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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I open an email on my phone - already slightly frustrating - and see a filled-out form: it's my application for a university program, though I can't remember which one. In a different font colour are notes by a professor whose first name seems to be Lynn.
This is a rejection letter, but not just a rejection letter. Lynn has gone through all my answers and has something snarky or critical to write about most of them.
After my project thesis statement, for instance, she just wrote one word in lowercase: "no."
Plus things like, "Can't you write simple sentences? These are so convoluted."
"If there's a point here, I can't find it."
"Incoherent."
"This is NOT what this program is about."
"Why mention Giordano Bruno?"
Why DID I mention Giordano Bruno? He was some sort of philosopher, right? I want to look up his name, but Google is unbearably slow.
"I know Montreal. I've even been on the bus you mention, the 204."
Dismissive, it sounds like. And I'm embarrassed. Wouldn't the 204 bus be flagrantly off-topic?
"Here's a map of Oshawa, which you didn't seem to understand, given where you'd said you'd live. Even if you were accepted, why assume you'd live on Lister Street?"
Or was it Linden Street? The street looks like a black branch on the map. Houses like "petals on a wet, black bough."
I try to assess how I feel about all this: angry and amused and confused? And which application is it, anyway? Where did I apply to in Oshawa? Maybe it was Ottawa. Maybe it's Memorial University in Newfoundland. I got rejected from there, right?
The anger flares up above other emotions and I feel like the best revenge is to abandon linguistics and fling myself into writing. But maybe the application was for a creative writing program? It's hard to tell - the words keep changing.
...
Wikipedia tells me that Giordano Bruno was a renaissance philosopher in Italy who was into astronomy and mysticism. He got burned at the stake (which is maybe why people get things mixed up and say this happened to Galileo). So he has about as much to do with linguistics as the 204 bus does.
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