The Day I Learned How to Swear

I was 26 before I learned what it felt like to swear. I had experimented with ‘drat’ and ‘dagnabbit’ in High school and even said ‘sucks’ and ‘crap’ on occasion but had never expressed the words known primarily by their first letters. The situation was I was a grad student in the Counseling program at Cal State Fullerton awaiting news about my practicum placement. I was already on track to graduating a year late because I did not get into an agency my first time around. I was experiencing a sense of urgency.

            It was February, a couple of weeks before the practicum faire, that I contacted the agency that I had previously interviewed with the semester before and set up a second interview. I went through the interview, thought it went quite well, and was confident about being accepted by the agency. Flash forward to May.

            By this time I had contacted/interviewed with a dozen or so other counseling agencies but did not receive any offers. I was becoming a bit anxious to say the least.

I still held out hope for my first agency until I heard a friend in my class tell me she had just been offered an internship by that agency. She had interviewed with them the week prior.

I called the agency to ask about my application just so I could have some sense of closure and was told they were sorry but there were no positions left. I asked if there was feedback they could offer me that I could take into future interviews and was told the following, “Well, it’s hard to give you feedback, what with such short notice, but there are certain characteristics that we look for and I’ve heard you do comedy and that you do it well.  I think you should look into doing that.” I said thank you and hung up.

            I wrote in my journal for a little bit and then called my friend who was also in the program. I told her what happened and that I was disappointed. She said I seemed to be taking it well but asked how I really felt. I told her I felt the situation was really fucked up and that ‘short notice’ line was such bullshit because they knew they didn’t want me back when I interviewed in February but didn’t tell me because they wanted to wait until they found someone so that they could just tell they were sorry but there were no positions left. It felt good to swear. I was surprised. It felt freeing.