A Cry for Help

I've always been told to study what I love in college and that the job will follow. I love English. I like words and grammar and books. However, I've come to the realization that English is about the most unreliable major that I could have picked. Here's why:

1. I don't like kids (read: I will not be a teacher).
2. I would never survive in law school.
3. To the remarks that I should write books, writers are hot or cold. If you're not J.K. Rowling or someone else that's comparably famous, you're probably the author of the terrible romance novel on the back shelf.
4. You can't read for a living.

So looking to what else I like: Italian. This is useful if I live in Italy. And that's about it. I mean, I won't stop studying it just because it's not exactly...practical, but I understand that there's not much call for people with a degree in English and mild proficiency in Italian. *Le sigh*

This graph is outdated, but Italian's still not there, today.
 I think that means I'm of little/no use.

I figure the closest thing to all of this that's actually applicable to today's society is Spanish. I like languages and cultures. Sweet. Sounds perfect, no? However, being a rising junior, I've run out of time to "explore my passions" in college. If I start on the Spanish thing, it has to work.

I also really like foreign language keyboards. 

This all means that if people have any other suggestions regarding how to not spend for years getting a degree that'll throw me under the bus, I would love to hear them. I read, write, and edit. I like Italian and I don't have a whole lot of time left to figure something else out. Pleasehelp.

Die. **

This is the part where I hyperventilate and curl into the fetal position, scared that I will never ever find a job in the real world. It's also when I wonder how my summer vacation has devolved into a frantic search for a future. All I want is mind-blowing fame and success, alright?

** On the plus side, I've just discovered an English Major Armadillo internet meme. I'm about a thousand times more excited than I should be. That last sentence was an example of hyperbole. Win.

Who am I?

I have no future. It's pretty much settled. 


In a panic that I absolutely MUST do something productive with my summer, I began scouring the internet for internships last night. At some point in my world wide wanderings (at some unreasonable hour of night) I stumbled across this site and readily made myself a profile. Then I noticed a quiz! A "what's your best internship?" quiz! I love quizzes and couldn't wait for the internet to tell me exactly what I'm going to do when I grow up. The internet is basically omniscient and omnipotent anyway, so it couldn't possibly lead me astray, right? Right?

NOT FOR ME

I began the quiz, thinking my responses seemed to target me as a pretty creative, literary, humanities-type person. I figured that it would tell me to be a teacher, because I've heard that a million times before. I was expecting kindergarten teacher, I was expecting lawer, I was expecting library sciences. I was not expecting what I received. According to the future-savvy internet, I enjoy:

• Higher education
• Research
• Medicine
• Science
• Computer industries
• Engineering/design fields

Higher education, check. But that's about where it ends. I'm really rather baffled as to what buttons I clicked that would indicate I'm a science person. Strange... But there's more. According to these results, I would apparently enjoy internships in:

• Computer software design/development
• Venture capital
• Legal mediation
• Financial analysis
• Economics
• Music
• Intellectual property
• Web site design
• Investigation
• Strategic planning
• Pharmacy
• Network integration

Something is not right here.

FALSE. Seriously, all of this. I like good paper, nice pens, and musty books. I write stories, not lines of computer code. I must have received someone else's future results, but these certainly not pertain to me. I like creative ideas and allusions and literary form. I like spending hours debating morality, politics, and literary analysis. 

Pharmacy? Where on earth does that fit in? I am not a science major and I am not pre-med. For everyone's sake, let's give that internship to someone who's a bit better versed in biology and chemistry than I am.

Finances? I could hold a fairly well versed conversation about world trade, economics and currencies, but that's because I read the newspaper everyday, not because I play the stock market like a businessman. 

Overall response to this internship quiz: Either I have no future ahead of me or I really really don't come across as a humanities person. Either way, I need to get it together. Okay, it's GO-TIME. Time to get some sort of focus and stop misleading the intertubes so that they can help me get all rich and famous and YEAH actually make something out of my life. 

Oh, but that's right. I'm only a sophomore. A confused student with a hazy, hazy future ahead of me.

MOTHER OF PEARL, I need to get it together.