The Cynical Career Counselor Predicts Your Future as a

Curator

Hi kid--sit down. Wow--an authentic 1974 Pink Floyd Tour jacket? Oh sorry--yeah, I guess you wouldn't want people to touch it--I wouldn't wear it in this crowded dirty building myself.

So--what do you want to know? Curator? Like in museums? Sure, I can figure that one out.

I assume you hang around museums now, so that's a good start. Get used to that stale, humidity-controlled air where the clatter of heels on marble is the only sound louder than hushed whispers. You're not going to have to worry much about sunscreen for the next few decades.

You'll do an undergraduate degree in something like the classics--relevant to museum work but not likely to help you in most other careers. You'd better do the honors program and get good marks, since you want to break into a very small niche career market, and they can afford to be picky.

You'll look to go to a more prestigious university for your graduate work; be prepared to brown nose for all you're worth to get good recommendations from your undergraduate professors, and hope for some sort of work study fellowship or something to make your grad school less financially back-breaking.

I'm glossing over this, but we're now about seven years into your academic game plan. By this time you've already lost a half-dozen relationships because girls might be impressed by authentic tour jackets, but they don't want to live in a one-room sub-cellar until they're 35.

Graduate school over, you apply all over to various postgraduate schools, and if you still have your cultlike devotion to the whole museum gig you will ideally qualify for one of those programs that puts you into some prestigious museum at least part of the time.

That will be heaven for you--you get to be behind the scenes, seeing the new acquisitions before the maddening crowd even has an inkling they're there. You won't mind the ridiculous hours and the constant lung problems from breathing 500 year old mould--it's all worth it to be part of the excitement--well, maybe excitement isn't the word most normal people would use, but you get the idea--part of the inner circle of geeks who think museums are cooler than say, eating, drinking and having normal human interactions.

Eventually you'll graduate, and toil thanklessly in some underpaid staff position in the same museum where you did your advanced degree studies. In the few moments of free time you have, you put out feelers to most major museums in the world, and after a few years of soul-crushing drudgery, you finally get the call you've dreamed of--a museum in a decent-sized midwestern city, and you're actually surprised you made the cut.

Once you get there, though, you understand the situation a bit better. Seems that while the museum had a pretty decent reputation during the 70s and 80s, it's been the site of bitter infighting between museum administration and the board of directors for over a decade. Your predecessor was just another casualty in that ongoing war, and most give you a shelf life of less than a year.

You, however, have made it this far by managing to be as inoffensive as possible when dealing with people in authority. You surprise everyone by sucking up just enough to various board members to win grudging acceptance from most of them.

The flip side, though, is that the tension of being a spineless lackey with the board makes you an unbearable tyrant to your underlings. Still, you bring a sense of order to the building that is most welcome that after the chaos of the previous regimes.

You begin working to get more prestigious exhibits to visit your museum, and the resulting publicity helps bring in more donations--including new, generous corporate sponsors who want to be associated with the positive energy so in contrast with the museum's previously stagnant atmosphere.

For the first time in your life you have a decent income, and you are able to put a down payment on a nice condo in a trendy part of downtown that is only a few blocks from where you work. The only problem is that the convenience makes it easier for you to spend all your waking hours in the museum, but you don't really mind that much.

After a while you realize the extent of the problems you've inherited. While corporations are eager to sponsor popular exhibits, basic building maintenance isn't so sexy, and you are constantly given new examples of how decrepit the building is. First it's termites in the Mayan exhibit, then it's the toxic black mould that accompanied a Mongolian warrior's tomb artifacts and which has spread throughout the entire Asian wing. Eventually it becomes almost impossible to find employees willing to work in that part of the building.

You also are unable to relax whenever the public comes into the museum--imagine your tour jacket anxiety and multiply it by a million. You flinch every time you see a camera flash go off, and make a point of berating offending visitors. You cringe every time a school group come in, knowing that "Do Not Touch" signs have little power when it comes to kids who spent the bus ride to the museum washing down candy with quart-sized carbonated caffeine infusions.

Your staff is coldly polite to you, but you eventually find a website that feature videos secretly taped of you haranging asian schoolgirls who dared snap photos in the Egyptian room. You despise the seniors who man the volunteer posts to lecture class groups and give directions--it's not that their unpaid work isn't valuable, you just tire of the constant bleating about how it used to be under previous curators.

It's not toxic mould, staff hostility or board politics that will be your undoing, though. It's something a little more... primal, I guess.

Your museum, like all such mid-level establishments, has an eclectic mix of exhibits. Ultimately, your budget doesn't allow you to send out teams or compete with facilities like the Met or the British Museum, so you rely on a combination of larger museum's leftovers and the goodwill of local benefactors who provide some of the more interesting artifacts.

One coup during your tenure is the acquisition of a collection of Yoruba artifacts obtained, as always, through questionable means. Some corrupt Nigerian officials--not of Yoruba ancestry--sold them to your benefactor and he sets up a press conference to bask in the acclaim given his largesse. You are merely a prop in his campaign of self-promotion.

Unfortunately, not everyone understand that--especially the Yoruba. They begin agitating for the return of the precious artifacts and they target you with a letter writing campaign, which soon escalates to a media war featuring a daily gauntlet of placard-waving protesters who hurl imprecations at you every day when you try to sneak into work.

Your mind begins playing tricks on you. A large statue of Yemoja, an ocean deity, seems to follow you with its eyes. You hear echoes of words in the wind that whispers down the draughty corridors--words cursing you and warning of dire things ahead.

Your demise, though, will be labeled an "accident". You come to work one morning to find the alarm ringing and the front door wide open. It seems that one of the security guards was a Yoruban plant and he's let in a group to liberate and deface the hated display.

You try to chase them out, but in the confusion, the statue of Yemoja falls on you, knocking you into a coma from which you awaken six months later, able to only remember your locker combination from junior high. The museum's board spearheads a charity campaign to raise funds for you, and they convert a small room in the museum basement into a simple apartment where you can live peacefully in the only place you were ever happy.

Unfortunately the toxic mould will kill you within two years. Can I have that jacket when you're gone?