Give Me Money

Spent a large chunk of today working on scholarship applications. I hate scholarship applications so very much. It's just so hard to condense why you deserve thousands of dollars into two tiny pages. What could you say that makes someone want to give you so many moneys!?

I've written like five thou drafts. Here's my favorite opening that I will not be using:

"Sometimes you just get crushed with debilitating depression, right? Don’t you hate that? And, not to sound self-obsessed, but I think artists can really have a tough time with this, because when you’re already feeling like a sad-sack because of, oh, I don’t know, the fact that thousands of children are brought into sex trafficking daily or the truckloads of paper cups we throw into landfills everyday, someone comes along and asks, “MFA? What’s the point in getting an MFA?” YOU KNOW, STRANGER, I HADN’T CONSIDERED THAT MY DRAMATIC WRITING DEGREE MIGHT BE MEANINGLESS UNTIL YOU SAID IT JUST THEN. So, wow. Thank you. Cut to: me puffy-eyed, hacking away at revisions of my most recent play, scarfing down cookies, leaving a crumby, smudgey wake of stress eating in my bed. Soundtrack: Ani DiFranco’s saddest hits. Let the chocolate chips fall where they may. This type of occasional meltdown is unavoidable in my life, but it’s always temporary because getting my MFA is important, and I’ll tell you why."


Kath eating cookie dough in my bed. November 2011.

As much as I'll complain about these apps, they're a good exercise. In trying to convince others what you do is important, you remember that it is.

It's time to pass the hat,
and there's nothing you can do 'bout that.