Excerpts from Beaux Artistes

Accepted

I didn’t think I’d ever be back here. The echoing, clicking of high heels on the marble floors, the sound of book pages turning feverishly before exams, the faint smell of firewood burning in the great hall. Before today it was a back-burner of a pipe dream.

Yet, here I am, standing tall in the university I have always dreamed of since my first trip to this dream-like place as a child, despite my mother’s protests and my father’s pleas to please do something else darling, you need to be able to support yourself. You know the trope, and I am absolutely living it. More on that later.

This was The Language Arts Conservatory of Cork, Ireland; the prestigious, international university for language arts, writing and communication. This place had housed the most brilliant scholars of language, the greatest authors and the most gifted speakers of any conservatory on earth throughout history. If you could make it out alive in this place, maybe the rest of life wouldn’t feel so terribly difficult.

And I have wanted this more than anything else in my young, open, whole naïve heart. 

I snapped out of my stupor when I noticed the bellow of the ancient bells ringing in the courtyard; oh how my heart longed to hear them and be cradled by their vibrations someday. A smile cracked through my hardened face as I began walking towards the admissions office to receive my schedule for the semester.

​

The door was big and arched, with dark wooden planks crisscrossing in a giant ‘X’ tied together with cast iron bolts bigger than I’d ever seen before. I couldn’t help but think it was taunting me, that the ‘X’ was saying do not enter, you don’t belong here, it’s not too late to turn back. A gold-plated sign resting in the center read Office of Admissions, but it may as well have said go home, fraud. I took one final sigh, lifted my chin and entered.

The interior was buzzing with life; students and professors alike all running around with their perfectly coiffed university look; something resembling a suit with matching briefcase or bag, various shiny new books in hand, the faster ones holding a hot coffee cup and the new first-years, myself included, looking around for the front desk with a twinkle in their eyes. It was like a dream; a whirlwind of ambitions and daydreams and plans for the future all melting into one tidy liminal space between who we think we are, and who we expect to be. I look ahead and see multiple cue lines with handwritten signs instructing the masses where to go. Counseling. Bookstore. Resident Services. New Students. Aha, that’s the one! I trot myself up to the end of the line in anticipation for what’s to come; where will I live? What classes will I have to take? Did I get into the coveted higher-level courses?

My mind chewed on these thoughts all the way to the front of the line, where I was met with a wide-smiled, bright-eyed woman’s gaze.