This is therefore intended for the "Lives" section of the New York Times.
Monday, April 2, 2012
I know that this needs a lot of work. I initially wanted to extend it and make it a riff on a Modern Love essay, but I wasn't sure that it was relationshippy enough, but since I shortened it, it might not be action-heavy enough.
This is therefore intended for the "Lives" section of the New York Times.
Personal Essay: The Unifying Force of Waffle House
This is therefore intended for the "Lives" section of the New York Times.
I am exhausted. I was supposed to have one layover on my flight in, forty-five minutes in the Detroit airport. My first flight was so late that I missed my connection by three minutes, though, so I was rerouted through Columbus. When I got there, the pilot for my last flight called in sick, so I was rerouted yet again, this time through LaGuardia. Instead of arriving at 5:30 pm, I got in shortly after midnight.
For the fourth time in six weeks, I'm on my way to the home of a stranger, my overnight bag in the trunk of their car. This time, I'm in Atlanta, my winter coat bundled under my arm, the windows of the car rolled all the way down because the night breeze negates the need for air conditioning. I'm in the back seat next to the woman I'm staying with. Driving tonight is her roommate's boyfriend, a burly type who is currently speaking loudly over the noise of the highway at night. They've been telling me a story, something about a mishap of a friend at a Waffle House near their home, when a thought hits the boyfriend.
"You're from Michigan, right? Do you even know what Waffle House is?"
And here's my in. These meetups, if you can call them that, are all about talking up my own best attributes. Most of the time, this means discussing my research experience and interests, but I like finding points of connection outside of that – with the first person, I connected through music taste. The fact that, despite my best efforts, I couldn't really find anything with the second just made it really clear to me how important it is to find similarities outside of academics, which led to my desperate leap onto connecting with the third over our first late-in-life experiences driving in winter weather.
"I actually grew up in Kentucky," I tell him. "Waffle House is totally my jam." And the four of us – the girl I'm staying with, her roommate, and the boyfriend – lapse into a very intense discussion about how each Waffle House has its own personality, to the point where one is almost a completely different restaurant from the next. I mention my personal favorite in my hometown, where the employees bring in tomatoes from their gardens in the summer and the late-night waitress uses the singular noun "honey" as a plural to address groups of people. I also bring up my least favorite location, where I am consistently neglected by the waitresses no matter when I go and where, once, a cockroach fell from a light fixture into my cup of water. Atlanta is the promised land of Waffle Houses – I count six on my way from the airport to their house – and by the time we finally get home, I know which ones to avoid and which ones to seek out, even if they're ridiculously busy.
I'm not here for a romantic entanglement, but it might as well be one. After a good night's sleep, my time in Atlanta will be spent going through essentially the same motions I did in Lexington, Kentucky and Oxford, Ohio: I will butter up to this girl, asking questions about her life and her interests, for the rest of the night. In the morning, we will head downtown, where I will spend the day in thirty-minute sessions with a number of different people, again painting myself in the most attractive light possible, conscious of my body and whether the way I'm holding myself conveys enough interest in the people I'm talking to, asking insightful questions that display a sense of familiarity with the work of the people in question. We will eat together, laugh together, and spend the better part of the day trying to impress each other. It's important to be like and be liked, here: if everything goes well, these people will be key players in the next five-to-seven years of my life.
I could be interviewing for any type of job, or preparing for any type of informal dating: hooking up, bind date, speed dating. The fact that I'm waiting to interview for a clinical psych PhD program is basically unimportant to me right now. I'm still sitting in the backseat of this car, fighting through my travel-exhaustion to try and to remember a really bad joke I heard six months ago, because I'm awful at coming up with them on my own, and this is where our conversation has moved to.
I remember the joke halfway through an interview with the head of the program the next day, and have to hide a smile. Discussing the importance of a diverse population base for both research and for clinical practica is not the time to tell someone that the Revolutionary War general told the cowardly private, "Chicken, catch a Tory."
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Saskia,
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed reading your piece, you have an engaging voice. I feel like the first part of your piece is very well developed. I can imagine sitting in Waffle Houses, some of which seem very good and some of which do not (I have never been to a Waffle House).
However, I am left to question what these "meet ups" are for quite some time. I like that you ultimately reveal that they are interviews, but it takes a little too long to get there. I think this could easily be solved by switching paragraphs "I actually grew up..." and "I'm not here..." to give the reader a clearer sense of where you're going with these "meet ups". I feel like the last sentence in the "I'm not here" paragraph lends a sense of foreshadowing for the ultimate reveal that you are interviewing for a PhD program.
Perhaps to make it longer, continue with the resolution of what happened during the interview. Did you get the position? Did you ever go eat at Waffle House, maybe in celebration afterward? If not, maybe list a few short examples of other silly/interesting/ridiculous interview situations you had to endure before ultimately ending up with whatever position you have now?
Just some thoughts. Good work.
Saskia—
ReplyDeleteI think this would actually be a cool Modern Love piece: you’re basically going through the motions of “romantic entanglement,” and you find that you share a love of Waffle House with the strangers in the car.
I also agree with what Amanda said—I was pretty confused about what “meetups” were at first. It seems like you intentionally want it to sound like a blind date—but could you maybe make that comparison without losing the readers over this term?
I LOVE the description of the waitress in your favorite Waffle House. The ending was also really funny—but I found myself wondering what your “so what” is? Are you just trying to paint a scene of connecting with academics on a different level? What did you want to leave readers with?
I wonder if the first paragraph if necessary—if you really want to highlight the non-academic ways in which you connect with interviewers, it could be more effective to start with the second paragraph in your piece: “For the fourth time in six weeks, I’m on my way to the home of a stranger…” If you started with this lead, then it would set your readers up to make the connection between the meetups and “courtship” from the get-go. The travel part, though stressful, seems to distract more than add to the overall picture of your piece.
