“It’s like if you asked Beyonce out on a date. You know she’s going to say no, but you still feel disappointed when she does.”
Across the table, one of my oldest friends holds a cup of red wine in her hand. She is eating Spaghettios that took three minutes to heat up. I am eating two-minute prep Pad Thai from Trader Joe’s. We first met each other in a lap lane in a swimming pool the summer before we started high school, but now we sit here together, well into our collegiate careers. I look at her and know exactly what she’s talking about. I have received similar rejections this week.
Every time I see an email from a job, internship or other program I have applied for that doesn’t read “Congratulations!” I get the same sinking feeling; it’s the feeling of being rejected by one of our country’s true national treasures in the form of a beautiful, long-legged goddess. To me, Fulbright and Beyonce are really one in the same. Both are unattainable and fierce, a picture of perfection all wrapped up into one.
If you took the time out of your busy Sunday evening to watch the Baltimore Ravens win the Superbowl, then you saw Beyonce reunite one of my personal favorite childhood groups, Destiny’s Child, while singing a medley of her top hits from her career, proving just how bootylicious she really is.
However, my Sunday night was so filled with studying that I lived had to watch a 14-minute Youtube video of the halftime show and read an influx of tweets and Facebook statuses about the game.
Currently the object of unattainability — a job — hovers in front of me just like Beyonce’s presence on my dorm room television screen. It’s right there, hanging just barely out of reach in the limbo space of satellite waves. I can see other people getting them. I can imagine what it would be like to have one. I can learn the “Single Ladies” dance, but, so far, no matter what I do, I just can’t be as graceful or as captivating as the woman herself.
Beyonce may be unattainable, which she makes more and more evident through her famous lyrics, but — no, I can’t handle this. I do want you to be my hero, Beyonce. I also want you to send me an email telling me you have the perfect job for me. Oh, and it pays more than minimum wage? I’m sold.
If I can’t be her or have her golden-brown locks, I assume I will have to settle for channeling her. Instead of formulating grammatically correct and convincing cover letters, I will now only submit them in the form of mash-up style lyrics of Beyonce’s greatest hits. You want someone who has good communication skills, knows how to use four different types of software and also has three years of previous experience? Well, I can name the titles of all of Beyonce’s albums in chronological order.
She does say that girls run the world, so maybe there is a place for me out there after all, even if I only feel the sting of rejection right now.
Ellie Kaufman is a Confusion Corner columnist and, instead of working on job applications, she spends most of her spare time practicing the “Single Ladies” dance and plotting to seduce Jay-Z.