argh... argued with my brother. about college.
he came and visited me with the purpose of visiting universities in the area. he can't do cat's so i found him a place to stay that was cat free. this ousted morgan out of his house and to mine which, other than the fact that it's still chilly first thing in the morning, isn't too bad, just a big inconvenience.
we go to visit places and i find that he's done minimal research on the places. he was supposed to have the addresses, phone number, and directions to the places. he was supposed to have called the universities and figured out if they had tours, what time, and reserve a spot. he was supposed to have called up the ROTC offices and figures out if there would be someone in on the day we were visiting.
he looked up which cities they were in and figured there would be signs.
so i drove him to the colleges. while we were driving, morgan looked up the phone numbers. the first was ETSU and i knew it was somewhat visible. when we were there, morgan looked up the numbers for the other colleges. because of morgan, we saved ourselves a fool's errand to UNC Charlotte. i drove, morgan did the research, my brother just had to sit there, look cute, and not say anything too stupid.
i spent multiple days that i could have used in preparing for the new semester. i could have taken a long weekend in atlanta, dc, or nashville for my birthday. instead, i took off of work to drive him around west NC and east TN.
i have discussed issues, explained possibilities, and attempted to encourage.
all he needs to do is stop by the education center. he's working and roads in upstate NY are sometimes bad. however, if roads are too bad thursday, then he can go on friday.
instead he sets off to massachusetts because "he had plans with people there."
the desire to go to college is real apparent now.
this hurts. morgan and i invested time and social capital. although i helped morgan clean, it still required him to take time from preparing his syllabus; and i refused to do the bathroom, which he scrubbed - including the floor. morgan needed to do prep work for his classes but spent hours looking up details on college visitation.
i feel like my good intentions were taken advantage of, and i know that morgan is feeling similarly. i feel like i took this seriously but it's just a joke to my brother. i shouldn't need to put this much effort into someone else going to college. i especially shouldn't put this much effort into any project just to have the person drop it because they would rather go have fun.
it's insulting. both morgan and myself are disappointed in our investment.
but when i mention this to my brother, he tells me i'm bitching.
aside: it's lovely how that discussion can be brushed off with "you're just bitching," which in the case of presenting actual concerns translates to "i don't want to listen and i'm going to devalue your comments on grounds that you're a female." male privilege makes me so frustrated.
