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I find it beautiful in part because I have a high tolerance for ambiguity and I enjoy loose association. The wheat section was my favorite. For me, it evokes a feeling of discontent about knowing highly abstract concepts without knowing the basics. Like, she knows about fairytales, but she doesn't know how to make bread. But it's not really about bread; separating the wheat from the chaff seems to be more about determining what is important in life. And everyone else here probably has a different take on this section.

It is thoughtfully ambiguous. It's thought provoking in part because it is unclear. You, as the reader, are an active participant in giving it meaning. What makes it "well done" is that many readers succeed in giving it meaning they find insightful or entertaining.

It is fertile soil for your imagination.

It's an advanced writing style that you see a lot in these kinds of personal essays, where the idea is to follow a stream of consciousness, weaving together different ideas that have loose relationships with each other in order to create a kind of mental miasma where the things can mingle together and connect in the reader's mind in various ways. The main subject tends to be triangulated by the constellation of ideas, instead of being addressed directly.

Specifically, in this case, the arbitrary and pointless (and impossible?) tasks in the fairytales are related to the arbitrary and pointless interview process. The author wonders what happens to her story when she fails the tasks, just like the characters who fail the tasks and then unceremoniously fall off the narrative map. But she's not a character, she's a real person who goes on living. But that living stops making sense in terms of the narrative that she was following before.

I don't totally get the connection with the bread myself. But part of figurative writing is leaving room for ambiguity and further thought.

> It's an advanced writing style that you see a lot in these kinds of personal essays, where the idea is to follow a stream of consciousness, weaving together different ideas that have loose relationships with each other in order to create a kind of mental miasma where the things can mingle together and connect in the reader's mind in various ways.

Does this have a name? I don't know what to google to read more about it.

I have no idea, I've just seen it in several places :)

Some other people have responded talking about the essay in general, but I thought I'd try and respond to the specific points that you found confusing with my own interpretation. This is of course subjective. I liked this piece because it gave me food for thought like this.

> But three days into an interview she wanted she seems to have changed her mind?

There are two time periods in this line at once. "I wish I had said" is talking about what she wishes now that she had said to him at the time. The tip off is the "had said" is referring to the time period in which she responds to the dean and is in past tense, and "I wish" is present.

> After that there's an explanation of plots in fairy tales that switches jarringly again into another line I'm not totally sure how to interpret about bread. Its also the title, I expect it to be important.

"Fuck the bread" is literally something her mother said to her, but also subtextually saying "fuck academia" (and maybe even the more broad "fuck societal standards of success"). This is the chain of associations that builds up the metaphor:

1. In fairytales, the characters are given impossible tasks. <List of examples>

2. In the fairytales, completing these tasks defines their worth. Characters who do not complete the tasks drop out of the story.

3. Getting a job in academia requires her to complete a list of impossible tasks. She cannot complete it.

4. Even basic tasks in society are impossible during the pandemic, like bread making. These basic tasks are part of appearing successful.

5. "Fuck the bread" == fuck 3, fuck 4, define yourself outside of impossible tasks and do not be a bit character in a fairytale.

> This I don't really get how she goes from wheat to needing machete to cut it to questioning why they want a job

Given the rest of the piece talking about how working in academia was a useless task, I think this is about wasting her time on something so frivolous instead of her basic needs (bread?). But that does go against the title. I'm comparatively pretty unsure about this association.

I may be completely off but my interpretation of bread is the following:

- She's struggling with finding bread, the main task that is defining her at that moment (the writer goes around the idea that on fairy tales the task is what the defines the character, and no fulfillment of task means no character), so she's struggling with the definition of herself too

> “I can see the wheat,” she says, “growing in the field from outside my window.” I watch a video on how to harvest wheat. I can’t believe I have no machete. I can’t believe I spent so many hours begging universities to hire me,

- For me this means that she wants to get bread and she discovers that for obtaining the wheat you need something to cut it, like a machete. A machete is a tool for cutting, for removing obstacles. And she doesn't have a machete, so she cannot remove those obstacles for the position, like the universities interviews, so she cannot reach the position as she cannot get the bread.

Putting it the other way around: you cannot just beg to the wheat to get the bread, you need a machete. She doesn't have it. She doesn't have what is needed to get the position.

I think the relation is not too obvious and I may be wrong, but I interpret it this way.

I think of another interpretation: if she had a machete, she could cut and make her own bread, instead of begging universities for a job, to buy bread.

I call a naked king here: if a text allows different interpretations, its just a bad text, not a smart one.

That sounds like a good interpretation. Sometimes the answer is more mundane though, the writer realised that thought out of the blue, at that time and the profundity - if the writer even realised it - came later. The link, whilst less satisfying in literary terms, could just be 'sudden revelations of things that were staring me in the face the whole time'.

But in this case it does seem purposeful, and I'd imagine your analysis is correct.

She did not changed her mind. And answered yes. And she did not get the job. The wishing to say no is something that comes only later. It would not change a thing.

The other paragraph is mind wandering. Her mind goes back to processing hiring process and her loosing it again and again.

> She did not changed her mind. And answered yes. And she did not get the job. The wishing to say no is something that comes only later. It would not change a thing.

But the description of a "beautiful, made-up reason" and the text around it makes it sound like "no" was accurate, which seems really jarring. I couldn't stop thinking about it through the rest of the story, because it confuses the context especially without any more explanation.