Pages

Thursday, May 04, 2006

There comes a time in every young woman's life when her mother says to her "Why don't you just become a Madam.".

Well, maybe not EVERY young woman. Maybe just me.

Yesterday I called my mom for our semi-daily "I am stuck on Rt 128 and am bored out of my head please entertain me" phone call. The topic of our discussion, as usual, was my reluctance to go back to school.

My mother is under the impression that having a bachelor's degree is about as useful as a high school diploma as far as achieving success job-wise. Being that I have a degree in English that is probably true (sorry fellow English majors, but are you or are you not working in admin now? (if you're not teaching or trying to get your MFA neither of which I am interested in)). The thing with me though is I have no idea what my long term goals are. Truth be told if I went back to school now it would probably be for something even more useless like Art History or Museum Studies and I am not willing to put myself in heaps of debt for something that will in all liklihood turn into a simply a hobby for me (Not that some people don't do amazing things with these kinds of degrees, I know).

Anyway my mother has this way of casually bringing up my going back to school that usually goes something along the lines of:

Me: Hi Mom, what's up?
Mom: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GO TO LAW SCHOOL.

or

Me: Hi Mom, How are you?
Mom: SWEET JESUS WHY DON'T YOU BE A NURSE?

Which, you know, may be a possibility but I am at this point in my life where I am still figuring things out, figuring out where I want to be, what I want to do. I like the job I have now, I am good at it, and it gives me time to figure out what my next step is while still adding something worthwhile to my resume, gaining new marketable skills, finding out what interests me, etc.

But as we all know "I'm still figuring things out" only buys you so much time with a parent. And soon my mother will have to face facts that I may (gasp!) never go back to school. I may find myself my perfect niche in the job market, able to use the skills and knowledge I have now as a college graduate with a degree in English. Shocking, right?

So that was when I said to Mom "I would love if i could find a job that involved interacting with people, and no paperwork whatsoever."

Which is when my mom came up with her brilliant idea

And I don't know...I have seen enough Cathouse episodes to know that there is actually a LOT of paperwork involved in that business. Plus I don't really see myself living in Nevada.

But, you know, it's good to have options.

4 comments:

Sarah said...

thanks kim :-)

kate.d. said...

you ever thought about grantwriting? not the most lucrative career in the world, but it'll pay the bills and put your degree to use. of course, the no paperwork desire won't really work out with this particular career path...

just a thought, from one of the few english degree-d people not in admin (though non-profit development work can often feel generally like admin work!), teaching, or in line for an mfa/phd...

Sarah said...

a few people have said that to me and i actually would love to know more about it. i will definitely look into it. thanks kate!

ECS said...

Hi, art history major here... My job now is as a software tester, which hasn't got much to do with my education at all, but I said my degree gave me a fresh perspective that they needed in the midst of all those people with the computer science degrees. It seemed to work, and I actually agree with it. Someone's got to make sure stuff looks nice and is spelled correctly. That's what the English and art history majors of the world are around for.