Deleted Lines From My Recent Grad School Applications

1. "I am animated, in equal part, by grandiose theories and the small-minded memory of long-ago slights."

2. "I am pedantic with those below me, but slavishly obedient to anyone in authority."

3. "I am reflexively progressive but culturally and socially isolated from the people I feel most qualified to save."

4. "Critiquing is as close as I have ever come to enjoying."

5. "I am perennially unable to perform simple tasks like paying a bill or finding my car in a parking lot, and I choose to believe that's because I'm smarter than everyone else rather than the much more likely opposite."

6. "The less something matters to the world at large, the more it matters to me."