I typically think that most people bring this up when it’s assumed otherwise, that everything is always sweetness and light. At least for myself, I still don’t bring it up unless the person presenting the opposing viewpoint does so in a manner that doesn’t suggest it’s just an opinion. Your mileage may vary.
Have you ever applied to graduate school before? If so, are you one of those ridiculous genius-types? My applications took months of painstaking, soul-raking effort. It didn’t take one weekend, it took about 12, in back-to-back, 8-12 hour shifts on Fridays and Saturdays. You don’t fill them out, you eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You dream about them. They consume your life.
Answer to the two questions: Yes. ::blush with false humility::
Then it is reasonable to suppose that you had an easier time of it than most people should expect to. I would imagine it also depends on your field. For Social Work I had to write 5-8 page essays for every school to which I applied, with the understanding that huge emphasis is placed on the essays. I wrote Og knows how many drafts and read an entire book about writing grad school essays and circulated them to people I know for feedback and then wrote more drafts… that doesn’t happen in one weekend.
You do have a valid point that she could work on it at home, though. I worked on my stuff straight through Thanksgiving this year, from the comfort of my Aunt’s house, and the day after Thanksgiving mailed out the final envelopes. I started in August. As someone who’s just been through this I feel the need to defend this particular point. It is a very time consuming process!
Hmm. I find this fascinating. So, you feel guilty because NONE of the prior generation bothered to attempt to engage you as a child or as a surly teen (and they’re all surly)? I say that grandma et al should have talked about their lives and told you stories from a wee age.
I had a moment like what you describe when my great uncle died. I had never known that he did recon in WW2–he was a spy for the Allies. Amazing. But I never felt lasting guilt: this was a man I saw often until I was 5, then I saw about once every 7 years or so (they lived in New England, we live in IL). My parents never talked about Carl’s experience in the war. To me, he was an old retired guy with a handlebar moustache. I was a kid–it’s up to the adults to make themselves into people for kids, instead of just “adults”. From kiddie tables in the living room to “send them outside to make their noise”, kids are not always encouraged to related to older relatives. And of course nowadays, the kids are the focus of a lot of family gatherings, which is just as skewed and (IMO) wrong.
My point is if you are not actively “recruited” (for lack of a better word), there is no way you are to know that great auntie Mame was actually a stripper and probably would have some damned good stories. Why put that on the OP?
I only did one app to one grad school–if I hadn’t gotten in, I wouldn’t have gone. But even that app took me several weeks of tracking down transcripts (I went to 2 different colleges for undergrad), people to interview (with subsequent paper to write), and my essay. My sympathies lie with the OP. And I have to say that once whatever generation it is that “makes” this extended family get together like this dies off, this type of thing most likely will not continue.
There is some sadness in that, but no doubt some other type of connection will be forged. I have only Xmas card contact with my cousins–I’ve never known them well; my kids have no contact with theirs. It was my parents who both fostered the ties, but also broke them (divorce, feuds with step-siblings etc). My generation were mere onlookers. I’m the only one of my family to have had kids. And so it goes.
I just want to say, there are lots of great things to do in Cleveland during that time period, and well as a large quantity of great libraries where one can get some serious work done in quiet. And possibly a DopeFest, but don’t count on it. So don’t blame Cleveland for your family struggles!