I've been feeling quite worthless lately. It's been stemming from the fact that I've been having to face graduating at the end of this Spring. I submitted the graduation application and the $100 fee on Thursday. (To add insult to injury, after paying thousands and thousands of dollars for an education--they charge you to graduate.) I guess real life gives me the jitters or something.


But I've been thinking that my English major is pretty useless. I mean, what kind of a job can I get with an English degree? I've been looking at jobs posted online, and I'm not going to be very employable. I used to work at a bookstore, and I worked with a lot of people who had degrees in English and History--and all they were doing was working at a bookstore for $7.25 an hour. I don't want to be like Janet and Mike and Steve and Kelly.


I started to wonder if I've wasted 4 years on an education. I should have majored in a science--that way I could at least have a wide variety of jobs openly available to me.


Then I started to feel like I should have stayed at one of my two previous universities. Because at least I was majoring in writing at both schools--one would guarantee me a job after graduation, and the other would have given me a foundation in the television/film/publishing industries (and an internship with Conan O'Brien, to boot).


I mean, who am I kidding, applying to graduate schools for a creative writing MFA? I want to be a writer. But it's not a real job--if I can get it to pay me at all.


So I know what Paradise Lost is about, and I know who Anne Bradstreet is. I know what Italian courtiers valued the most, and I know the customs and etiquette of courtly love and sex during the English renaissance. I can name all the kings (or queens) of England, and the dates of the reign, starting with William the Conquerer. I can analyze Shakespeare better than anyone my professor has known in the last 9 years, but so what?


All that makes me qualified for selling books in a conglomerate bookstore.


Great.




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