T-Rock, Who Gave Me His Kindle, Knows How to Enter the Next Phase

You know you’re impressionable when you want to change careers with each paper you grade. When I read “Formaldehyde Follies,” I wanted to become a chemist. When I read “The Balance between Piracy and Freedom,” I wanted to become a computer scientist.

Perhaps I’m a little more impressionable than usual since I’m currently finishing one job and searching for the next. The job I need is in Germany and doesn’t require German language skills. I’m moving to the land of Sauerkraut on Sunday.

So far I’ve noticed one outstanding cultural difference between the US and Germany. Tracy, my dude, had to fill out forms for the company that is moving our things to Franconia. The first set of forms was requested by a German moving company and required that everything we own be quantified in number and/or metric feet. For instance, “How many meters of hanging clothes do you have?” “How many parasols?”

The American company wanted everything quantified in terms of how much it is worth. “Cucu Clock, Total Value? Lingerie, Total Value?” (Unfortunately, we don’t own either of these things.) We did, however, have to estimate how much our (my) book collection is worth. When the American moving company sent a guy to do an inventory of our stuff, he asked, “Are you taking all the books?”

“Yes,” Tracy and I both said.

“What about these ones?”

“Yes, all the books.”

“What about these ones?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“These ones, too?”

Tracy and I got to visit Nuremberg for about 40 hours when he interviewed at Puma, where he will be designing shoes. One of the few touristy things we did while we were there was to visit the library. We walked in, stood in the middle of a room lined with shelves of books, all in German. Tracy looked at me with grave concern and asked, “What are you going to do?”

It is occurring to us in stages that Germany really operates in German. The internet there is in German, too. Wouldn’t that be cool if my blog posts turned German?

Student who paid attention in high school English: I disagree.

ME: You’re wrong. Here’s why. [NOTE, in case my tenure committee is reading this: I say this very kindly, taking advantage of a teachable moment, making sure that the student understands that his/her participation is valued and feels both validated and enlightened.]

STUDENT: My HS English teacher said there are no wrong answers about literature as long as you can defend your ideas.

ME: Your HS English teacher was wrong. There are plenty of wrong answers about literature. What your teacher meant was that there are also plenty of defensible potentially right answers too.

[LONG PAUSE]

STUDENT: So are you saying there are wrong answers in literature and that my HS English teacher, who was my personal role model and who died last week after a heroic bout with cancer, was wrong about everything?

[LONG PAUSE]

ME: I’m sure your teacher was a remarkable person.

STUDENT: A remarkable person who was wrong about everything.

ME: Probably not about everything.

[PAUSE]

ME: Just about this thing.

[At this point, some people are crying in the back of the classroom.]

ME: Let’s move on, shall we?

Dear HS English teachers,

Please stop teaching my future students wrong (read: oversimplified) stuff. They get enough of that from TV.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Frey

the guy who will have them as college freshmen

Have You Considered Fish Spearing? Photo by Mitchell Kanashkevich

If you had to choose your career strictly on its name, which would appeal most to you and why?

