Just when I thought I'd finally pushed that rock up the hill...

Kaplan cancelled its March training session. The next one they'll offer will begin early in April.

I didn't even bother taking the retest. I was still shaky on the math and I didn't want to waste my one opportunity to retest if the training doesn't start for a month.

This is one of the more devastating stumbles I've faced so far. I've been counting on this job for a month. (I applied on the first day of February, and my interview was the next week.) I haven't done much in the way of other applying since it looked like this was going to go through. Now I've literally got nothing to fall back on. This was the m*****f***ing fallback.

Something drastic really needs to happen soon. In an attempt to nip any potential parental hand-wringing in the bud, I told my mother and father that I'd have something else by the end of the week. I don't really know how realistic that time frame is, but that's what I told them. I'm obviously not going to find a job that I want in four days. But apparently I'm not going to find a job that I want in six months either. I've been revisiting the idea of just getting into my car and driving away, but I feel like there's something keeping me around here for just a little while longer. Summer and beyond may be another story, but for now...

When I called to tell her the bad news, my mom had a few suggestions for where I should look next. She'd seen an ad on ESPN.com for an editor "with three years of national magazine experience." I told her that it sounded like I might be a little underqualified and her response was, "Well, doesn't the Yale Herald send subscriptions out all over the country?" Fundamental disconnect, anyone?

The idea of getting a burger-flipping job or something along those lines is frustrating, but more than that it seems like career suicide at this stage of the game. How is it going to look that I've held out for six months only to wind up doing something menial that I could have been doing all along? I worry that I'm doing serious, irreprable damage to my future career prospects. Even if I apply to law school, I'll have to account for this time. Will admissions officers see an unmotivated slouch and move on? Have these six months effectively nullified all the ladder-climbing I've done over the past 23 years?

I've been pumping a lot of motivational music through my speakers since yesterday afternoon. There have been a lot of commercials for the DVD of Rent, which led me to a few songs from that show: "Will I lose my dignity/Will someone care/Will I wake tomorrow/From this nightmare." I know, that riff is about having AIDS, but, hey, at least I can empathize. Sort of. Then there's The Killer's "All These Things..." which is probably the song I would write if I were able to write a song: "I wanna shine on in the hearts of man.../I'm so much older than I can take.../I need direction to perfection.../You know you gotta help me out..."

What a ridiculously lousy situation. I cannot wait until the day when I can look back and laugh at all of this goddam bullshit.