I wanted more description of the actual people in the car—can you give us little details about what they were wearing/if they had accents/ anything that might let readers in a bit more to the car setting? And who were the “people” that the woman introduced you to the next day? (See third-to-last paragraph.)
This is a great topic for a personal essay! This seemingly ordinary conversation is really engaging.
Hi Saskia,
ReplyDeleteI loved your voice in this piece. You manage to relate a familiar inner dialogue that effortlessly grants me access to your thoughts, while never sounding self-conscious or ironic. I also the love the structure in which the first half of your piece is packaged: the backseat of an unfamiliar car, drifting in and out of the present. This feels like the upshot of your piece, the heart.
I think the Waffle House-Georgia setting has so much potential for evocative description from the backseat. How did the open-window breeze smell, where did you feel sticky, what about sitting in those terminals and on airplane seats informed your body about then sitting in a car, what is your relationship to these strangers, how do their voices sound?
I completely relate to the difficulty posed by this assignment, but one thing that helped me better construct a narrative arc was by telling a close friend the story I wanted to tell with my piece. You have so many potent ingredients in here, but as a reader, I finished feeling unresolved. For me, the most resonant aspect of this work is the tension between the desire to present the most acceptable version of yourself to these strangers and the fantastic intimacy of your narrator's stream of consciousness. Perhaps I would explore this more while revisiting this piece.
Elaine
Saskia,
ReplyDeleteI love the way you lead the reader into your story without immediately establishing what the heck you’re in Atlanta for. For me it was a real draw and I wanted to find out what was going on. You have a clear and straightforward writing style that I really enjoy. I also found myself laughing at parts. I think this is a wonderful start to either a Lives or a Modern Love piece, but I can’t help but feel that the story is missing something, some unifying thread, like Waffle House unified you and your acquaintances in conversation. For instance, you open with an intriguing tale about air travel (and how much it blows) and then move onto what I read as the crux of your story dealing with strangers, and finally moved further into the interview process. While all of these scenes and stories were interesting and well described, they seemed disjointed. I also agree with Elaine that more description of the actual people might make your story a bit stronger. In all, I don’t have much say and I think this piece is really strong and you clearly have found your voice as a narrator. Keep working on and adding to this story and you’ll have something really funny, relatable, and endearing. Nice work.
Paul
Wow, the part about the cockroach is crazy! Good visual! How can you tell which ones are the good and bad ones? I really like your anecdote about the waffle houses—it’s good because there’s so much detail and specificity. I think the rest of the piece could really benefit from increasing specificity and detail in the rest of the piece. I wanted to know so much more about how you got to where you are at the end of the piece and I’d like to know more about your comparison of job hunting with first dates—I think that’s a really interesting concept to play with!
ReplyDeleteJust something technical, in the first paragraph you say you are rerouted through La Guardia and that arrive shortly after midnight and then you take us to Atlanta. To clear things it might be helpful to the reader if you say where you arrived in that first paragraph so that Atlanta isn’t such a jump.
I’m not sure if the ending really works with the joke. You have a great sense of humor in the piece but I think it might take away from the deeper meanings of your piece, like maybe what the transition to the ‘real world’ is like or how random small talk takes you from strangers to acquaintances or even friends sometimes.
I think I just want more, you have a great start, and expanding will really give it more narrative power!
Hi Saskia,
ReplyDeleteI think your attention to detail and sense of humor are definitely the strong points in your piece. I loved the way you described the Waffle House locations to avoid and those to go to. Each one seemed to have so much character and I think you did a great job of capturing them.
Although I think your use of detail is really great, at times I do feel it is a bit overbearing. For example, I got lost in the details of your opening paragraph on how you actually got to Atlanta. Although the journey itself sounds stressful and exhausting, I think your piece would be stronger if you just start with your arrival. Also, I would recommend alluding to why you are actually in Atlanta in your first paragraph so that the reader has some solid concept to carry them through the piece.
On a different note, I found myself craving to know more about the characters you were with in the car. They seemed to have a significant presence in your story, yet we hardly know anything about them. I think you could really expand your descriptions, perhaps adding in some more dialogue. Use sensory details here.. what did you see, hear, smell in the car? Paint a picture for us.
Although I loved how you incorporated remembering the joke and the detail of you smiling as you recalled it was really nicely written, I felt that overall the ending was a bit abrupt. Due largely to the fact that we had just learned the real reason purpose of your visit to Atlanta in the paragraph before, I felt like as a reader I didn't have enough time to process everything before it ended. However, by alluding to the interview earlier on I think you could easily avoid that sense of a sudden ending.
All in all I really enjoyed reading your piece. I think you have a great topic and lots of room for growth. Great job.
Alaina
Saskia,
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great start. The beginning of the piece is really engaging, especially the scene when you are sitting in the car after all the traveling and talking about the Waffle House. I still am not completely sure of what this piece is really about, but as a reader, I am very interested in knowing more about this interview and all the people you interact with. Showing descriptions of the characters could help the essay and the scenes come more to life. Also, think of the structure of the piece and how you want your story to move. I think the best approach to this would be your character constantly moving (traveling) around and interacting with the other characters you choose to include.
Great job :)
Maureen
Love the idea and premise--and I even like the way you set it out in the process writing post. It begs the question: why be so mysterious and sneaky about what you're up to in this essay? I think it would work to lay it out there--pose the question about the connection between dating and interviews--and attempt to figure out something about yourself by answering it via story. You're well on your way!
ReplyDelete