Blogspot, Claymation dude.

My favorite result of being a salaried employee is that nowadays, I have the funds to vary my diet. Whereas 80% of my senior year consumption consisted of the "Mix-and-Match", a $5 curry on rice confection from the local Pakastani joint, I have been to no less than five restaurants in the past week.

Unrelenting march into happy yuppie verisimilitude notwithstanding, this has been a welcome development. I'm no longer starving all the time. During the week, I can be considered what some describe as bright-eyed and bushy tailed. The fact that my newly minted breakfast-habit is heavy on the peanuts and sunflower seeds makes the squirrel metaphor all the more accurate.

My boyfriend recently wrote a blog entry about food-as-pornography, which is an idea he hopes to expand into an honors thesis (I cannot wait to tell my mother). If so, my quest for five servings of fruits/vegetables at the Union Square Farmer's Market today was nothing less than a submarine mission through Jenna Jameson's fallopian tubes. Joe and I ended up buying rhubarb, blueberry ginger jam and a 3 ounce hunk of organic goat cheese. I even considered buying a tuna steak at Whole Foods.

So basically, money is glorious. Oh, what's that? I'm being a jerk? WELL, I DON'T SEE YOU WORKING TEN HOUR DAYS, SO YOU CAN LICK MY ASSHOLE.

Blogspot, shuttlecock in hand.

I'm starting work on Monday. Sorry for the neglect. I'll post tomorrow if I have the energy. For now though: sleep.

Blogspot, Pralinenmacher seit 1909.

I just found this in My Documents. I wrote it a couple weeks ago.

Like all good stories of failure and dejection, this one starts with alcohol. A few empty bottles of cheap Australian wine grace the area behind my laptop. Their labels each feature a color-coded representative of a different vertebrate taxonomic class. The orange lizard of Jindalee. The kangaroo of Yellow Tail. The black swan of Black Swan. It's like a list of rejected team names from Legends of the Hidden Temple.

I need this booze after Republican Guard style interrogations for jobs I don't really want at all, namely, Associate Scientist I in drug discovery. A mere two weeks from graduation, when I shall be forcefully torn from the famously bureaucratic bosom of NYU, I realize that my father was right: the job market is impossibly heartbreaking, especially if you are a science major looking to work in (wait for it, this is funny) publishing.

It all started when I renounced my proud middle-class North-Jersey-Asian heritage and decided not to attend medical school immediately after my undergraduate studies. It's not that I doubt my proficiency. For all the glib insecurities I might present to the outside world in the hope of projecting some mutant kin of "charm," I know I'd be an excellent doctor. It's just that medical school is essentially a pricey eco-tourism package promising to bring you by helicopter to the pristine frontiers of human suffering. And my friends, there is no complimentary continental breakfast included.

Another metaphor: it's like crash-safety testing for the soul—expensive, horrifying and only profitable if you get a five-star rating. If you need someone to sew your pinky back on, who in their right mind would want the Ford Pinto of physicians? I figured I’d be ready for medical school when I could commit to being an extended metaphor BMW 7-Series.

Clearly wary of saddling hundreds of thousands in debt to effectively disappear for four years, I decided to spend a year gaining real-world experience, working at something that married my broad science background with my ability to produce concise and informative copy. A craftsman lives deep inside of me and nothing pleases me more than when I can hold up a crisp, finished project and declare with the divinity of Tim Gunn: “I made it work.” Editorial Assistant: the position reeks of new beginnings and a tragic, bohemian pay scale. Despite friends who warn me that it is quite literally "the worst job ever," I dove boldly into my task and prepped my cover letters and writing samples.

Unfortunately, that is where it all goes to hell in a hand basket. It turns out that editorial assistantships at science magazines are not only rare, but virtually mythical. Furthermore, most companies look for English majors to fill that capacity in mainstream publications. This is irony at its cruelest: an employer would prefer the indolent English major over the schmuck who slaved away to attain his pre-health credentials in three years. I listen to the opening song from Avenue Q, the play starring foul-mouthed puppets, wherein the protagonist poses the question "What do you do with a B.A. in English?" I think to myself: "everything I can't" and break out in funereal sobs, mourning my stillborn future.

It doesn't help that my internships thus far have been in research. Through intensive practice, I have acquired the ability to completely fillet three mice in ten minutes, separating their lymphatic tissue into Next-Food-Network-Star-caliber towers of murine flesh. In the shining world of publishing, this apparently isn't considered nearly as useful as experience faxing rejection letters to freelancers. Re: Your non-Future.

It's also no comfort when your friends get fed-up with the defeatist mantra you chant thrice daily to the origin of the four winds: "I am never getting a job."

"There's always McDonalds', my dear," says my friend Celeste. It takes several seconds for my monstrous inner bourgeois to erupt in a plume of indignation. For that magical moment of hope before that, I mentally revisit that aforementioned tower of mouse meat and consider how impressed the branch manager would be. I did learn marketable skills! Gloria in excelsis deo!

Dejected, I break into Celeste’s liquor cabinet for some hearty discount casket wine. But I must show temperance tonight. I have an interview in the morning for a developmental biology research gig. Oy.

That having been said. I got a rather high paying job doing work I am likely to enjoy. Ha. Ha.

Blogspot, King of Spirits.

When NYU requested a personal essay in its admissions requirements, a friend of mine chose to wax poetic on her superior personal qualities in the context of her rhinoplasty. The essay was entitled “n.j. in NJ.” It is a testament to her uncanny charm and striking intelligence that she got in anyway. Based on this preface, it may be odd when I say that she would make an amazing doctor, but such is the case. This summer, it’s time for her to apply to medical school, but she is conflicted.

The problem stems from her finances, as her pediatric nephrologist father will only contribute to the Med School war chest if she agrees to attend UMDNJ. It’s an excellent school, but Piscataway, the central-Jersey town where it’s located, is less than glamorous. And, as she puts it, she wants to maintain the illusion of being an Upper East Side princess. This means a brand-name school with a brand name bill that she’ll be feeling well after her ovaries become prunes. So when I said that the problem stemmed from her finances, I didn't tell the whole truth. It also stems from her pride.

I’m hardly one to judge. Despite my complete lack of experience in a non-research setting, I adamantly refuse to take a job that does not come fully equipped with at least health insurance or the bohemian veneer of poverty. This, of course, is declared in the name of perpetuating the delusion that I am hot shit / dedicated to my noble cause to educate the masses in the ways of science. Thankfully, my erroneous beliefs concerning my employability are probably the last vestige of a formerly-held battery of fantasies about life in New York. As this job hunt continues to render me mad, even that is eroding. Soon I will be whole. My awakening is almost Buddhist.

We all came to New York with preconceived notions of what urban life was like. Airing out my dirty laundry, I will admit that mine were heavily linked to Will and Grace. The depth of my ignorance was on-par with the sins of legions of would-be Carrie Bradshaw. My shame is great, but I suppose I find solace in having grown out of it. Some of those young harpies carry on their erstwhile search for their Mr. Big long after their best-laid plans for sex columnist glory have crumbled into an indentured servitude at a faceless publishing house.