It’s the dreaded question. “What are your plans for next year?”
Here’s how I’d like to answer: “Next year? You mean life isn’t all getting takeout and singing karaoke?”
Here’s how I actually answer: “I’m not sure yet. I’m still looking.”
I feel like a failure, because it’s March, I’m graduating in May, and I’m still jobless. It seems like every engineer, business major, and hotelie has had something lined up since October. But I’m a communication major—so this is totally normal, right?
I enjoy writing, but I hesitate to call myself a writer; with blogs and Twitter, who isn’t a “writer” these days? Still, it has been a longtime dream of mine to write for a magazine. This, however, requires breaking into journalism during a terrible economy—which why I’m jobless in March, discouraged, and feeling increasingly pressured with each passing day. I’m a plan-ahead kind of person, and to have my life beyond May be an enormous question mark is nothing short of horrifying.
You know what else terrifies me? Being forty and wondering what I did with my life.
According to many prospective employers, my business minor and “sales/marketing” internship at one of the world’s largest magazine publishing companies—where I mostly got coffee and mailed complimentary copies to clients—make me far more qualified to sell ad space in a magazine than to write for one. Although I’m mildly interested in the business side of publishing, would taking a sales job mean selling out?
At this point, it’s hard for me to accept that what I do next year doesn’t have to define the rest of my life. I could take a job in sales and solve my short-term problem. But to be happy in the long run, I think I just need to be patient right now—even if it requires dodging the dreaded question for a while longer.
— Erin Keene ’12