Designer
Welder
Phlebotomist
Cobbler
Professor
Barista
Carpenter
Architect
President
CEO
Hygienist
Guitarist
Director
Conductor
Bassoonist
Engineer
Computer Scientist
Singer
Surgeon
Psychologist
Entomologist
Economist
Coach
Editor
Secretary
Soldier
Farmer
Dentist
Commander in Chief
Programmer
Journalist
Teacher
Reviewer
Critic
Commentator
Principal
Body Builder
Drummer
Anesthesiologist
Priest
Recreation Aid
Pundit
Nun
Provost
Catcher
Mechanic
Monk
Butcher
Nurse
Physical Therapist
Concierge
Pitcher
Custodian
Laborer
Hostess
Stylist
Actor
Skipper
Manager
Ballerina
Cashier
Materials Handler
Cook
Clerk
Bartender
Stock Broker
Doctor
Financial Analyst
Blogger
Boom Truck Driver
Producer
Fellow
Diplomat
Nanny
Ambassador
Food and Beverage Attendant
Contract Specialist
Chef
Geologist
Acupuncturist
Columnist
Anchor
Electrician
Naturopath
Mason
Loss Prevention Officer
Teller
Private Detective
Broker
Expeditor
Application Security Consultant
Websphere Application Server
Heave Haul Dispatcher
Tug Captain
Lowboy
Waiter
Longshoreman
Lawyer
Controller
Comptroller
Accountant
Buyer
Web Developer
Esthetician
Game Tester
Choreographer
Videographer
Model
Developer
Curator
Animator
Talk Show Host
Dermatologist
Personal Trainer
Projectionist
Cosmetologist
Courtesy Clerk
Server
Chemist
Exterminator
Protein Crystallographer
Fisheries Observer
Caregiver
Compliance Auditor
Bailiff
Building Inspector
Academic Advisor
Umpire
Google AdWords Specialist
Esquire
Case Manager
Pilot
Canvasser
Call Center Representative
Residential Counselor
Landscaper
Minister
Vet
Physicist

I think my favorites are: Umpire, Physicist, Longshoreman, Anchor, Fellow, Entomologist, Exterminator, and Boom Truck Driver. I’m not saying I actually want to do the work but, rather, I like the words because they’re funny (Fellow), have sweet sounds (Umpire, Physicist), cool associations (Anchor, Longshoreman), make it sound like I would get a lot of respect (Entomologist),  would be an expert at destruction (Exterminator), or drive to some bumping tunes (Boom Truck Driver).

In looking at titles, I found a job description that intrigued me. Have you ever considered being a Waxing Specialist? You just might be qualified. Below are some of the traits desired:

* Must possess sound judgment skills
* Must be self motivated
* Tidy and Timely in their duties
* Someone who will go the extra mile for co-workers and clients
* Naturally positive in demeanor
* Must be able to stay organized and multi-task

Since I don’t even know how to begin imagining how a waxing might proceed, some of these are somewhat difficult for me to picture: multitasking? going the extra mile? I do understand the self-motivation requirement. In other words, nothing about the job itself will be motivating.

1) Helplessness Blues– Fleet Foxes

I love, love, love Fleet Foxes. They’ve got a kind of 1960s Beach Boys/Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young kind of vibe, but that description doesn’t do them justice. They’re a young band from Seattle, WA and in a matter of three years or so they’ve become known worldwide. Helplessness Blues is the title track off of their latest album. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking up a copy. And if you’ve got a record player, buy it on vinyl.

2) If I Were A Rich Man– Fiddler on the Roof

As a kid I watched a lot of musicals (my mother’s influence) and Fiddler on the Roof is probably my favorite. If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s about a poor milkman named Tevye, his wife, and his five daughters, set in Tsarist Russia in 1905. Tevye is down on his luck. He can’t afford dowries for all of this daughters and his only horse is lame so he has to pull his wagon himself. If you haven’t seen it, and you have the attention span for a 3 hour musical, it’s definitely worth the watch. This song is from the 1971 film version as sung by Chaim Topol.

3) Free Money– Patti Smith

Last year I rediscovered my love for Patti Smith after reading her memoir Just Kids (winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction). There are few well-known female artists with half as much talent as Patti Smith. She’s the type of artist that makes you want to be a better person. Her debut album Horses is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums in music history and I most definitely agree. This song is from that same album.

4) Dollars And Cents– Radiohead

Few mixtapes are complete with out Radiohead. This is off of their 2001 album Amnesiac. Radiohead reminds me of better economic times. They remind me of the ’90s. Weren’t the ’90s great? Anyway, you’ve got to give it up for this band. They’re still coming out with amazing, amazing music and they’re producing it without a major music label. Their new album King of Limbs is fantastic.

