debbie is on vacation for the week. (read: has 102 fever). in an attempt to keep this forum true to its title - and a real representation of what it's like to be twenty-something in the twenty-first century - today's blog has been provided by deion. and the letter p.

The night was cold. A few handsome young men were walking down the street. The air carried a faint smell of American brewed lager and parliament light cigarettes. Perhaps the young men had consumed a few alcoholic beverages that night. As one of them sifts through his pocket for a lighter, he turns to his friend. They realize that two of their companions are missing. Across the street is a darkened gym apparently closed for the evening. But something doesn't appear to be right. As the two walk closer to the gym, they hear noises from inside. The door is unlocked. As the two walk into the gym, they notice their lost companions. One is trying to ride an exercise bike as the other pretends to lift weights. One of them attempts to throw a dumbbell at the other. All four fall on the floor in laughter. One looks at his watch. It is 2:34 am. On a Thursday.

Perhaps this is simply high school or undergraduate debauchery. Maybe it's part of a frat hazing. Grown ups certainly don't behave in such ways, do they?

Amazingly they do.

I present to you the future legal minds of America, courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Breaking and entering? Attempted battery? Public intoxication? Not only do we learn what these offenses are in Criminal Law by day, but by night we actively break them.

At least when we're finally arrested we'll be able to save money and defend ourselves.

At some point we're simply going to have to grow up right? I thought that my six years of undergraduate studies would have flushed this immaturity out of my system or at least purged me of the fun of binge drinking. After three months of law scool, I realized something: that's not going to happen. I still got three years of this. Law school is the shit. My job only consists of spending a few hours a week in classes learning about stuff I think is interesting. I'm going to be 25 in a month and my parents still make weekly deposits in my checking account which predominantly gets spent on alcohol.

This is the life.

Of course that all changed when I took my finals but beforehand and since, I've gone with the above mentioned theory.

As you readers are aware, Debbie is planning on going to law school next year, and she's been picking my brain daily about my experiences through my first year. Since she enjoys my insight, she suggested that I author some "guest columns" for her blog. This is all cool with me because sharing my thoughts with others serves my egotistical intentions in a way. Furthermore, I'm way too anti-commitment to actually blog myself. So if this goes over well, then I'll throw her some columns periodically.

Luckily, this time, the police were not aware of the law students breaking into the gym facility. In fact, I've yet to see cops bust anyone in Pittsburgh. The city is broke and can barely afford to pay what officers they have. I guess this works in my favor as I'm going to be doing this law school thing for the next two and a half years. I guess it's just up to me to determine what my friends are going to break into next drunk in the middle of the night. If it continues, we could even be charged for a continuing criminal enterprise or conspiracy. But those sound cool. It would be a good story to tell in a bar. We can make this happen. See, this law school thing is going to be the shit.

All we have to do now is return the 15 pound dumbbells we stole so we can compensate our victims and make them "whole" again.

It's what our torts professor would want us to do.

you may have noticed that i've been unusually quiet.

(or perhaps you haven't noticed at all.)

this whole application process has caught up with me. i'm tired of doing it. i'm emotionally worn-out. and i've got that sick to my stomach, nauseous, wanna-throw-up kind of feeling. the one where you can't form actual words because your tongue is sucked back into your gut?

applications and the admissions process has rendered me (more-or-less) speechless. which is quite a difficult feat to accomplish ... because i am rarely at a lack for words.

i've done 23 applications.

with 4 more to go.

i've spent over $1000 in application fees.

and over 50-hours of my life in front of a computer writing personal statements for law schools, describing why i want an mba, and making up situations in which i was working for a team that failed. (because i've never been on a team that's failed. for we type-a personalities, failure is never an option.)

for better or worse, applications have forced me to be much more introspective than i've ever been before. and frankly, much more introspective than i'm comfortable with. yet in a way, i think every person should have to apply somewhere every five or so years. taking the time to answer "what makes you unique?" and "what have you accomplished to date and what are your next steps in life?" has been a profound experience.

a profoundly uncomfortable one. but also a profoundly insightful one.

