Julia Gottlieb: Plans after graduation

There are just a couple of weeks before the end of November, and, despite the cold weather, I'm starting to sweat. I still have no idea what I'm going to do after graduation, and a big deadline is fast approaching.

It will be brutal. It will be extensive. And it will smell like turkey.

While my parents are up to date on my adventures, I only spend time with the rest of my family on major holidays, such as Thanksgiving, where they usually ask me the same stock questions every year.

This fall, however, the annual Thanksgiving inquisition promises a change in repertoire. As a senior, I anticipate that the old classics -- such as, "So, do you have a boyfriend yet?" --will be replaced by the new "Do you know what you are doing next year?"

As always, anything short of the desired answer -- in this case, "Yes, and I'm going into some sort of professional graduate school" -- will probably elicit lots of unwanted advice.

It's OK: I'm sure they thought I already went downhill when I switched out of a pre-med academic track.

The truth is, unless you're a Nursing student, the job market is not good right now. To make matters worse, I'm not enrolled in one of Penn's pre-professional schools. Aside from being blocked from new Wharton computers, a degree from the College of Arts and Sciences means that things are open-ended, making it hard even to decide which over-staffed company I will choose to author my rejection letters.

I would be depressed, but I have a backup plan!

When the predictable question is fired this year, I will be able to say that I am a highly qualified and experienced applicant for dozens of paying research positions at Penn.

This summer, I helped finance a trip to London by participating in academic investigations. I did work with the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience as well as the Linguistics Department. I got paid for my time and learned about new research in each respective field.

Yet my position was not one of research assistant or even file clerk. I was, in fact, the subject of the experiment.

My favorite type of work was definitely the functional MRIs that I did through the Center. To begin with, I got to tackle their entertaining screening questions.

Prior to my first scan -- I did about four in one month -- I spoke to a student who sounded nervous. He said that some of the questions might be, well, a little embarrassing.

Expecting some sort of questionnaire about drug use, I listened as he began: "OK. Here we go." Pause. "Have you ever suffered a gunshot wound?"

I had to laugh. All of the questions related to the possibility of having metal in my body, and I got to answer negatively to everything -- no metal screws, no experience in welding and no metallic hair dye.

All of this qualified me for the actual experiment. To oversimplify, the people at the Center placed me in a giant magnet. They tucked me into a sliding bed that rolled into a small tube. It's really quite comfortable, especially since I'm not claustrophobic.

I then worked on various tasks for two hours. It was sort of like doing SAT word problems in a womb -- that is, if my mom had been a construction worker. It's very noisy -- there's pretty much a constant clanking or beeping. Going in there with a hangover would pretty much be my personal hell.

With no known side effects and at an average of $40 a pop, the fMRIs were a lucrative and sometimes intellectually interesting way to pass time.

That said, I'm still horrible at solving analogies.

So while there might not be too many available public relations or human resources positions out there, I know I'll have something to pay the bills and keep me thinking.

With this in mind, I can relax and anticipate the look on my cousins' faces when I tell them in between servings of potato stuffing that I do have some prospects after all.

Now if I could only figure out what the terms "lip, ball and figure" have in common, I'd be set.

Julia Gottlieb is a senior English and Music major from Lancaster, Pa.

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