5) Working Class Hero– John Lennon

This is the first verse: “As soon as you’re born they make you feel small/ By giving you no time instead of it all/ Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all.” Enough said. Post-Beatles John Lennon at his best.

6) I Need A Dollar– Aloe Blacc

Aloe Blacc is from Orange County, CA. His album Good Things came out about a year ago and this song is still fresh in my musical brain. It’s also the theme song for the HBO show How to Make It In America This song is infectious and I don’t think it’s gotten the attention it deserves in the US. This single reached the top ten charts of the UK, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Scotland, and Czech Republic. You’ll probably want to go ahead and add this to your music library.

7) Sixteen Tons– Tennessee Ernie Ford

This song is from a time when country music was really country music. The original version was written by Merle Travis in 1946, based of his time spent working in a coal mine in Kentucky. Nine years later, Ford’s version was a number one hit. You’ll find yourself snapping along with this song in no time flat. And the lyrics are timeless: ”Sixteen tons, what do you get/ Another day older and deeper in debt/ St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go/ I owe my soul to the company store.”

8) Eat The Rich– Motorhead

Fuck yeah, Motorhead. This song was written in 1987 for a movie called, you guessed it, Feed the Rich. I’ve never seen the movie but this is how IMDB summarized it: “Alex is a disgruntled waitress at a snobby exclusive restaurant who falls on hard times. Forced to deal with the contempt and disgust of the upper class, Alex & cohorts attempt to go on a rampage. Meanwhile, General Karprov and Spider plot to involve the inept anarchists into their plans to derail the prime-minister-to-be’s campaign.” As far as the Motorhead lyrics go, I’ve got two words for you: Bacon Torpedo.

9) I Can’t Wait To Get Off Work (And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue)– Tom Waits

If you’ve ever worked a closing shift at some minimum wage, entry-level job this song will speak to you. Waits wrote this song while working at Napoleone Pizza House in National City, CA. It was his first job. Brings me back to my days of delivering pizza in my 1996 Dodge Caravan (with woodgrain panels), working into the early morning hours, knocking on the doors of people that are too drunk to tip, and spray-washing dishes until your shoes are soaking wet and squishy. Always good to have something like that on a resume for post-graduate job opportunities.

10) The Harder They Come– Jimmy Cliff

You can’t have a working class mix without Reggae or Calypso. It’s not just Bob Marley or The Clash, it’s the whole genre. This song is from the 1972 movie The Harder They Come. Jimmy Cliff plays the protagonist Ivanhoe Martin, a young Jamaican musician who finds work as a reggae singer, but upon reaching fame is forced to sign away the rights to his hit song. After his music career is destroyed, he ends up leading a life of crime as a marijuana dealer until he is brutally gunned down by police. This character is based off of the real-life story of Ivanhoe “Rhyging” Martin, a Jamaican folk hero who died on September 9, 1948 at age 24. He’s known as the first Rudeboy.  Jimmy Cliff called him The Jamaican Robin Hood.

Hope these songs help you get through the week. Happy listening.

When I met with the external reviewers who visited campus, I was asked about placement. That’s a word that educes defensiveness from many of us who teach in programs that grant art degrees.
…
Graduates of M.F.A. programs have always followed a greater variety of career trajectories than their scholarly counterparts in humanities Ph.D. programs—both because they’ve wanted to and because they’ve had to.
…
One reason for this is that substantial publication is a prerequisite for a good teaching job in creative writing, and that almost always means a full-length book. Unlike young literature scholars, who need a book to keep the job they get, creative writers almost always need a book to get the job, plus another to win tenure.
…

While we who teach in M.F.A. programs can show our students how to write a strong pedagogy statement and stage mock interviews, the best job training we can give is to help students write a good book, cajole them into finishing and revising that book, and give them advice on getting it published. That also serves the students who don’t want to remain in academe; nearly all of them do want to publish books.
…

Besides, consider us an instructive preview. The dearth of jobs for Ph.D. humanities graduates, together with the related recent interest in alternative careers for scholars, suggests that a broader definition of “placement” may be coming soon to a variety of non-arts programs too.

