Career Choice

I was in my fourth year, about to be forced out into the real world, and I had my arms and legs splayed against the door, toes curled against the edge, head pushed against the threshold, fighting to stay in. What, a student of liberal arts armed with Nietzsche and Kakfa who's not ready to be tossed out into the world?

For fortitude (or for some marker that I really belonged), I turned to cigarettes. On an evening 30 below with wind-chill, I wrapped myself in my long sleeved shirt, two layers of cashmere sweaters, a wool jacket, a down coat, two layers of gloves, and a twelve feet long scarf wrapped around my bulbous head to track two blocks down to Walgreens. There, I scanned the rack. The Marboro Guy and I didn't mix. Not slim enough for Virginia Slims. And Camels don't belong in the middle of the South Side of Chicago. No on Lucky Strike because luck just wasn't enough. I settled on Dunhill because it seemed pretentious enough to compensate for my lack of pretenses. With enough baby fat for confit and my stylish bowl haircut, I'm sure Dunhill would have paid me not to be seen with their packet.

I locked myself in the once Elvis frequented hotel now turned dingy dormroom overlooking Lake Shore Drive with the window cracked open wide enough to offset the smoke alarm, and I took my first couple of puffs, wondering how the hell people blow rings. Before I'd barely had a chance to choke through the first stick, a first year knocked on my door to talk about his roommate dilemma. He learned that his roommate is gay, and should he stay in his room or somehow escape the obviously pernicious threats of homosexuality. And I was the Resident Assistant, the ordained King Solomon of these dilemmas.

As he sat down to talk, he sniffed. With his jaw dropped and his eyes popping out, he accused,

- Are YOU smoking? Not, you, my dear Shinyung. Oh, my goodness, when did this start?? Don't you know this causes cancer?

Sheepish, feeling unworthy of my position and having lost my sense of 22 year old authority to an 18 year old, I vowed never to do it again, and my encounter with tobacco leaves ended as a fling.

But how to brace for the upcoming year and the looming question of what to do for the rest of my life? Why could I not stay in college forever and just learn? Do I really need to pick a career, and only one? So what was the point of studying all those different thinkers, writers, theories and methods - to be pigeon-holed into one little corner of life?

In the computer room, I drafted a short letter to the editors of each of the magazines I loved. Please hire me, I begged. I need a job.

A typical response came from the Atlantic Monthly.

- Dear Ms. Oh,

We would be delighted to have you intern with the Atlantic Monthly. Please give us a call when you are in Boston. After a few months of internship, we can discuss whether we could hire you for a paid position.

In a fury, I wrote back, words after words of how I could not take just an internship, I needed a paid position, I could not live off of my parents who toiled in a dry cleaners 12 hours a day and how ashamed I would be if I had to ask them for money, how I work really, really hard, what an asset I would be, etc., etc., etc.

The Atlantic Monthly sent a one line response.

- Ms. Oh,

Then we suggest you look elsewhere.

At the end of the school year, they pried my arms and legs off of the dorm door and gave me one good kick in the rear. I landed in my parents' home, where I did an admirable job of warming the couch. Finally, with a friend's mail merge program, I applied to law firms for a paralegal job. After a few months at the firm, I began to suspect that not all lawyers are ogres.

More than fifteen years later, I find myself in the same place, without a direction for my career, having received another kick in the rear, fretting about what to do with my life, and once again wondering if lawyers are ogres after all. So what do I have to show for the past fifteen years of my life? I have no job, no baby, and ten pounds of left over fat that hang like pieces of a dead chicken. I own a house with a mortgage that exceeds the cost of several houses in the mid west. Oh, right, at least I can put "Esq." behind my name.

I've been spending the past month baby sitting our five year old yellow lab, and every time he sighs at me, I wonder if I've fallen in his estimation somehow.

What would have happened had I not opted for security above that big life dream that I harbored back then. Why did I not go for it? Who's to say I couldn't have become the next Michael Pollen?

So I'm sitting here, raising one finger after another, conjuring up all that I could muster of my dormant and perhaps now defunct imagination, reaching deep inside cobwebbed crevices for sparks of creativity, and praying to some non-existent god for inspiration and luck. Because I'm not dead yet and because you never know...