College Grads Ahead: Proceed with Caution

Maybe in hindsight, this blog should have been called “How to Eat Your Feelings,” or “Cooking with your Parents’ Cash,” or even better yet, “How I Avoid Accepting Adulthood.” I’m kind of fond of the last one for its heartfelt truth and distracting alliteration. But I've settled on "What the hell do you do with a B.A in English" because it seemed so much more appropriate.

Graduating is kind of like trying to win a prize at a really cool fair, except once you get the prize, you realize it’s actually not that great, but now you’re stuck with it and you can’t get rid of it no matter what, because you spent all the time and money trying to get the stupid prize in the first place, and there’s no return policy at the fair. 

The prize would be my degree, but it’s actually more like a dead fish- something useless and sad.

It’s not like I didn’t know English degrees are useless. I went to college and majored in English despite the fact that they were useless. But I was naive and young then. I did know the meaning loans, or how much my ham and brie panini habit actually costs to maintain. Reality set in-- like a giant boulder crashing into my body and pinning me to the ground, unable to do anything.

 

But now it’s time to do something, you see, judging by all the people who keep asking me what I’m doing after I graduate. But English degrees, like dead fish, don’t do a whole lot for you. My conversations with these well-meaning questioners usually go something like this.

Them: “Hey, so what are you up to after you graduate?”

Me: “… I have no idea.”

Them: “Wait, what? I didn’t catch that.”

Me: “I’m not doing anything.”

Them: “What about grad schools, weren’t you looking at those?”

Me: “Applying to grad school is a complicated process. Also, you don’t do it unless you know it’s what you want.”

What I really mean: “Grad school scares the shit out of me, and I really don’t want to study math for the GRE because the GRE is stupid just like math, and I have more secret grey hairs than I’m willing to tell you about because I only very nearly escaped my undergraduate career with my sanity and soul intact, but there still might be some lasting damage and going to grad school right now may be the end of me.”

Them: “Oh, okay. Are you going to move back in with your parents and see what happens?”

Me: “Um, I already live with my parents…”

Them: “Oh.”

The Awkward Silence falls, and I try desperately to restore the conversation, lest the other person walks away thinking I’m going to be another sap collecting unemployment from their paycheck in the very near future. 

Me: “But I might move to Madison!”

Them: “Oh! That’s nice. Why Madison?”

Me: “Because the unemployment rate there is really low. And my boyfriend is going to school there. But mostly the unemployment.”

Depending who I’m talking to, this is the slightly redeeming end to the conversation that I hoped for, but this is not always the case. Sometimes, I realize that I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake, and I should have just let the other person assume that I would sit despairing in my parents’ basement for all my days. But how was I know that moving + boyfriend in the same sentence would be the equation of doom?

Them: “OMG that is SO romantic! So when are you getting married?”

Me: “Um, I’m not. It's not like that.”

This is about the point where I start feeling itchy and hot, like I’m a pie baking in the oven and no one’s going take me out anytime soon and I can’t escape because I don’t have any legs.

Them: “Is he a nice guy? Men are such slobs these days. If you’re thinking of having children do that soon because-”

Me: “OH HEY LOOK AT THE TIME I HAVE AN IMPORTANT AND SUDDEN MEETING RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND NICE TALKING TO YOU BYE!”

But it’s too late. The damage has been done. It’ll be another night of despairing in my parents’ basement reading the self-guidance books I bought from Barnes and Noble that I have to return in two days because I can’t actually afford to buy them- just buy and return them (it’s like a library with higher stakes. Instead of being charged twenty five cents if you’re overdue a day, you’re out twenty bucks and get a new book).

So what’s the lesson learned here? Don’t ask a recent college grad what they’re up to unless you know what they’re up to, and it happens to be something laudatory. If you don’t know what they’re up to, or if it’s not laudatory, please, just give them some cookies or something.

We really like cookies.