How would you measure the success of an MFA program? How do we know whether we are “successful” after graduation? Did you enter your MFA program with a specific goal of what you wanted to accomplish after graduation?

One question that’s been bandied about is a pretty basic one: Why the protests? And to be sure, the protests are hardly homogenous; there’s all sorts of different viewpoints and myriad causes being supported by protesters across the country.

But at its most basic, I think it’s quite clear that people are angry, and at one group of people in particular: The Scrooge McDucks among us.

No, really, Scrooge McDuck. You may remember the Duck Tales, which featured Scrooge McDuck, a very wealthy Duck who made a habit of taking a morning swim through his vault of money.

Now most of the folks that I’d label Scrooges aren’t actually individual people. They are banks that got bailed out. Well, I was thinking about the bank bailouts, and after (hastily) doing the math, I realized that the bank bailouts had not only given the banks, we’d given them enough to actually make the opening scene of the Duck Tales possible, and then some.

OK, so here’s the math. Feel free to correct me if I got things wrong. So Google tells me that a U.S. dollar has the following dimensions:

Thickness: 0.0043 inches

Width: 6.14 inches

Height: 2.61 inches

A standard Olympic size swimming pool is:

50 m (164 ft) long

25 m (82 ft) wide

79 inches (six feet, seven inches) deep

 So if you do the math:

 82 feet/2.61 inches= there would be 377 rows across

164 feet /6.14 inches = each row would have 320 individual stacks

79 inches/.0043 inches = so each stack would have 18,372 bills.

Put that all together and you get: 377*320*18,372 x 1 = $2,216,398,080

And if you take the bailout to be the originally advertised (a big if, I know) $700 billion, that makes 315 Olympic size swimming pools of money.

It gets worse. While banks got veritable swimming pools of money, the rest of us got this:

So to recap: A very small group of irresponsible businesses were given a very large amount of money despite the fact that they nearly caused a depression; despite this largesse, the damage they’d already done to the economy was severe, causing unemployment to spike. The McDucks, however, largely recovered and chafed at even the most modest financial reform. They proceeded to give copious bonuses to their CEOs and rake in profits like madcap Monopoly guys, while at the same time admitting, zero, zilch malfeasance.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck in the kiddie pool.

our products are so amazing, it’s hard to believe we even need someone like you to help us sell them, but since our completely realistic goal is 112% market share and then total world domination, we are looking for a marketing director who has a lifetime of experience in our ridiculously obscure industry and who’s worked in a fucking-warpspeed-hyperdrive-faster-than-anything-physicists-have-proven-is-even-theoretically-possible fast paced environment.  you must be exceptionally talented beyond our current needs, but willing to work for a salary we would normally only offer to people who were merely “good enough” in a more stable economy.  this position will report to a vice president whose job the desired candidate could probably do for him (in their sleep).  the right candidate must be able to quickly look at massive amounts of data and then hastily create an action plan that is really really similar to what we’ve already done in the past because change comes slow and we don’t want to freak out the board.  you will play a key role in very little within our organization, but you will be able to reasonably claim on your resume that you did when you search for a new job in 2 months or 12 months or 24 months or whenever you’ve forgotten what a colossal pain in the ass it is to look for jobs.

