Dear Committee Members

by Julie Schumacher

Under whose aegis was it decided that Economics and English should share a building? Were criteria other than the alphabet considered?

as persistent and maddening as a fly),

He is sui generis.

Even six years after our divorce, Janet considers herself an expert on the subject of my many foibles, and she is often eager to share her questionable wisdom with others. Fair warning here, Carole: though smooth-spoken and polished, Janet is as cunning as a wolverine.

After all, how often does a lowly professor of creative writing and English have the ear of the associate VP?

The only smudge on it results from the fact that some clueless sadist assigned her an introductory lecture course during her first two semesters

Let me suggest that, no matter the variety of employment, there is nothing more relevant or crucial than an aptitude for original thought and imaginative expression.

Oil (god only knows whether you’re using K-Y Jelly, lard, or some less well recognized lubricant) appears to be your primary ingredient regardless of the category of food.

(now circulating her CV like a blackjack dealer at every conference in order to extricate

do their salaries make ours look like an eleven-year-old’s allowance;

an unconscionable act of piracy and a grotesque, systemic abuse of vulnerable students, to whom you extend the false hope that writing a $50,000 check to your institution will be the first step toward artistic success.

early chapters of which my agent greeted with all the enthusiasm of a farmer presented with a bucket of dung.

he poured four or five glasses of expensive scotch (my tab, of course) down his gullet as if emptying wash water into a drain.

now considered by many to be as quaint as muttonchop whiskers and the butter churn, I hereby

But by his own account he has survived a difficult if not harrowing childhood; and what skill matters more than the ability to prevail in the face of cruelty, adversity, neglect, and ill will?

Be reassured: the literature student has learned to inquire, to question, to interpret, to critique, to compare, to research, to argue, to sift, to analyze, to shape, to express. His intellect can be put to broad use. The computer major, by contrast, is a technician—a plumber clutching a single, albeit shining, box of tools.

like Atlas with his sphere of the heavens,

a pencil again.

Kentrell will never survive round #1 of your deliberations; therefore, secure in the knowledge that this letter will soon join thousands of its brethren in a rolling bin destined for recycling—presumably before it is read—I am comfortable endorsing his application.

has served steadily, diplomatically, magnificently in the Student Services/Fellowship Office here at Payne University for eleven years. She is an enviable constant in the chaotic and demanding environment in which she tactfully holds sway, managing to advocate for student welfare, calm the neuroses of the faculty, and assuage the bilious and unpredictable tempers of the myriad deans

peruse

our anxieties about the crevasse that had opened like a kraken’s mouth above the mailroom door.