somewhere in between my august debacle of having no idea what i want to do with my life and jisaac's advice of just "making up some shit that the admission people want to hear," in my pursuit of persuading graduate schools that i had a 5-year and career-long plan, i think i've actually convinced myself. (damn i'm a good communications associate.) and i was able to tone down "i want to take over the world" to a much more feasible "i want to take over - just - the united states."

for the first time in my life, i actually have direction. well, sort of.

admittedly, i've been accepted to a couple of law schools. in fact, when penn law called, the admissions woman made a point of telling me that my personal statement was "phenomenal." and that it was "exactly what they were looking for." i think i floated around that day.

but apparently, penn's (now) insignificant business school thinks i suck. which, to date, is the most humbling experience of this whole application rendezvous.

because it turns out ... i'm not perfect.

but don't tell anyone else that.

it turns out that despite the fact that im a much stronger business school candidate, only law schools have expressed any interest in me.

i don't even want to practice law.

(dear law schools: please disregard that last statement. it was only a joke.)

although i said that i expected to get rejected from every school that i applied to, somewhere along the line, i realized that rejection sucks. so i honestly was not sure how the rejection letters would affect me until it actually happened. and now that it has, here's what i have to report: the piece that makes the rejection hurt is that despite the fact that rejected candidates aren't supposed to take it "personally," really, how can i not? you just told me that i'm not good enough for you.

i'm a perfectionist. and i'm still not good enough for you.

i'm sorry that i only have two years of working experience. i'm sorry that i didn't find the cure to some incurable disease. i'm sorry that i don't have a higher gpa. i'm sorry that i sneezed all over myself during the interview.

but i'm one hell of a student who aims to set the curve with an insatiable drive to do the impossible (like publish my book).

and on the off-chance that it turns out that wharton's not perfect, and i am - in fact - perfect, then they'll be sorry when i take over the united states.

in the meantime, i'll be here looking for my self-esteem.

i take shopping very seriously.

very, very seriously.

so when i tell people that the black eye i'm sporting now is a shopping injury, the next set of questions i inevitably get is:

"wow. so did you get the xbox360 after all?"

and

"so how bad does the other chick look?"

let's face it. i'm a badass. well ... as badass-ish as a wimpy white jewish girl can be around christmas time.

being jewish during the holiday season is a struggle that every jewish kid faces during his/her lifetime. most of us outgrow being red and green with envy. but some of us look longingly at the pretty lights every december wishing that chanukah had something just a little more fat and jolly.

really, can any holiday - however imaginative - compete with an overweight chubby guy who flies around on a sled for one night, sneaks into people's houses, eats a plate of chocolate chip cookies, and leaves a bunch of presents underneath a tree that was severed from our dwindling forests to decorate someone’s living room for a week?

not even jelly doughnuts and deep fried potatoes can hold a candle (or eight of 'em) to that magic.

for those of us (un)fortunate enough to have experienced (read: suffered through) a hebrew school education, the fact that chanukah, at its very core, is actually not a gift-giving holiday makes the whole jewish gift exchange feel much more like a "jewish comeback" to the christmas season.

chanukah is hardly one of the biggest jewish holidays, yet it is perhaps the most well-known. in essence, chanukah is exactly like every other jewish holiday: they hated the jews; they tried to kill us off; we won; let's eat.

naturally, i don't mind the gift-giving component of chanukah. like every other mainstream kid who grew up in america, they two are nearly synonymous for me. and i love the shopping element of the holidays. (hey, it is important to know one's strengths.) but i do sometimes wish that chanukah was celebrated for the holiday it really is, not what every kid in america wishes it was.

and then that thought quickly passes.

maybe what the holiday season is really about is the interaction associated with gift-giving: kinship and power; taste and insight; symbolism and values. maybe the key element to the psychology of gift-giving is basic human reciprocation: 'i help you and you help me.' maybe the whole purpose of the holidays is a way to forge bonds with family, friends, and strangers as in the days when gift-giving served a useful purpose when there was no state to keep the peace with police or militia.

or maybe, christmanukawanzza is a corporate commercialization conspiracy in which customers are consumed by greed and materialism creating a commercial pollution at the cost of authentic spirituality.

and if that's the case, then i'm in the right place.

because, as an up-and-coming business school student (*who has yet to be accepted anywhere), it is fundamentally important to know that the survival of many businesses are dependent on the holiday season profits, and frankly, it is my patriotic duty to be as helpful as possible to these fellow americans who are just trying to make a decent living.