job requirements:
• a minimum of many years of demonstrated analytical marketing and project management proven track record experience
• must be a self starter—by which we mean you have to be able start things yourself
• must be a team player—by which we mean be a single player capable of doing a whole team’s share worth of work
• ability to spontaneously contribute marketing insight that will develop innovative solutions for our customers, even when (read: especially when) neither you, nor us, nor the customer knows what it is we’re really talking about
• ability to be perfect
• advanced design skills in programs that are not design applications (e.g., microsoft word, powerpoint, etc.), because we don’t want to spend the money on adobe creative suite
• ability to work under arbitrary (and often suddenly created) deadlines
• ability to multi-task like a motherf*cker
• ability to manage projects on budgets we won’t let you fully utilize until the very end of the year, at which point you’ll have to throw all that money you didn’t use at anything you can so your department doesn’t get a smaller budget for the next fiscal year
• ability to do analytical AB/multivariate testing of consumer online acquisition affiliate marketing strategies until your eyes bleed or we decide to just do what we did the last time
• must have excellent collaborative strong organizational communication skills with co-workers, the leadership, underlings, customers, vendors, that guy who does weird stuff on our floor’s communal bathroom, people who used to work for our office and still hang around sometimes, all individuals who might ever exist in the world in the future of ever, and the president’s spouse

this high energy, team-focused person is expected to exhibit unnaturally (like, crazy freaky) high levels of intelligence and aptitude which we can use to rebuild the credibility we lost after the last asshole in this position turned out to be a bit of a perv with the customers.  our ultimate goal is make a metric fuck ton of money by riding on your back, then sharing with you a percentage of those profits as fairly determined by the free market system (usually in the form of a cost-of-living pay raise which does not accurately reflect the true increase of the cost of living in this very exciting place in which you love to live—i.e., america).

please do not waste your time or ours if you do not match the above requirements.

reply with a resume and salary history which we will use to determine your salary at our organization even if this job has nothing to do with your former job(s).

please do not call HR, as they are very busy sorting through hundreds of applications for this single job posting and also are morons.

local candidates only.

the virtues and perils of working in this “gig economy” are fairly well documented, and basically boil down to this: more freedom, less (career) safety.  as someone who studied fiction in graduate school, the appeal of setting my own work schedule obviously has great appeal.  the lack of financial security is worrisome, though.  as is the essentially cost-prohibitive nature of medical care (i’ve been lucky so far, but i gotta figure that extremely limited access to medical & dental benefits is gonna bite me in the ass at some point).

i do like that this freelance movement seems to be nudging our ideas of “work” in the united states in a new direction—one that has, perhaps, a healthier balance between what we do to earn money and support ourselves and what else we do with the rest of our lives (it’s no secret that american workers are insanely productive—by which i mean “workaholics”).  but i’m not so sure the current tax code, or general economy, or culture of the u.s. is really in a position to support a new, broad, gig-based workforce.  however, with events like the international freelancers day tomorrow, and websites like freelance switch, and organizations like freelancers union, we might be getting closer to that.  i’m just still wondering what comes next.

i’ve heard lots of people praise the entrepreneurial spirit behind this new freelancer movement, as if this was a shift back to the ol’ by-your-own-bootstraps mentality that built america in the first place.  and maybe that’s true.  but having seen how the global economy works now, i wonder if we’re not just setting ourselves up for yet another wave of outsourcing.  like, to india.  or china.  or wherever else jobs continue to float off to from this country.

the great thing about freelancing is that you can work from home, right?  you don’t need to be in an office, you don’t need to be tied to a single office, or company, or even city.  just this week for my own freelance work i set up interviews with people in greensboro, nc—people who assumed i was stopping by their office until i explained that it had to be done over the phone because i was in chicago.

so if it’s true that i need no institutional knowledge of a client (and don’t need to be in the same time zone as them) to get the work done, why can’t that job also be done, cheaper (but just as skillfully), by the people in asia, who are educating themselves at least as well as we are, but don’t have the same high cost of living?  i mean, etsy is only still around because little children in china haven’t been clued in yet that all they need to do is slap a bird on all their handmade products to make a small fortune.

if the internet can deliver news & trends everywhere, just how high up the employment ladder can outsourcing go?  if we’re all shifting to a gig-based economy, one which does away with the idea of “loyalty” in regards to employment (on both sides of the equation), then what’s to stop people from setting up pipelines of highly professional freelancers (be it in computer science, copywriting, accounting, or anything else) that are capable of snapping up the work american employers are offering, and doing it for way less than what american freelancers are charging?

