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.
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.
posted by Byron at 11:06 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home