so i shop. and i buy. and i give. because maybe i'm a sucker for whatever-holiday spirit. i love the fuzzy feeling i get when i've given someone exactly the right gift. i suppose that as a jewish kid in a non-jewish country, the christmas season is one i'll struggle with for the rest of my life.

but you know what? i'm okay with chanukah. besides, i don't need an excuse to sit on some guy's lap. (i can do that all year round.) and i suppose that if you push me to say it, my connection to the jews who survived deep-seeded hatred and persecution is probably more profound than my affinity to shiny lights.

and really, who needs honey-baked ham when you can have deep fried potatoes?

and let's be honest. this badass didn't get her black eye in some heroic feat to grab an xbox360 for her boyfriend's big-last-night-of-chanukah-present.

let's just say that my face and the corner of a cabinet door in a beauty-supply store had a run-in with each other.

and my right eye lost the battle. (but you should see how i took out that cabinet.)

so much for beauty supply.

(with thanks to zak.)

you know why today's date is significant?

because today is 12/12. which is far cooler than 11/11. and 12+12 is 24. and there are 24 hours in a day. and 24 is the best show on tv. and dave brenner was number 24 when he used to play hockey.

i mean. how cool is that?

okay. sigh. despite my best efforts otherwise, today is …

monday.

and even more tragically, today's is my birthday. my 24th "birfday."

and i hate my birthday.

fair enough, i don't hate the day of my birthday so much as i hate the day afterwards. for me, there is nothing worse than feeling just-special-enough one day to feel just-less-than-average-enough the next. and i think i'd rather just not make a big deal out of my birthday than have to deal with the only-364-more-days-until-other-people-make-me-feel-
like-i'm-special-again-post-birthday-depression.

back in september (http://debbierosenbaum.com/2005/09/1212-liquor-bar-blues.html), i wrote a little bit about this phenomenon.

"i have not really liked my birthday since after the days when other moms used to bring in supermarket cupcakes for our preschool classes. but even then, this overachiever was never satisfied with offering my peers the option of 'vanilla cupcake or chocolate cupcake?'

the night before my birthday, my mom and i would always make something that i was sure no one else would ever bring in: toll house cookie pie, ice cream cone swirl cupcakes with homemade cream cheese frosting, double chocolate chip peanut butter walnut bars. and i think one year i convinced her to make both gourmet applecake and martha stewart rice krispy treats.

like i said. i've always been an overachiever. and competitive - more competitive than you.

(by the way, i'm convinced that my adolescent and adult obsession with simple box yellow cake sans icing is a direct result of my childhood dessert snobbishness.)

but anyway.

around the year i turned 6 and every year forward, my parents would offer to 'buy me off,' a proposition any future business school student would agree to: instead of spending the money to throw a party for some snot-nosed kids in my class, my parents would give me the money to buy whatever i could budget. you think i had friends because i was a nice kid or because i had the coolest toys?"

so. i made the martha stewart rice krispy treat confetti bars for my office today. just because i'm not 6 years-old and just because i don't really like my birthday doesn't mean that i'm not going to do something completely infantile for the hell of it.

because what 24 really boils down to is one thing: i'm no longer approaching my quarterlife crisis; rather, i'm in the throws of it.

(which for me, ultimately translates into: crap. does that mean i'm only going to live until i'm 96? now that's crisis.)

i'm not sure when the birthday hatred began, but i think it had something to do with the great gatsby.

hear me out. when we were reading the book in seventh grade (well, maybe just some of us were reading it; the rest of the class had the cliffs notes), the narrator suddenly announces "i just realized that today is my … birthday."

i distinctly remember how profoundly struck i was. who the hell suddenly realizes that today is his or her birthday? (i mean, if eric were his boyfriend, he would have also woken up to someone singing "happy birthday.") mr. wermus tried to explain that this point in the book is a turning point for nick, the narrator, and this statement is an indication of his resolve to no longer drift through life.

from that day forward, i think i resolved to one day "suddenly realize" that today is my birthday too. because in the throws of my quarterlife crisis, i would kill to just drift through life.

which beats what i'm doing: drowning.

