Like This Soup, Grad School Is Painfully Sweet and Sour

I made a huge matzo ball of a mistake.

I stupidly, betraying my heritage and bloodline and bringing dishonor to every Jew who survived pogroms, did not choose to eat the matzo ball soup at Saul's. Yes, I passed over an old favorite and the sole soup that has sustained my people for 5,000 years. My grandmother didn't survive the Holocaust for this.

In a moment of body dysmorphia and solid-food induced stupidity (I had just eaten a pickle), decided to go for a bowl of sweet and sour cabbage soup at Saul's Jewish Deli, which many of my faithful broth-appreciating followers know I have a near-romantic relationship with.

Yes, laugh. You can revoke my soup connoisseur credentials, I care not. My soup choices are mine and mine alone. All of you do not understand what it's like to be under souply stress.

I am making a shocking omission far earlier in an article than I normally do. I am breaking convention for this blog, indeed. The soup was bad.

The flashback begins. It's 18 years after I've been Caesarean sectioned, hated by all, old yogurt rotting in my backpack; I just humiliated myself playing all the female parts in a rendition of Twelfth Night in my English class. A former friend of mine assures me that "we all like your sister, we just tolerate you". I do not listen to him and tear into bowl of French onion soup. He will never understand true viscosity.

I reflect back on my senior year of high school. I made the quite unfortunate mistake of joining the Academic Decathlon team at my school. My school, one of the perennial contenders for the national title, lost miserably in the soup-deprived city of Sacramento. I still remember a despicable rad na I had the night before the defeat took place.

I grew to hate my teammates and my coach. I felt juices churning in my stomach not unlike a disgusting broccoli cheddar one hour after you've consumed it. After losing a year of my life to illness, I had lost a year to this dumb competition that will never reach the level of a soup-themed competition on an episode of The Food Network's Emmy Award-winning Chopped.

However, one aspect of this year stuck with me. That was the subject of the competition, India. It was no wonder I was drawn to this land. Nearly every dish of India is a soup. Yes, curry is a soup.

I was somehow Stockholm-syndromed into liking this subject, just like a Swedish citizen eating a putrid salmon and milk soup. I truly do not understand the Scandinavian soup.

As I went through college, my interest only grew. My knowledge of Salman Khan's blackbuck-hunting prowess and Romeo calls increased. I was called a bitch in Hindi more times than I can remember. I was the white boy of the year in my Urdu class.

I decided to write my thesis with a truly sauceless professor who I will only identify as a historian whose brother is a complete ghoul in Modi's government. I chose to write my thesis on an even more sauceless and soupless topic: 18th-century Sri Lanka.

After graduating, I applied to six graduate schools for a doctor of philosophy degree. I was rejected from all of them. Like a man using a slotted spoon to eat soup, many professors lied through their teeth, empty words leaking out of their mouths.

I took some time off. As many of you know, I honed my soup connoisseurship skills in my beloved "food paradise" of Davis. I took on Wendy Weitzel, formerly of the muckracking rag the Davis Enterprise, over her false and pay-to-play coverage of various Davis culinary establishments. All Davisites hated and loved me. None were spared from my grace and wrath.

But every pioneer, every king must leave his throne. I decided to kiss my beautiful donkey Protege goodbye and head to the city of Berkeley for a master's degree in Asian Studies.

Why would I choose a life of poverty and constant social anxiety over a life of eating chili in Tommy J's kitchen on G street as the sun set in beautiful Yolo County? Why would I room with a 21-year-old who shits all over the place and uses the N-word when he games when I could be slurping down a massaman curry at the overpriced Sophia's Thai on the hopping E street as the Davis icon I dubbed "Hare Krishna Larry David" ambled down the street in his robe and glasses, bald head shining under the Nick the Greek sign? To study India, that's what.

Despite my racist roommate and his loose butt cheeks, I had a fine enough first semester. I learned about the Mughal Empire, took Persian (but didn't eat terrible fesenjoon, possible my least-favorite soup), and made many a new friend. Despite eating a lot of bad Berkeley soups, I felt accepted by the doctoral students I met. But a rotten broccoli cheddar of a feeling remained.

I felt no imposter syndrome, the fesenjoon of non-intellectuals who need to get a life. Eat a stew! But I felt like I was more than qualified to become a doctoral student. I was a part of the community, but at the end of my days, I simmered with discomfort just as the chili on my stove. I was not one of them at the end of the day. And I felt it.

My second semester began. Several people in my life started to disrespect me and stir me around. Donald Trump and his team of ghouls at the DOGE gutted my source of funding, ruining my revenue stream for the following summer and academic year. How was I supposed to fund my trips to ramen restaurants? I was truly lost.

Moreover, I was supposed to go to India. Finally, I could taste its curries and get ill mere hours after eating them. I could see tigers and elephants. I could be white boy of the year once again.

But life is never easy for a soup connoisseur. My prospects had evaporated just like milk, giving my lactose-intolerant stomach a churning ache. Where was I to turn?

As any man who loves soup kitchens has learned, I turned to others for assistance. But I was surprised; very many of my fellow "sous-chefs" left me in the dark. I was drifting in the ocean, a stray fly who has idiotically delved into a pot of wonton soup in a B-grade Chinese restaurant. But none would come to my rescue and fish me out. I was left to die on a piece of shrimp.

I lost several friends. Confidants had deserted me. Opportunities had come and gone just like my favorite "soup song" of South India, "Why This Kolaveri Di? (The Soup of Love)". When would the popularity of this song return? Perhaps it never will.

Nearly 27 years on since I had been Caesarean sectioned, I found myself with my remaining friends in Saul's Deli, stewing on my misfortune. But for a soup connoisseur in a favored establishment, only two questions can be at hand. What soup shall I taste? How shall I measure its viscosity?

I chose to have the matzo ball soup. But then I looked at my body. I felt I had become fat. My OCD and body dysmorphia played their worst trick of all: they conned me out of good soup.

The waiter came. He asked what I would like. And I made the greatest mistake that I have probably ever made. I chose the sweet and sour cabbage soup.

Where was my mind? It was addled by my personal and professional failures. Friendships and funds lost, I lost my soup-stimulated senses.

The soup came. Immediately, it violated a rule that I have for cabbage soup: it had no meat. A dedicated reader may remember that in my blog entry entitled "Mounds of Meat", I wrote that this is a cardinal sin for this type of soup.

I dug in. Slurping, I noticed this soup was truly sweet and sour. At least that was correct. The only thing I hate more than bad soup is false advertising. But the soup was far too sweet and sour. Frankly, it tasted like fesenjoon.

Saul's, my beloved spot, my synagogue of soup, had betrayed me. They had taken the cabbage, the perfect vegetable and best vessel for soup to impose its presence on, and rendered it beyond my recognition. I could barely eat this unearthly concoction. I did something I never do. I spit out the soup.

There was no viscosity of any kind. Or if there was, I could not taste it over the sourness. The tomato broth was rendered null just as my Foreign Language Area Scholarship by a South African billionaire who probably eats solid foods for every meal.

I had a foul taste not only in my mouth, but also in my soul. Was this my fate? To bemoan my graduate experience, to lose my money on overpriced soup, to lose promising friendships, to face alienation? All while matzo ball soup sits in my friend's bowl two mere bowls-lengths away from me?

But what can a soup connoisseur do but write a blog? My grandmother didn't survive the Holocaust for her grandson to have bad soup.

Soup Score: 1.1/10 barely edible