You know the Cough. You’ve heard it in class if you’re a student, or maybe at the movie theater, or, say, during a terribly long and boring financial training seminar for work. The Cough makes more frequent appearances in the winter, but it transcends seasons and places. It comes up in any situation that involves being trapped in a crowd of humanity, an echo chamber for bacteria. It’s a wet cough, guttural and toxic, and it sounds like snot covered gravel rattling around in a bowl. The kind that probably lingers for a week or even more. You can practically see the molecules of malaise, thick globules floating through the air, slowly but inexorably wending their way towards your throat and nasal passages. Despite being just fine seconds before the Cough, your throat begins to tickle. Someone else coughs and sets off an evil orchestra of cacoughphonous (sorry) death and disease.
The second I hear the cough, my brain goes through two diametrically opposed reactions. My first instinct is to cover my nose and mouth with either hand or sleeve (I try to be subtle and polite about it if the origin of the Cough is near), to limit the exposure of my immune system to nasty rogue bacteria or virii. It’s one part natural instinct, one part generic paranoia from my mother’s side and germophobia from my father’s.
The competing instinct kicks in a full second later - my brain goes into “oh no, oxygen supply limited, must breathe!” mode. Suddenly there’s not enough clean air available in the increasingly tainted supply, to be distributed evenly amongst the room’s inhabitants, and now I have two warring reptilian instincts going “stop breathing so deeply!” to “need more air!”- and I find myself breathing deeply behind the flimsy barrier of my sleeve, looking quite ridiculous to those around me, I’m sure.
Now I know, on an intellectual level, that no hand or sleeve can stop the germs from worming their way into my trachea (Reptile #2, luckily, does not). I know that if I’m stuck in a room with a bunch of Coughers, there’s not much I can do about it. And really, the stress probably taxes my immune system, ironically making me more vulnerable to catching whatever goopy illness floats my way. But no amount of reasoning, actual medical advice or common sense, will ever fully get my reptilian friends to back down.
How do you react to the Cough? What deep, irrational instincts motivate your bone-headed reptiles?
Today one of the budget dragon ladies yelled at me for something more or less out of my control. It’s the end of the fiscal year, when we are supposed to play “whack-a-mole” with the budget. Here’s the trick - if your department doesn’t spend all of its allocated budget for a particular year, they receive less money for the next (because obviously if you didn’t spend it all, you didn’t need that much). So we all have an incentive to waste as much money as we possibly can at the end of the year, within the odd limits of state funding purchases of course. Example: you cannot purchase a fan with state funds. Rationale? The state is already paying for air conditioning, why aren’t you happy enough with that? (Never mind that currently the heat is on in my building for some inexplicable reason. Grr). So everyone gets stressed out, spends spends spends, and sometimes invoices show up after the deadline, and people get mad. Particularly, budget dragon ladies. I got all worked up about being yelled at, thinking I had done a pretty good job considering how unorganized and random things were, and then thought - “wait, why the hell am I upset?”
As of yesterday, I have now outlasted every other staff person here that worked here when I started. I had only been planning on working here for a year, while I got my bearings together. In August, I am coming up on two.
What happened?
A number of things: I got apathetic and pretty comfortable in my situation despite vague discontent. I can pay my bills, go to the doctor every once in awhile, support a gluttonous cat (I’ve often been tempted to put him down as a dependent on my tax return). I can indulge myself with booze and fancy cheeses, and really, what more is there to life? I am a lot better off than many people, and I count myself blessed overall.
I do think it’s time to move on, though, and I’ve given myself a deadline: I will either chase the money wagon and go teach English abroad somewhere in Asia next spring, or I will bite the bullet and go to graduate school. Where, or what, I don’t know yet, but I will!
There are a number of issues with both of these plans. The teaching English in Asia gig has the potential to be pretty lucrative, particularly in South Korea, where most folks in my cohort are headed these days. The reason why South Korea is more profitable these days, I am told, has to do with the fact that the currency there is not tied to the ailing dollar. So teachers’ salaries have more or less stayed the same in South Korea, and with the exchange rates, the payout would be worth more. I’d definitely need to earn enough to save and to pay off my student loans, so South Korea seems like the best option.
My ex-boyfriend is currently there doing the same gig, and marrying a Korean girl there soon, so maybe my copy-catting his plans would make for a little bit of awkwardness! But the main concern for me is that apparently, Asian-Americans often get treated less well than other teachers. Plus I even look Korean (so I’m told), and my name even sounds similar to common Korean names, so people might see me as Korean-American. Would the average person on the street think I was Korean, get mad at me for not knowing the language and chide me for not being true to my roots? I already get enough grief for that from Vietnamese elders, I don’t need it from the Koreans! Of course this is all pretty silly and paranoid, but I can’t help factoring that into my plans.
As far as the grad school thing, the main problem is that I don’t know what to study! As time passes, the prospect of sitting through another creative writing workshop has become exponentially less appealing. I have all sorts of flibbertigibbet notions of going to art school, or culinary school, or what have you. If I am going to commit funds to a program, however, I definitely want to be committed to it, both now and down the line.
But my number one major consideration here is kind of cheesy and heartwarming in a “Full House” sorta way - I don’t want to leave my friends here in Lawrence behind. If only there were some way of packing them all into a big bag and taking them with me everywhere I go! I guess during high school, I was all dorky and shy and didn’t have that many close friends to miss, and a lot of them ended up coming to KU anyways. So I never really had the wrenching experience of leaving home that most people go through.
But now, who can I find that will replace the void in my life that will be left by my roommate Andy, a bundle of constant hilarity and gregariousness? Where am I going to find another crazy redhead who collects animals like they’re state quarters, who hoots and hollers and punches boys until they love her? Is anyone out there more of a sweetheart than Indie Dan? Or as entertainingly knowledgeable about certain chemical substances as Tall Man? I could go on, but in short, right now I am constantly surrounded by my best friends in the world, and I am finding it increasingly hard to picture the absence of them in my life.
Alas, however, I really can’t stay in this kiddie pool forever. I suppose I should start shopping for a large suitcase!