It’s Saturday, July 5th. It’s still sunny. This last hour, I made a pile of pancakes while listening to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” the wacky NPR trivia show. Yesterday, I had a lovely time with Danny and others at a friend’s friend’s parents’ house. Also yesterday, I decided I should take up this journal thing again. I hadn’t realized how much I get out of writing regularly. I thought I had just run out of things to say, but that only applies when you’re saying things to other people. From now on, I’m imaging that I’m saying things into oblivion. Hello, Oblivion, I’m Roy.

I’ve been up to a lot lately, though you couldn’t tell by looking at me. I consciously decided to pursue graduate school about a year ago. I sort of imagined I would go to graduate school, but was about to graduate with no plan to do so when I got wrapped up with certain people on campus who offered a plan of action. Instead of having graduated already, I’m graduating in Spring 2004. This gives me time to complete a good thesis, finish my minors, and apply for graduate scholarships and fellowships that require that I still be enrolled as an undergraduate when I apply for them this fall. Undergraduate study then became a hurry-up-and-wait sort of thing. For graduate school, my sights are set on Washington DC. The plan is to go directly into a PhD program. We’ll see.

This summer, I’ve visited the Northeast for a conference and to visit schools, and I’ve finished my thesis. The past few weeks I’ve been teaching creative writing at a prison, and preparing for three weeks that I’ll be working as an RA at UCF. I move into the dorms tomorrow. The rest of today will be spent packing and typing up rosters and things for the high school chilluns I’ll be RA-ing. Meanwhile, through September or so, I’m studying for the GRE, general and Lit. subject test. Yes, a little nervous. Especially when I open my study guide to anything involving numbers.

During this whole itinerary for academic achievement, I’ve had moments when I feel confident and practical about the whole thing. Graduate school isn’t impossible. It’s something people do, and there’s no reason I can’t be one of them. Then I think about all the books I haven’t read and all the years I feel like I’ve wasted as an undergrad. I look at the backgrounds of people who win fellowships and go to good schools, and their precocious success makes me feel behind, overwhelmed, deluded. I’m missing so many tools, and most of them because I haven’t reached for them myself. The thing is, if I don’t continue going to school, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m afraid of making myself miserable. And I’m not young enough anymore to go on being clueless.

Anyhow, I’m proud of my thesis. It’s a 30 page essay on race consciousness and masculinity, then 30 pages of creative work, all of which has appeared here. It was all revised, of course, but essentially if you’ve been reading this journal, you’ve read half my undergraduate thesis. Cop out, or opus? Both, I think.

We got a dog. She’s small and spotted and excitable and popular with strangers. I like her, but not her presence so much. 3/4 of any day at home is spent seeing to her, the cat’s, and the frogs’ needs. This is not a welcome distraction. But I promise I won’t beat her.

So there’s something of an update. I will either have lots of time, or no time at all, to write entries during the next 3 weeks. I figure I’d start the habit now, though, in case I find myself diary-able. This diary did first take off while I was living in a dorm, afterall.

Hope to see you around.