COLUMN: Groping toward a career

From Ariel Horn's, "Candy from a Stranger," Fall '99 From Ariel Horn's, "Candy from a Stranger," Fall '99There are three careers I know I never want to have. I never want to be a cafeteria worker at a fat camp. I never want to be a massage therapist working in a leper colony. And I never want to be a mime. Period. Fearful of spending another summer working at an unpaid internship with only a traveling stipend (read: indentured servitude) to keep me warm at night, I decided to take the advice I had received from the Career Services listserv and stop by for a walk-in appointment. It was time to arrange my future -- or at the very least my summer plans. Weeks before I ventured into Career Services, I joined the listserv as a way to ease myself into the idea that I would not always be living off the fat of the land (read: parents' checkbook). Indeed, someday, I would have to support myself, as many college students already do. I joined with hopes that a career would magically find its way into my mailbox via the listserv, and that my summers spent socializing with the paper shredder would be over. At the very least, I joined the listserv to show myself there were careers that didn't involve being a doctor, a lawyer, an investment banker or a mime. For some reason I was OK with the fat camp thing. While the listserv only amplified my anxieties by forcing me to read e-mails about jobs that other college students were surely jumping on every second, Career Services accomplished an impressive feat that fateful day of my walk-in appointment. The woman I spoke to about fixing my resume and finding paid employment showed me that there is life beyond the leper colony. She showed me the links on the Career Services Web page that will find positions for you at the click of a mouse. She showed me that getting a summer job that's intellectually stimulating and monetarily gratifying isn't necessarily the Impossible Dream. Resisting the temptation to fall to my knees, kiss this woman's feet and sing the songs of Viking victory, I shook her hand and left. I finally felt OK about my summer job search. Career Services had done its job. Huzzah, huzzah! Admittedly, forcing myself to go to Career Services was daunting. When students go to Career Services, it means they have come to terms with two realities: 1) that they need a job to financially sustain themselves and 2) that college doesn't last forever. Each of these epiphanies can be equally terrifying. And coming to terms with them is the first step toward becoming something other than a mime. While the flood of e-mails encouraging all of us to apply to be engineering interns in Minnesota can be both overwhelming and annoying, a trip to Career Services can fill in the gaps that the listserv messages can't. For instance, did you know that you're allowed to "bump up" your GPA on resumes, or list your GPA without pre-med courses included in it? That there are Web sites for college students geared at finding us jobs in the locations we want? Most importantly, that they give out free pens at the office? Maybe you want to be a cafeteria worker at a fat camp. Maybe you want to be a masseuse in a leper colony. Maybe you want to be a mime. In those cases, you have bigger problems on your hands than finding a job. Perhaps you will find true happiness in the pathetic looks on obese children's faces begging you for more food, or in the sloughing off of papery diseased skin, or in living within the confines of an imaginary box. But if you don't think you will, a free pen and a future await.