Friday, 06 November 2009

• On Day Jobs and Dreams

  
  
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  This is going to be another one of those posts where Sarah rants about college and life. Be forewarned.
  
  So, I've wanted to be a writer since ninth grade English and The Catcher in the Rye, when I met and fell in love with sprawling narratives, em-dashed non-sequiturs, parentheticals inside parentheticals—it's all marvelous. Still, towards the end of high school, when I was touring and applying to colleges, it never even occurred to me major in writing. I was sort of a snob, I guess, and I felt like whatever talent or inclination I had was either there or it wasn't, that it would be almost an insult to Holden Caulfield and all things prosy to takes notes in a classroom on story structure. I decided to major in physics instead.
  
  Then uh, stuff happened. If we DVR forward a few years, we'll witness in flashes a couple key events:
  
  

  • Physics betrays its buoyant-force benevolence in favor of relativity, which sucks, and points to an unsteady, illogical world.
  • Said world beats me down in the form of a quarter-life crisis, largely existential. I retreat to New Jersey, where dreamers go to die.
  • I recover, move in with my dad, start dating a writer, follow him to New York, and wind up majoring in creative writing in my second go at college.

  
  ...Wait, what was that last part?
  
  I don't know, this boyfriend of mine, he's always wanted to be a writer too, but unlike me, he actually pursued it—he's got a B.A. under his belt and an M.F.A. in the works.
  
  I was talking to a friend of mine, another would-be author like myself who never felt especially inclined to acquire a bachelor's in dream-following. There's just a certain appeal in drawing a line between passion and paycheck, keeping one sacred and the other secondary. Like, we're studying Wallace Stevens in one of my classes—the man won a Pulitzer for his poetry, but never quit his day job as an insurance VP. Most of his colleagues didn't even know he wrote poetry.
  
  And yet, here I am, majoring in creative writing. For me I guess it sort of works out, since my ideal day job right now would be anything journalism-related, and that's still writing, so an English degree arguably applies to both my dreams and waking life. And, more practically, my workshop class has already inspired me to produce two short stories, which is infinitely more than the zero I composed while in Jerseyland. But I mean, Wallace Stevens is still my hero—him and Holden Caulfield.
  
  What's your dream profession? Did has it been a factor in your college and career decisions?
  
  

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