i’m not trying to sound xenophobic here.  i only care about american employers hiring foreign workers to the extent that it prevents me (and my fellow citizens) from finding work, and that (if continued indefinitely) this trend seems to point only to the economic destruction of the country i live in.  manufacturing jobs got outsourced.  then customer service jobs.  engineering jobs seem to be on the way out, too, not least because other countries are better at teaching their kids math & science.  i can’t think of any compelling reasons why white collar & professional jobs won’t be the next to go.  especially if we’ve already proven to ourselves that these jobs don’t need to be done “in-house.”  so before we go patting ourselves on the back for re-inventing the economy, i wonder if we shouldn’t also be asking ourselves “then what’s next?”

To his credit, Kenemore is upfront with his personal reasons for writing this piece. “Year after year, their ranking of Columbia University—my alma mater—has steadily fallen.”

He points out that Columbia employs well-published writers as professors, leaving the reader to intuit that writers who have won literary awards are prima facie great teachers. Rarely, whether the discipline is writing, mathematics, sports, etc, are great talents also great teachers.  Often, mediocre talents are great teachers, and great talents are medicore if not lousy teachers.

Kenemore’s second argument (if you allow his first claim to be an argument) is that “(Columbia) is also located at the center of the book publishing, agenting, and editing universe. The guest speakers and visitors from New York’s literary scene offer an unmatched immersion into the world of professional writing.”  This is true, although, every MFA program within a short train ride from Manhattan matches this immersion.

Finally, Kenemore points out that Columbia “remains a top choice for applicants.”  But asking prospective students to rank schools is, as Leslie Epstein, novelist and Boston University program director and signer of aforemention open-letter said, “analogous to asking people who are standing outside a restaurant studying the menu how they liked the food.”

But fine.  Columbia is an Ivy-league institution, and despite Kenemore’s faulty arguments, I don’t doubt it has a fine MFA program.  So why has its ranking plummeted?  “It’s very simple.”  Kenemore writes.  “Columbia has expensive tuition, and Poets & Writers is attempting to shame Columbia into lowering it.”

And here comes the crux of Kenemore’s piece.

But—now the unspeakable heresy—what if your goal were … something else? What if your goal were to write a successful book that lots of people read? What if your goal were to become a person of letters whose writing was read and appreciated by those outside of MFA and academic circles? What if you even dreamed of securing thousands of dollars for something you had written?

If the Columbia University MFA program would help you do these things, which—guess what?—it totally does, then, as a proposition, Columbia begins to make complete and total sense.

Columbia is a school for people who actually want to become better writers, get books published, and survive—or even thrive—in the rough-and-tumble world of American letters. It is not a holistic weekend retreat. Columbia is a place for people who want to be the best and study with the best. (Or, OK, the best after Iowa.) It’s for people whose genitals still work, dammit. For writers who want to be brave and persevere in the real world where people often fail.

Putting aside Kenemore’s tone, does he have a point?  Should a school which gives students a better chance for financial success be expected or assumed to charge insanely high fees?  I certainly wouldn’t want a law against it, but it doesn’t feel right either.  For a school to force a majority of its students to accumulate six-figure debt, the degree the students earn better come darn close to guaranteeing they can repay that money.  Medical schools accomplish this.  Q. What do you call the guy who finished last in med school?  A. Doctor.  But law schools have come under fire recently for giving debt but no jobs to their graduates.

Do we want MFA programs to create writers who will write books that will sell?  Would graduate students then focus on genre: sci-fi/fantasy, spy, romance, zombie, vampire, fake-memoir, self-help, Christian, ghost-writing, celebrity profile?

I’m going too far, I know.  I don’t mean to argue for a false dichotomy between literary work and popular work.  I think we all want writers who will write great books that are also great fun to read.  And MFA programs should teach plot in addition to grammar, characterization, POV, etc.  I want to read literary spy, sci-fi, vampire, etc novels in addition to non-genre literary fiction.  But, I’d be worried if success is solely calibrated on copies sold.  It would take the “fine arts” out of the degree, and make it a vocational one.

