3 Strange Days” was. Every time I spot the bland, undecorated phrase “Some college” on a survey, I wince for a second and have to shake off the reminder of a young adulthood that wandered astray.

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