admittedly, there is one part of my birthday that i kind of like: the phone calls and IMs. i mean, if birthdays are good for one thing, then they're a good excuse to hear from people we only speak to occasionally. and as far as i'm concerned, i don't really care what reason you have for giving me a 'holla. as long as you do. but only every once in a while.

and for me personally, there's also a deeper aspect to my birthday (gag; don't tell anyone about this). it's the one day a year when i figuratively measure myself and never literally weigh myself. how far have i come in the last year? what have i achieved?

and most importantly, what have i fucked up least?

in the past year, i had the balls to leave a job where i was unhappy and the aptitude to choose a job that i (relatively and occasionally) enjoy. i adopted two sons who make me look forward to coming home at the end of every day. i lost some of the weight i've been meaning to lose for the last 3 years. i decided to leave myself open to the utmost rejection by applying to grad schools that are above even using my application as a tissue.

and i got my first hd-tv.

(while i'm mentioning firsts, this is my first birthday with a black eye. actually, this is my first black eye ever. details to be discussed in a future post).

more intriguing, and certainly more frightening, are the unknown firsts that lie ahead in the coming year.

and so, while i continue to hate my birthday and the brief period where others force me to feel more special then i deserve, i have a whole slew of pending rejection letters to remind me that i'm really not so special 364-days-of-the-year afterall.

maybe i hate my birthday because i resent the fact that there are too many people around me who (pretend to?) like me enough to refuse to let me "suddenly realize" one day that it's my birthday.

and if that's the case, then my resentment is probably in the wrong place.

which would be pretty typical of me anyway.

"because i'm bored," is what i wanted to say.

but instead i said that the reason i was applying to business school was because an mba would play an integral role in my future endeavors and that my career aspirations and entrepreneurial spirit require me to attain such an education.

or something like that. whatever.

over the last week, i have graced four lucky people with my interview charm. (which has proved very inconvenient for blogging). well, really, four people have given me the chance to tell them that i want nothing more than to attend their school. which i do, of course. all of them are my first choice.

because my first choice is the school that accepts me. i couldn't ask for anything else. except maybe a full scholarship too. and a bmw.

when granted these admittedly-above-me interview opportunities, i assumed that i would just enchant my interviewers with my charisma, intelligence, and, of course, cleavage.

which proved to be an ineffective plan (to the best of my knowledge) when three of the four interview conductors turned out to be women. very very successful women. okay. honestly? the real issue was really that all of them were way too smart for my antics.

because it turns out that really smart people see right through even really good bullshit.

and truthfully, when you strip away my blue eyes and bullshitting talents, all that's left is some kid who is trying really hard to figure out what she's good at. and to please too many people. and to make a difference in places where i can.

like the kitchen. and the bedroom. (both good places to "make a difference.") and any organization that is desperate enough to let me take a leadership role.

with the increased visibility of this communications forum (coughbullshitcough) and the high profile i have been garnering as a result thereof (coughmorebullshitcough), i can't disclose full details from these interviews - seeing as "blogging" is listed as my primary hobby on all my grad school resumes.

and if they don't reject me outright for being a loser (i mean, common. who lists "blogging" as a hobby?), then on the off-chance that one of the smart school interviewers has the foresight to check applicantsname.com, i'll certainly be rejected for being honest. and apparently, honesty only equals credibility if you're famous. or a published author.

neither of which i am ... yet.

(but you can be assured that all gossip gets revealed once i get accepted to grad school.)

in the meantime, here are a few examples of the last weeks' inter-rendez-views:

question: tell me a little bit about what makes you a unique mba candidate?

debbie thinks: because i'm an over-achieving, jewish, kinda-latina kid, who gets good grades, studied hard enough to pull of a kinda-good standardized test score, and has no idea what she wants to do with her life.

freud's ego mechanism: oh wait ... you asked what made me unique.

debbie says: jd/mba; jewish/latina standard answer anyway.

question: tell me a little bit about why you want an mba?

debbie thinks: because i'm bored and have nothing better to do.

freud's ego mechanism: now, now, debbie. no need to get bitchy with the interviewer. she's just doing her job.

debbie says: (insert some stuffy answer here.)