I studied with some of the greatest living writers, made publishing contacts that will probably serve me for the rest of my natural life, and—in the nine years since graduation—I have published six books. Many of my colleagues report similar success.

I’m glad for Kenemore’s success, and that he overcame “$45,000 in student loan debt in 2002″ (would that be $90,000-$100,000 in 2012?) and I’m sure many Columbia alums have achieved greatness.  But I have met countless Columbia MFA grads in my boat: unpublished, working a day-job to keep writing, and possibly looking to secure an “assistant professorship at Possum Grape Community College,” as he so tactfully puts it.  One difference, their boats are weighted down with ten of thousands of dollars of debt.

I do agree with his conclusion.

Poets & Writers should add a “manuscript placement” column to its yearly rankings spreadsheet, alongside fellowship placement and job placement. What percentage of fiction graduates secure a publishing contract worth at least four figures within 10 years of graduation? What percentage of poets win a prize that results in the publication of a book within 10 years of graduation? Including these figures would create a more informed worldview for a student thinking of getting an MFA and would allow students to attend the graduate school that most closely fits their own definition of “success.”

But I’m not sure how high this would vault Columbia up.  No doubt Columbia has a higher number of graduates publish books, but they also accept double if not triple the number of applicants of a typical program.  I could be wrong.  It would be good to know the short, medium, and long-term success of MFA graduates by many metrics- teaching jobs, book contracts, etc. P&W’s rankings are flawed, and even a sham, but not for the reasons Kenemore gives.

Finally, it would also explain why Columbia’s program remains so popular … and so worth the money.

Columbia may be popular, but it’s not work the money.

And while the P&W rankings are flawed, there should be rankings to serve as a starting point for prospective students and they should be better.

You graduate with your advanced degree and step into the “real world” with high hopes for your career. Well, maybe not high hopes–you did major in the arts–but a moderate longing for success. You start strong, applying to all the jobs you can find, but one by one they pass you by, until you’re left at home feeling worthless, a lump with no hope of employment beyond the service-industry work you did before you were educated?

Well, pout no more, my friend. You might be down in the dumps, feeling a little blue, but follow my ten feel-good tips and you’ll be rid of the unemployment doldrums in no time.

This could be you!

• Watch a lot of reality TV, especially shows where people are extremely stupid/in grave danger. You’ll feel so lucky not to be stuck in a swamp/a narcissist with eight kids/so stupid clothing labels pay you not to wear their clothing that you’ll feel better about yourself–just don’t think about the TV stars’ money.
• Create Facebook pages for your pets, your neighbors’ pets, your alternate personalities. “Friend” them all and watch your Facebook value skyrocket.
• Write a lot of blog posts, the more whiny/sarcastic the better. You’ve got to let out what’s inside you.
• Cruise the internet for other posts to comment on, and really rile things up. Tell bloggers their favorite bands stink out loud, their ideals are ridiculous, their photos are lame. You’ll be surprised how much power you have to get under other people’s skin. And that’s what you need right now: power.
• Donate blood. It will give you a heady sense of well-being, and it burns calories.
• If at all possible, sell your blood. There are plasma centers all over the place, just waiting to make you feel valuable. Because you are worth something: in general, $9 to $20 per donation.
• Learn how to fish–for compliments, that is. The more you bad-mouth yourself to others, the more they will lift you up.
• Engage in minor vandalism. Key a car. Maybe the Pontiac you saw in the reserved parking space after a particularly brutal interview. Do it quickly and casually. No one will know it was you, and it will leave you smiling all day.
• Learn the art of panhandling. If the cops hassle you, you can say it’s research for your upcoming novel. If they don’t, you’ll have made a few dollars–and maybe some fodder for your upcoming novel.
• If all else fails, run off and join the circus. I hear that’s very chic nowadays.