When I Grow Up

When you're a kid and Adults ask you what you wanna be when you grow up, it's so easy to have a quick answer: Astronaut, Teacher, Model, Doctor, Lawyer, Basketball Player. But when you finally get to be an Adult, sometimes you find yourself struggling to find the answer to that same question. Now that you're finally "grown up", aren't you supposed to be something already? If you're lucky, you went to College and got a (potentially useful) Bachelor's degree. If you're even luckier, you got a Master's degree too. And if you're like me and you have both, you're trying to figure out what you do with them instead of mounting them on your wall to collect dust.

In Elementary school, I said I wanted to be Veterinarian.

In Middle School, Fashion Designer.

In High School, a Writer.

I always knew I liked to write. My dad encouraged me; He praised stories I showed him and told me I was going to be a great writer one day. (To my Dad, the sun shines out of my ass, so he's gonna love anything I show him.) My mom "encouraged" me by shoving Reader's Digest and other magazine essay contest clip outs at me and told me to submit my work. (Even though she could never pry herself away from the TV long enough to read anything I wrote and/or even give me half-way decent feed back on any of my writing.) I applied to English/Creative Writing programs at 3 schools in Boston. I wasn't interested in going anywhere else and do anything else: I started my senior year dead set on becoming a writer in Boston one day.

Half way through the school year, however, I was taking a Forensic Science course. (And no, I didn't jump on the CSI: bandwagon; CSI: actually just came out that year and my teacher was so excited to be able to incorporate episodes of the show into our lesson plans.) I became really fascinated by Forensics and thought maybe I would like to try and go to College to do all the crime scene investigation stuff too. There were very few colleges offering the program at the time though and my options were between Pace University and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. But since I'd already applied and been accepted to schools in Boston, I'd have to wait it out. I did eventually transfer after 2 years (to John Jay instead of Pace which I am still kind of mad at my parents over) and it turned out, there was just too much science and math involved for me to succeed in it as I had hoped. Science & Math had never been my strong suits. (They say those that are good at Writing and other Liberal Arts disciplines are usually weak in the other 2 areas, and vice versa.)

So it was back to English for me. I had too many credits to transfer to my new/third/final college's Creative Writing program (now even more pissed, Mom and Dad!) so I completed my studies as a Literature major. Great. A Bachelor of Arts in Literature. There's something thats sure to put a roof over my head one day! Well, that degree combined with the amazing internship at my first college's (which I chose because of their superb Co-op education program that was supposed to help people find internships in their fields) Registrar's Office, helped me land a job in..... another Registrar's Office! And that was useful enough to help me get my Masters degree for free. So now I had a Master of Science in... Communication Arts?... which consisted of some Communications, Marketing, PR and Advertising courses - but certainly not enough experience to go out and get a job in any of those fields. I suppose I could have just tried to fake it until I made it, but with the economy in the Shitter and the fact that most Marketing jobs either wanted 5+ years of experience or straight Interns, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Which brings me to where I am now: Working in my third Registrar's Office, a safety net in an economy where jobs are harder to get than Crocodile Birkin bags, with absolutely no solid plans for my future. I had tossed out all kinds of potential possibilities for myself: Get some kind of marketing job that allows for great advancement and a six figure paycheck, become a Celebrity publicist (Lindsay Lohan, when you get out of jail, call me!), start a blog that's going to make me rich and famous (hint hint!), write a Great American Chick Lit Novel, earn an MA in TESOL and go teach English overseas, go back to school and get a PhD in Social Psychology where I research the behavioral patterns of Boys & Men and one day write a book to help Women figure out the male species once and for all and hence, make lots of money.

What I actually am doing: Sitting in my pajamas on a Monday night writing a blog post about how I don't know what I want to do, where I want to go, who I want to be, or what the fuck I'm doing with my life,.

..........

In the infamous words of Meredith Grey, "We're Adults - When did that happen? And how do we make it stop?"