The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Cartographer

Hi kid--sure, sit down. That--oh that’s an old globe that’s been cluttering up this office for years. I keep meaning to chuck it out. Really? Sure you can have it. So what’s your career goal?

Cartographer? Oh, yeah--those people that do the geography stuff--it’s pretty much the only answer I know when some kid comes in who’s acing geography and they ask what the hell they can do with a degree in it. So that’s what you’re thinking of? I suspect your future may not go the way you’ve mapped it out, if you’ll allow me the pun.

You’ll go to some nearby college and do a degree in Geography. You’ll cover all the bases--the plate tectonics stuff, urban geography, political geography, environment, and a bunch of other stuff I’m getting sleepy thinking about. After your first degree you’ll realize you need graduate credentials to get anywhere so you’ll begin your masters right away, picking ups some TA work to help pay the bills.

Once you’re done, you’ll look for something that allows you to use your training, and the internet phenomenon of global photo mapping should provide that. Everything from onboard car computers which can chart out a travel plan to stalker sites that allow one to check out the back yard of the old high school flame utilize people with your skill set to make everything work.

You’ll toil in front of screens for hours as the dreary days all run together. Occasionally you get a bit of excitement from the visit of government types who’ve suddenly decided some new military hot spot must be removed from your scans of the globe, but otherwise it’s pretty mundane work.

You begin using your weekends to visit museums which feature displays of old maps--Vasco da Gama holds more interest for you than Google earth ever could. You eventually chuck your high-tech job and take on a poorly-paid position at a historical institute specializing in cartographic history.

It’s fascinating--you spend hours pouring over ancient maps from all over the world--some completely the product of their creator’s fantasies, while others are almost as accurate as those created hundreds of years later.

After a few months in this new job, you realize that while your soul is content, your bank account--already meager--has shrunk to nothing. You are forced to vacate your modest one-bedroom apartment and move into a storage room in the historical institute. The manager takes pity on you and gives you the room almost rent-free, in return for your doing some minor caretaking duties at night.

It turns out this is even better for your obsession with the older artifacts in the institute; you begin wandering into the dark basement and dusty attic of the building every night--finding uncatalogued maps and charts that haven’t been looked at for years. One catches your attention more than the others--it’s a fragment, showing a piece of land--possibly an island--with a narrow channel separating it from what might be mainland. What bothers you is that it looks vaguely familiar, but none of the few names on the map mean anything to you. There is nothing to even indicate the continent of origin, but the island has something you later are able to translate from a mix of Portuguese and Latin as “The Lost Land”.

You go about your work half asleep during the day, because each night you try to find anything to help you understand the map fragment that has captured your imagination. Suddenly, just before dawn one Thursday morning, you realize the mainland is a portion of the south Chilean coast--very close up. You search Google Earth and some other maps to confirm your theory, and you’re positive you’re correct. Problem is, the "Lost Land” is not anything you’ve ever seen referenced anywhere before. You do a bunch of internet searches, and come up with a couple of obscure references to some crackpot named Dr. Chavez who presented a paper at a “cryptogeography” conference that suggested that all previous theories about Atlantis got it wrong--the lost continent was really a relatively small island off the Pacific coast of South America which had once been home to an advanced civilization.

You sleep in and are woken by your supervisor--he’s angry you missed the start of your shift, and informs you that a visitor wishes to see you. It’s the same Dr. Chavez--turns out he’d been tracking the map fragment you found and somehow was informed of your internet searches after his sleuthing had already led him to the institute.

He takes you out for lunch and picks your brain, and soon determines you know little. He then explains his theory, which has evolved from that he shared at the conference two years earlier, and it revolves around ancient visits from alien beings, advanced technology existing on a small island thousands of years ago, and the possibility of riches and treasure with the discovery of the sunken remains of this mystical place.

Hang on--I need to answer this. Hello? Oh right--I forgot it was Margaret’s birthday--still some cake in the staffroom? Okay--no, I’ll be there in a sec.

Sorry kid--what? Oh sure, I’m going to finish it.

He’ll lead you out into an alley behind the restaurant where you’ll show him the map fragment which you smuggled out of the institute. Then his accomplice will suddenly appear behind you and inject you with a quick acting poison which kills you quickly but painfully. A few months later he’ll be famous and rich.

Maybe 20 people will turn out for your funeral. Their gift to your memory will be a really accurate map of the spot they sprinkle your ashes, which they’ll post on your myspace page.

Gotta run.