An essay for my Peace Corps application...

...which turned into something else all together. Maybe some of you will enjoy and/or relate. I found writing it a very cathartic experience.



Since leaving graduate school and beginning to look for jobs, I am invariably asked the question, “What do you want to do?” by curious family and friends. It is a harmless enough question, and one that is entirely appropriate to be asked at this point in my life. However, it is truly remarkable how such an innocuous inquiry can elicit a deep-seated feeling of panic inside my stomach each and every time it is prompted.

You are supposed to know what you want to do with your life! I tell myself. Stay calm, act confident, and quick! Say something that the average person will find completely ambiguous and inscrutable.

“I am thinking about policy work.”

Then smile and for heaven’s sake change the subject.

The truth is, of course, that I have no idea what I want to do with my life. In the community in which I grew up, this statement is practically blasphemy. I have been engineered and bred for career excellence through seventeen years of academic rigor, after school ballet lessons, math tutors, SAT prep classes, and oh yeah, a college education costing more than three hundred times the GDP of Somalia. Indecision is ok (who hasn’t felt that?) but in the meantime, act busy and put on a good front at church on Sunday. Thank God for “policy work”, whatever that is.

I suppose I have no one to blame but myself. Moving back home again is not for the faint of heart. There are far too many familiar faces to have any hope of weathering out the storm of career uncertainty in blissful anonymity.

I really did think that by this point in my life I would have a career path figured out. But perhaps that maybe that part of me is still eight years old, constantly changing the current response to “what I want to be when I grow up”. At that point in time the possibilities seemed endless, and they still do, which is probably the problem. I have been taught that I can be and do anything. But what if I don’t know what that is? What if there are too many options to choose just one?

The blame really should go to my incredibly patient and supportive parents. They actually agreed to let me study fine art in college, knowing full well the ramifications such a degree would bring. It just isn’t fair that I was blessed with so many options and such indulgent parents.

My friends from college fall into two camps: those who studied practical majors and have been employed for several years in large companies identified by multiple last names, and those who took are trying to apply their college-acquired pottery specialization in the real world. Oh, and eat too.

I have come up with a theory that my business-major friends from college, the ones now reading up on 401(k)s and investment strategies, probably missed out on some of the fun we art students had in college, but they are now having the last laugh. Then again, some of those practical minded friends have also confessed, behind closed doors of course, that they too have no idea what they are doing with their lives. “Really,” they tell me, “We are all just better at pretending that we have it all figured out.” If there was a class for that I really wish I had taken it. It would have come in handy at church on Sundays.

Comment below and I will:

1) Tell you why I friended you.

2) Associate you with a song/movie.

3) Tell a random fact about you.

4) Tell a first memory about you.

5) Associate you with an animal/fruit.

6) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.

7) In retort, you MUST spead this disease in your blog/LJ/etc...

*_*_*_*_*

Ok, it snowed. But I am still worried.

This winter's weather prompted me to rent Al Gore's An Inconvienent Truth a few weeks ago. Not only did I watch it, but I also made sure my family did too. It really made me snap out of my blissful pseudo-ignorance about global warming and CO2 levels. Of course I learned all about global warming in school, but somehow it just never seemed real or terribly important. It was just another one of those things that teachers said was happening but I could never see for myself.

But now I feel like I am really seeing firsthand a change in weather. I know people say that this unseasonably warm winter is due to El Nino or something, but I just don't buy it. I am sure wind and water currents are having an impact, but there is no way this is all because of El Nino.

My genuine sadness over the weather probably merits a bit of an explanation. While I like temperate climates just as much as the next guy, I also really really love snow. It may sound strange, but part of me really believes that snow is magical and pure, and that every place looks more beautiful covered in white. This is also the first winter that I am spending home, in the area I grew up in, since I graduated high school. And some of my fondest memories of being home involve snow days: the sheer joy of waking up to a white landscape and a day off from school. I really can't imagine that thrill not being a part of life in this area, for both me and my future kids. (my family has also lived in the Princeton area for over 300 years, so chances are that I will end up settling down here)

Now I am just really worried, about the future of this planet and what life will be like in 50 years. This has gone from something that I thought about rarely to something that I think about at least once a day. I have really tried to change my lifestyle and make small improvements in the way I live.

just "W"ondering

Does anyone else remember back around the last presidential election, how there were so many cars with George W Bush stickers on them? (Maybe I saw a disproportionate amount because I was in western PA, but based on election demographics almost half of the people in this country voted for Bush... at least some of those folks no doubt had W stickers on their cars) Anyway, I have been spending a lot of time recently in my car, driving around, and I almost never see a W sticker.

Where did they all go?

At what point did George W. Bush fans decide it was time to stop declaring their endorsement to the road community? I'll bet it was a pain to get all those stickers off -- they never come off easily and always leave behind some pasty residue. I wonder if those former supporters got out the Goof Off glue remover and pulled their car into the garage so the neighbors wouldn't see them doing the deed. Or maybe they removed the sticker in the driveway for all to see, as if to say, "yup, I made a mistake".

And then I also wonder about those people still driving around with George W. Bush stickers on their cars... are they just too stubborn or proud to admit their endorsement was misplaced?

And finally, I wonder about which cars probably once had a W sticker on them... I'll bet some of more than a few Hummers once did. Environmental policy is clearly not a key issue for those folks.

Meanwhile, I am depressed because it is never going to snow again, and I am going to have to explain to my future kids what snow is.

jobs jobs jobs

I had a job interview today in NYC for a job working on exhibitions at the Japan Society.

I am also a semi-finalist for a job in DC working for the government, probably in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Too soon to tell for sure what will happen with this one, the application process is pretty drawn out and it will be at least a month or two before I know anything.

I also have an interview for a research position with a Buddhist studies journal on Wednesday...

so far I am loving January. Suddenly everyone is hiring.

Copycat

I would just like to share that my green suit jacket is currently being worn by a woman in a Singulair commercial...Those of you who were hanging around the Tri Delta house during spring of 2005 know which suit I am talking about.

I still love that suit, even though it would NEVER have been suitable for the BOC.