Failure
I applied to the MAT program at UNC. I was rejected. It’s easy to look at external factors, but ultimately I am to blame. Same problem as before, four years ago when I applied to graduate programs: not enough Latin on my transcript.
It doesn’t matter that I know Latin, or that I have been reading Latin despite an exhausting 40-hour job, or that I had plenty of non-curricular Latin during my undergraduate studies. I am holding back all my bitterness, because I don’t want to say unkind things on the Internet. But I am bitter. I meet the bar, but they set it, and they get to say I don’t meet it.
I am driven by this against my will, really. It’s the thing closest to a calling that I can see. So I’m not giving up, but it is a hard thing to bear. I have little choice, though. Endure a completely disparate field of employment indefinitely, or keep trying to bust out of my oubliette. I choose to strive for freedom.