Yale Lost

The 2006 Matt's Graduate School Playoffs (MGSP2K6) have their second result, with Yale University losing today. Of the six schools that made the playoffs (Harvard, Maryland, Michigan, Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Yale) only five now remain, and only Wisconsin has made it to the final round. The Badgers are still the frontrunners even if some other schools manage to make it past the first round.

Basically I'm saying I got rejected from Yale. This isn't surprising, since the man there I wanted to work with (Robert Farris Thompson - look him up!) is pretty much retired and not accepting students. But what I enjoyed the most was the way Yale rejected me. Usually places send you a nice letter in the mail, letting you know that at least they care. But Yale sent me an email entitled:

2006 YALE ADMISSIONS DECISION

This email linked to my online application, which then linked to a popup window which showed a fascimile of the rejection letter that they are not going to send me. It went like this:

2/20/2006

Dear Mr. Matt:

Thank you very much for applying to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University. I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission. As you know, the very high number of extraordinary candidates among our 8,000 applicants far exceeds the number of places we have in each program, and we are not able to admit many excellent candidates.

We are using this system of electronic notification to communicate with you five to ten days more rapidly than we could by letter and, therefore, help applicants plan their futures quickly and effectively. We wish you every success in all your endeavors.

Sincerely,


Jon Butler
Dean of the Graduate School


cc: History of Art


Translation:

Dear Matt:

We receive a hell of a lot of applications, which is such a huge burden for us to deal with that we would appreciate it if people with substandard applications such as yourself would not even bother applying. As such, please take some time out of your own life to print this rejection letter and save it for your records so we don't have to.

Sincerely,

Dr. Nigel McBetterthanyou



I actually have no animosity toward Yale (I have great respect for their art history program, a longtime frontrunner in the study fo "Non-Western" cultures). I just think it's funny.

MGSP2K6 continues!

I Balanced My Checkbook Today

For the first time in my entire life! And it turns out the bank did a much better job of keeping track of my finances than I did - they remembered a purchase that I had forgot to save the receipt for. In the end, my finances matched up perfectly, so no worries there. I now feel very accomplished and intelligent.

Many New Things To Report, Missouri First

I haven't posted in a while mostly because I've been gone. For the first ten days of February I was in St. Robert, Missouri (which is basically smack dab in the middle of nowhere) doing an archaeological survey at nearby Fort Leonard Wood. After that, I quickly flew off to Philly to visit Shewara for her birthday. I'll post about that tomorrow.

So, Missouri is an interesting place because the so-called "Bible Belt" runs straight through its equator, uniquely positioning it at the junction of the liberal hippie north and the conservative Bible-hugging south. This also means that Missouri is the home of some unique juxtapositions: the state home to more strip-clubs per capita also has an ungodly amount of churches. This makes for fun highway billboards:

BOB'S XXX-RATED TOTALLY NUDE GIRLS LIVE!! EXIT 165

followed immediately by:

PORNOGRAPHY KILLS CHILDREN (paid for by Jews for Jesus).

Personally, I would think the pornography helps with the whole children production, but that is just me. Billboard fights between porn-stars and preachers like this continue throughout central Missouri, interspersed with what seemed like 197 different ads for Meramec Caverns. This made for an interesting drive until I finally arrived in St. Robert - the world's most uninteresting place. When the only decent eateries in the telephone book are located twenty miles away, you know you are completely cut off from civilization. Our hotel managed to provide wireless internet access, apparently at the sacrifice of breakfast in the morning. To replace my usual morning meal, I had to buy cereal and milk at the WalMart Supercenter; a convenient establishment located 500 feet from the hotel, yet you had to drive a mile to get there. The stripclub and Waffle House, however, were easily accessible.

So I was really looking forward to working so I could get out of St. Robert. This turned out to be a mistake. Usually, archaeological surveys are conducted on flat ground (and Ft. Leonard Wood is mostly flat) but in our case we were forced to hike up and down pretty damn tall and steep (as well as densely forested/thorned) mountain/hills on one side of the base. For seven hours a day, I hiked up and down mountains while staring straight at the ground. After a while, your mind starts wandering to places it has never been to before while it tries to keep your mind alive while your body grows increasingly tired from the hiking. Luckily, there were some really interesting fungi on the ground to keep me moderately amused.

The last two days were actually really exciting though, since we got to go cave exploring. There were five or six caves in a vertical rock face on one side of one of the mountains, most of which showed signs of Native American habitation a few hundred years ago. I went back into one of the very deep ones, exploring a few hundred feet back in the absolute darkness with only the aid of a small flashlight. I had to shut it off a few times while I was back there, and it made me realize that I think most people don't know what it is like to be in complete darkness. There was absolutely no light anywhere - I felt blind. The photos below were taken with a flash from my digital camera while I was in this complete darkness:











Especially fun about this particular cave was that during the summer
and autumn months it is home to an endangered species of bat. It is a crime to disturb them in any way from April-October, and to enforce this the Missouri Department of Fish and Wildlife installed this completely non-functional, yet intimidating camera on the ceiling of the cave:





Finally, check out me staring out across the river valley on the edge of the Fort's property:



So all in all, the scenery and hiking experience were very tiring, but very rewarding. My job has more trips scheduled there, so I am sure I will be returning at some point. After the trip ended, I made the long return trip to Chicago (with a one-day stop in Winchester / Springfield, IL to do some extra surveying) and then went off to see Shewara in Pilly where she lives sometimes.