The origins of Captain Surly Pants (Part 3)

Previously on the Adventures of Captain Surly Pants: Kevin recalls the time he broke his toe. Also, the Joker escaped back to his secret hideout after stealing the hope diamond. Now the exciting conclusion!

As I said in the last entry, the week or so after I broke my toe is blurry because of the sheer amount of painkillers I was taking. Thankfully that week was the last week before Thanksgiving break. About all I can remember from that time is that I continued to neglect my other History paper and that I was also frantically trying to figure out a research topic for my capstone paper. More to the topic, I also only had two weeks left to send in my application to JET.

I had everything I needed for the application ready except for two things: my statement of purpose and my letter of recommendation from Dr. G-antz. I planned to write the statement of purpose at the beginning of Thanksgiving break. As for the letter of recommendation, it had been at least three weeks since I asked Dr. G-antz to write it for me, and the combination of time ticking down and Dr. G-antz's notorious unreliability was causing me much concern. It was time to switch to plan B.

I had already scheduled a time to meet with Dr. G-antz about my capstone presentation (yes, I know I said I didn't remember anything, but it's coming back to me now dammit!). The afternoon before I decided to buy a small box of chocolates as an early thank you gift (I also bought one for my Japanese professor who had written the other letter). The next day I gave her the box of chocolates in an attempt to speed up the process and it seemed to work. She made sure she had a time to meet with me to hand me the letter. She also ripped apart my capstone proposal, but at least I had my letter on the way! She got it to me Friday afternoon right in the nick of time. I went back to Colorado Springs as soon as class ended that day.

Other than the traditional murdering of a relative, nothing of note happened during Thanksgiving break. I spent about the first half of the week writing my statement of purpose. I'm normally not an anal essay writer, but there were a few aspects to the statement of purpose that made it fairly time consuming. First, this essay was actually for a job. Normally when I write I'm just pulling an essay out of my ass for some class. Not being the best of students, I would usually just write until I reached the page limit, throw in a conclusion and do minimal proof reading. This time the anal side of me came out, causing me to re-read and rewrite the statement of purpose until my fingers went numb.

The second thing that made the essay such a pain was the mix of the 2 page page limit mixed with the long list of specific questions they wanted answered. Some of the questions needed a long paragraph to answer such "What are your career goals" and "What about you would make you an effective teacher" etc. After a few drafts I got my essay down to the point were I felt it had all the essential information while still being short; however, when I was finished I was still a couple of lines over the page limit. I spent many hours trying to figure out a way to shorten some of the content without having sentences such as "I want teach". It was an exercise in frustration for the most part, but I eventually got it done. The next day I sent of my JET application and it felt like a huge load had been lifted off my shoulders. Little did I know just how much more stress there was to follow...

The remainder of the semester was spent just finishing up school work (especially my capstone) and having problems with my shitty roommate who owed my a ton of money. Winter vacation would be a greatly welcomed break, but I wasn't exactly looking forward to the long, boring month in Colorado Springs...