The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as an

English Professor

Hi there--you're the kid who writes the book reviews in the school paper, right? Those are pretty good--there aren't many kids your age writing about the pre-raphaelite brotherhood, I expect. You want to be an English Professor? Why am I not suprised--here goes:

You'll do an honors degree in English Literature someplace Ivy League, or that feels Ivy League. At first you'll join a sorority, but after one year you'll realize those people aren't for you--clumsy gropings by drunken frat boys send you scurrying instead to dimly-lit downtown poetry readings, where you gradually find your fellow travellers. Unfortunately, the price of intelligent discussions of literature is your participation geekdom's lesser festivities--long nights of role-playing games and the occasional renaissance fair make you a reluctant expert on things you can't talk about outside the inner circle without risking your chance of ever procreating with a non-wizard.

You'll have crushes on a few of your professors--their erudite insights leave you sadly unsatisfied with the young men you spend your time with on weekends--and it's only too likely that one or two of them might violate their code of ethics after a long chat about your most private poetry you've deigned to share some smoky evening at a local angst cafe.

You enter grad school with great expectations--now you can truly focus on your passion for Victorian novelists--and you promise yourself not to let the increasing burden of student loan debt limit your enjoyment of your studies. You immerse yourself in grad school, and your fellow English majors become your surrogate family, though not much of a dating pool; the few pasty males in the crowd evidence Oscar Wilde's sexual proclivities and Hemingway's gender sensitivity.

A master's degree, of course, is merely a wall decoration in the world of literature, and you manage to find a post grad program that accepts you largely based on a few poems you had published in an obscure university literary journal. There you find yourself increasingly isolated--part of you wants to be carried away by some hero from the pages of a Bronte or Austen novel, while the conclave of unshaven lit/women's studies majors you smoke dope with every Friday night scoff at those who seek fulfillment from mere males.

Upon graduation, you do manage to land a position that evolves into an associate professorship at a small college--unfortunately, as junior member of the department, you're stuck with classes of first-years who have the literary sensitivities of Stanley Kowalski from Streetcar Named Desire. You weary of the stupidity of the phys-ed. cro magnons in the back of the class who only lose interest in picking their steroid acne to guffaw when you explain that Lawrence's serpent isn't merely a snake. From that point on, every assignment they submit are little more than puerile attempts to find phallic symbolism in everything they read. You know that all of their decent work has been ghostwritten or bought off the internet, but you are too apathetic to fight the constant onslaught of plagiarism.

Meanwhile, your student loans burden you more than you ever anticipated--you will have to spend two decades driving that VW bus you bought with the professor who left his wife for you and repented his mistake scant six weeks into your relationship.

On the bright side, the money you save on depilatories and hair products will allow you to indulge your need for really nice emo glasses and a trip to an Ani DiFranco concert once every year.


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