Rachel Feintzeig | It takes more than four years to find direction

I'm supposed to be one of those kids who still doesn't have a job.

I'm supposed to be checking journalismjobs.com every day and wielding my Daily Pennsylvanian connections to score some rookie reporter opening in Appalachia or Ohio or somewhere equally unappealing.

And then, while everyone else is scoping out studio apartments in SoHo and stocking up on business casual, I'm supposed to cash in those savings bonds from my Bat Mitzvah, buy a used car, and drive off toward my new life, reporter's notebook in hand.

That was the plan. If you had asked me at seven or 17 or even last September, I would have told you about my unglamorous post-graduation plans, about how I was going to get paid less than your typical teenage babysitter to cover town council meetings and write obituaries.

But I'm not. I'm moving to a city; I'm signing up for the company stock option; I'm combing through the sale rack at Banana Republic for discounted blazers. It's been a very odd spring.

On the surface it may seem like I'm selling out, but, sadly enough, my salary is nowhere near high enough to validate that assumption. The problem isn't money. It's direction. For the first time in . well, forever, I genuinely have no idea what I want to do with my life.

I always thought it was writing. When asked in the first grade what I wanted to be when I grew up, I proudly answered "gurnalist" (yup, pronounced like it's spelled - clearly I had a promising future). I wrote page 217 of my autobiography about my illustrious future career as a New York Times foreign correspondent.

But somewhere in the last four years, I got burnt out or fed up or bitter or whatever. It wasn't one specific article or all-nighter that did it. But the long hours left me tired, not exhilarated, and the phone calls from angry readers made me cry and I really really hated being the boss.

It's a hard job, and some people are better at it than others. I'm not sure where I fall on that spectrum in terms of the work I produced, but I know where I stand in terms of how I was able to handle it personally. I had a tough time.

I sat down in December to write a cover letter convincing a committee to give me a journalism fellowship and realized I couldn't even convince myself. I also realized that, more than anything else, I just wanted to be happy next year, and I wasn't sure that signing myself up for DP Managing Editor: The Sequel was going to cut it. So I took a job with a company that gives their employees cookies every afternoon.

It also happens to have the word "consulting" in the title, the ultimate red flag that I've joined the People Who Have No Idea What They Want To Do With Their Lives.

Two weeks after I sold my soul to said consulting firm, my English seminar hosted a visit from the United States Poet Laureate Donald Hall.

He read his work aloud and discussed symbolism and meter and imagery, but mostly he talked about quitting his tenure-track job at the University of Michigan to devote his life to writing in a two-hundred-year old New Hampshire farmhouse. He had no heat the first winter. Each month he was scared he wouldn't be able to pay the bills.

But it was all worth it, Hall said, because he was doing what he loved. He told my class to be brave and try to do the same.

That's good advice, and I really hope that one day I can find something that I love that much. Maybe it will turn out to be journalism after all. But for right now, I'm ok with not knowing.

So this is my advice to my classmates, the kids of 2007. To the people who know what they want to be when they grow up: Congratulations. Go for it.

And to the people like me, who are still searching for their passion: Don't beat yourselves up about it. Just remember to keep looking. And, in the meantime, save up some money from that i-banking job, so that when the time comes, you'll be ready to save the world.

Rachel Feintzeig is a College senior from Fairfield, Ct., and former managing editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Her e-mail address is rachelf3@sas.upenn.edu.

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