Give Me a Break

It's like looking into my own future...

My final spring break started yesterday.

Unlike the fall semester, where Thanksgiving Break didn't come until everyone was about ready to commit suicide, this break was perfectly timed. I was just starting to get a bit frayed around the edges. I won't pretend that my job is particularly difficult - everyone's job has its ups and downs - but when you're counting down the days to graduation, a week-long respite can be very welcome.

Spring Break isn't what it used to be. All of my friends have real jobs now, and I don't really have the funds to go anywhere, so I'll be loitering around my parents' house for the week. I have a belated St. Patrick's Day party to go to tonight, but that's about it; therefore, I've decided to take this opportunity to apply for some jobs. Over Christmas Break, I got my resume in order, but I didn't actually apply for anything. I set up a thing with the Pittsburgh version of Monster.com where it would send me an email anytime it found a result for the search criteria of "writer." This let me see what was out there. At first, I was a bit disappointed. Monster kept sending me results for Software Analysts, Secretaries, and something called a Crystal Reports Writer. Most of these jobs were either way out of my area of expertise/interest, or they required years of experience. The low point came when Monster sent me a listing for "Parking Lot Attendant." I think my neighbors heard my wails of despair.

But I finally found a few leads. Quite a few engineering companies in Pittsburgh are in need of technical writers. Turns out those crafty engineers often don't have the time or talent to write reports and memos and such. Engineers also pay well. These same people who are doing the hiring think "Master's Degree in English" sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is.

Technical Writers can make upwards of $40,000 to $50,000 annual starting salary. This pleases me immensely. Going to class week after week to learn about sodomy and the intricacies of meta-biography can really make one feel that he or she is not learning any marketable skills. This information was just the kind of pick-me-up that I needed.

I've received a lot of unsolicited advice from friends and family who tell me that the job market is so much more unpleasant than the academic world. That may well be true, but I'm just schooled-out. I wasn't always the apathetic ragamuffin who doesn't do 70% of his homework that you see before you today. I used to be a really great student. Every year has been spent preparing for a future that hasn't arrived yet. There's only so long that I can spend preparing for the future before I actually want to go out and do something to make it happen.

Such will be the plan for this break. I'll get my students' papers graded at some point, but my only motivation for completing my own classes is the following declaration, which I must repeat to myself on a regular basis: "You only have seven weeks left! Don't fuck it up now!" I'm doing my final seminar paper on suggestive language regarding sex during the British Romantic Period. This is one of the extracts that I'm working with:
"I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? Not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observed, it must have belonged to a young giant! I could not, without pleasure, even venture to feel such a length, such a breadth of animated ivory whose exquisite whiteness was not a little set off by a sprout of black curling hair round the root. In short, it stood an object of terror and delight."
The fair young strumpet knows how to appreciate a fine-sized maypole! Essentially, I'm studying old-time porn, and no one cares. If that's what I'll end my graduate school career with, then so much the better.

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Nine out of ten readers can't believe that JP is not in hell (or at least a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison) yet.