Insanely Life Altering Cockup?

Sooooo I have been having a weird day. I actually got my script done, and it’s submitted to the editor. Which is good, I powered through, I actually think it’s stronger, and if we went into production with it as it is I feel I could stand by it.

What is making my head spin, and I actually had to put it aside to work and now I am thinking about it again, is that this life altering moment MAY have happened five years ago and I didn’t even know about it until today?

Okay, so let me try to get this story straight. Bear in mind a lot of this is really unknown.

SO five years ago I had applied to my top choice university, York, which I wanted to study scriptwriting in. It would have been an MFA program, two years, serious university. I got my references together, my application, support material, transcripts, EVERYTHING. I submitted it and got a MyFile number where I could log in to the York system and see the status of my application.

Now, it’s been quite a few years, so I don’t REALLY remember specific details. I know the status didn’t change for a long damn time. Like, I don’t remember if it said “To be processed” or something, maybe it was “No decision.” I don’t know. Either way, people on FB started posting excited messages about being admitted to their various programs. But time passed and nothing. It was May, nothing was happening on MyFile, and I hadn’t gotten a letter either.

So I called them and was like “Look I applied and the system hasn’t updated my decision, what is going on? When is a decision coming?”

And I don’t remember who I talked to, some admin person, it was a guy, probably in the admissions office or something. He sounded kind of flustered and was surprised I hadn’t heard and told me I was waitlisted. “But if you don’t get in this year please apply again next year.”

Soooo a couple months go by, it’s in the summer and I THINK a letter finally came saying I was waitlisted? BUT ALSO I don’t even know if I am remembering that correctly. It might never have come. I remember being like “Fucking hell, York is so disorganized, they can’t even tell me what’s going on with my application. That’s probably a bad sign for a university. I’m not applying there again.”

So the next year I applied to Ryerson, for a different program but in the same vein. I got in. Did my Masters. Got really into my thesis project which is now the big script I am working on with Telefilm funding. Life is good right?

Anyway, this big deal filmmaker who is also faculty at York has been following my work more recently and was hinting at wanting me to go to York, there was never a good time to tell him the story until this past weekend at an event I was at. He was like “OMG I’m going to scold that department” because he was really disappointed York was never gonna have a chance to have me in the grad program.

Today he sends me an email that’s like “Uhhh the admin person here says they have no record of your application.”

And I’m like no really I applied. He sent another email to admin to find out.

But basically… it looks like they had lost my application in the web portal. At least, that seems to be the gist I am getting from this. And I’m like, what the fuck?

I could have gone to York? I could have gotten a 2 year MFA instead of a 1 year MA? I could have been here a whole year earlier?

That’s the basic thoughts. Then I go deeper…

Jessie was doing her PhD at York at that time, it was probably before she met her current LIFE PARTNER. She would have been not in the same program obviously, but in a very closely linked department and we probably would have met years ago instead of last year.

I don’t even know what to say about that. My life took a total detour because of an administrative error???? Like okay, still, this MIGHT not be what happened. But there’s a good chance it IS what happened.

And people would always be like “Why didn’t you go to York?” and I’d be all “Oh I applied and they didn’t take me” and then they would always be kind of shocked.

But now it’s like, maybe I never got that chance because THE FUCKING WEB PORTAL LOST MY APPLICATION????!?!?!

I don’t even know what to think. It sort of makes me cry. It’s so ridiculous. But then also I’m trying to see what happened instead. Like, Ryerson WAS actually pretty good for me even tho I bitch about it sometimes. And if I hadn’t stayed another year back home I wouldn’t have gotten my baby girl dog, cause she wasn’t born until November of the year I thought I got rejected. And I would have written a different script for my thesis, it probably would have been a comedy, I know what story I was pitching to people at the time. It was a good idea, but SO different than the one I am working on now. I wouldn’t have gotten the breaks I had, or met my producers, or been able to work with the big shot story editor I have now.

But it really is crazy. They always talk about forks in the road. Like life altering moments that change your destiny. I had a good chance at that life, but through a bureaucratic error I ended up at another University a year later. With a different project, different classmates. I don’t even know what to say about it.

I want to tell Jessie this crazy story, but it takes so long to explain, and she’s not getting back to me right now anyway. But it is really so fucking weird. Life is a trip.