interviewer rebuttal (rebuttal? rebuttal? there's no rebuttal in baseball): uhhhh. i just don't get it. i'm not able to "wrap my arms" around what you're saying.

debbie thinks: yeah, nofuckingjoke. me either.

question: what ceo do you most admire?

debbie thinks: holy crap. holy crap. holy crap. holy crap. where's the panic button?!

freud's ego mechanism: that's not helpful, debb. think of something meaningful that uses the word "leverage" or "concretize." quick!

debbie says: those guys from enron. i heard that they were really good at leveraging their insider knowledge and power to concretize their massive accounting flaws.

debbie thinks: now that was a good answer.

and so, now the only question that remains is whether or not i was able to leverage my cleavage. because lord knows my intelligence and charisma haven't gotten me past sixth grade PE.

(indeed this is tardy. but this is a much-needed continued reflection of last weekend that has escaped me. as deion said, "why don't you write about the people you actually like; not just the ones you tried to hide from.")

inevitably, every year at thanksgiving someone at the dinner table suggests the fanfuckingtastic idea of going around the table and everyone saying something that he or she is grateful for.

inevitably, the first person will always say something incredibly beautiful and meaningful.

and inevitably, the second or third person (usually me or one of my siblings) will say something totally obnoxious and everyone else is spared the reality of baring his/her soul. well, at least spared the reality of saying something pukey that he/she may or may not really mean.

despite the fact that at some point we all became adults (and i use that term loosely), it's still just as funny to be totally obnoxious when i'm with family and close friends.

and really. does that satisfaction ever diminish?

every year, for me, thanksgiving - and thanksgiving break - boils down to two things ... my family and my friends.

okay three: friends. family. and shopping. lots and lots of shopping. (just for the record, shopping in miami the friday after thanksgiving is a no lesser feat than winning survivor. and now that i think about it, i think i'd rather eat live grasshoppers than go into some stores during this annual madness.)

sure, high school reunions and catching up with old comrades can be fun (see previous blog entry), but nothing, nothing, beats lax calling deion short. or lax making fun of the way monk speaks. or lax telling matt fine he's slow. or lax not picking up the phone for anyone's call when he's angry. there is something so normal ... so expected ... that makes this bitterness the telltale sign of being home.

the last few rendezvous home have left me ... unsatisfied. i've been frustrated by the social and sexual dynamic between my friends. despite the fact that we all graduated from high school (well, most of us did anyway) five, six, seven plus years ago, our high school personalities reemerge in the presence of each other.

and i'm tired of being the sexually suggestive lone female in a group of a dozen doting guys.

oh wait. no i'm not.

yet this last trip home made me realize that despite our best efforts to never grow up, the dynamic among and between us has ... changed. fiances say, "what's up cat?" none of the new girlfriends are from miami. cheeks has been married for almost a year (well, actually just three months). law school friends are harder to argue with. business school friends are harder to talk to. and professional friends are harder to call after 10pm.

and while i'm not sure that the day-to-day bickering has decreased, the substantive relationships between us are definitely different. the friendships have changed. the hook ups have shifted. and the STDs are (fortunately) still under control.

i often wonder if what we have is unique. so, as a sociology researcher (read: blogger), i asked a bunch of people. downstairs amy from san diego assures me that she is still close with a crew from high school. kjc (the self-named kendall jew crew) appears to stay tight. but something about us - about the miami boys - is different.

because we're not just friends.

we're really family.

so i've decided that instead of being frustrated by the fact that my high school friends still treat me like i'm 16, i embrace it. and i've learned that sometimes it's okay to let go. to let go of adult responsibilities. to let go of graduate education. to let go of the daily grind (and the griding). to let go of all-consuming anal-retentiveness.

this thanksgiving, for me, something changed (besides the color of my highlights). i wasn't just grateful for the enemies i have been successful at hiding from, i was genuinely thankful for my friends. the ones i really like. and even the other ones. and my family. the family i really like. (but not the other ones.)

and above all, i was thankful that this year, no one in my family had the fanfuckingtastic idea of going around the table and suggesting that everyone say something that he or she is grateful for.

so instead, we made fun of each other. and everyone else.

and that's just the way i like it.

more blog fun to come later today. but to "whet" your appetite:

(c/o deb t. and her mom. no joke.)