Throughout my first three years of winter breaks, I followed a carefully prescribed schedule: I would rise each afternoon between the hours of 2 and 3 p.m. nauseous, dry-mouthed and eager to waste the day. After crawling my way to the couch – often with blanket and pillow in hand – I would focus my attention upon television so dumb as to be almost pornographic. By the time the sun was setting, some distant survival instinct would force me to find something edible and, invariably, I would set out into the world with the intention of having someone else prepare a meal. Fat with food and with the night upon me, I would then direct my considerable powers of concentration on the true purpose of winter break: unadulterated black-out drunkenness. Three or 4 a.m. would find me slumped in the back of a cab, only able to communicate through grunts and wild hand signals. This enviable cycle would then be repeated for the better part of the next three weeks.
But despite the attractiveness of the familiar, I decided to stray from my well-worn path this December. Once the presents had been opened and the carols sung, I packed my bags, knotted a tie, and flew east for Washington, D.C., to intern for the Sunday-morning political talk show “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
About two weeks into my time in D.C., I was called down to the set of “This Week” to sit for the camera crew. When I arrived downstairs, I found a small collection of interns and other apparently dispensable employees sitting dutifully on the set. We were supposed to remain perfectly still, surrounded by plasma screens and six or seven cameras, as they adjusted the lighting for Sunday’s show. The crew had no intention of learning our names, or even asking about them for that matter, and so, instead, they referred to us by the name of the politician or news person we were portraying. “Stephanopoulos, you’re going to have to look at the camera. Senator Kennedy, try to look a little fatter.”
Sitting around the table, we were an unlikely, incongruous group. To my left was a man of about 65 – a large gentleman wearing a ridiculous baby-blue blazer with a long-outdated ABC logo sewn into the breast pocket. He was a technician of sorts, someone from the crew forced to sit for the cameras. To his left were two women: another intern – a girl who looked to be about 17 years old – and George Stephanopoulos’s much older administrative secretary. To their left was a tired sound engineer, a quiet, gray-haired man who was completely indifferent to us all. He almost never made a sound, except to sigh and mention once that if he could “do it all over again” he would have been a chef.
Hoping to spark conversation, the geriatric man in periwinkle asked us what schools were represented at the table. He started us off by noting, with swelling pride, that he had attended Penn State. The intern to his left went next and announced that she was a sophomore at Georgetown. To this, Mr. Baby-blue beamed in approval. Next, George’s secretary revealed that she had graduated from Emerson College, to which our interrogator nodded respectfully. The sullen gentleman to my right said “Ohio” the way you would say, “I hope your brakes fail on the drive home.” Then, the table turned expectantly to me.
I said “Wash. U.” with an eager grin and waited. A few uncomfortable seconds passed, and the technician looked at me like I was speaking a distantly familiar foreign language and he was concentrating hard to pick out the cognates. Seeing that my pronouncement was eliciting little reaction, I tried “Wash. U. in St. Louis,” followed by “Washington University” and finally some incoherent combination of all three. He looked at me with sad, disappointed eyes that said, “Why would make you want to go and make up a school?” I assured him that Wash. U. was, in fact, a real four-year university, and told him that I was a history major. This seemed proof enough that I was a crackpot – maybe even homeless – and he asked in a mocking tone what I planned to do for a living. I responded that I was interested in politics and he gave a little chuckle followed by a thoughtful pause. “Well, maybe,” he said, “if you could go to a good school for graduate work.”
For a full moment, every hope and ambition that has ever rattled around the interior of my skull evaporated, and was replaced with visions of panhandling for spare change. Though I eventually regained my composure – and I’m pretty sure my ambitions have been left unscarred – I failed to take appropriate action. I should have calmly and competently described Wash. U. to him, and invited him to check us out at, say, U.S. News and World Report.com.
It seems to me that the only way we will triumph over the burden of our unmemorable name and our equally unmemorable locale, is to take the time to preach the gospel of Wash. U. – even to curmudgeonly old camera men and periwinkle enthusiasts. So go forth and spread the good news – at least until I find a job.
Zach is a senior in Arts & Sciences and a Forum editor.
And the truly unlikely “Indiana University of Pennsylvania”.
I mean, California University of Pennsylvania”…which I think is in Indiana, Pa.
No, they’re separate. Double the confusion.