while i was home for the weekend, i took the opportunity to meet my father for dinner one evening. we went for mongolian food at my favorite restaurant, jp lee’s in millburn. almost as soon as we found our seats in the rear of the dining room, he looked at me and asked, “so do you have any plans for when you come home, or are you going to be a parasite?” it was a point blank question. i knew exactly why he was asking. graduation is just a few weeks away. i don’t have any plans. i don’t have any prospects. for the foreseeable future i’m stuck in this station, waiting on a train that might never arrive.
i thought about his question. it reminded me of something i overheard during one of my weekly communications department honors seminars. i don’t know if other colleges offer anything like it, but at muhlenberg the top 10-15 kids in the communications department met weekly at a professor’s house off-campus to talk about…well…the field of communications. we’d have guest lecturers, roundtable discussions, analyze media, it went beyond a class in the traditional sense. at some point this semester, a girl in my class said something that i found hilarious. she was speaking to the rest of us about how all her friends at other colleges/universities were producing media, but at muhlenberg we focused our intellect on non-traditional, higher-order communications studies. it sounded so pretentious.
without thinking, really, i reiterated that girl’s words (a comment i audibly snickered at when it was originally made) to my father. i answered by saying, “muhlenberg college isn’t like other schools, dad. my communications degree isn’t about learning a vocation, it’s about higher-order thinking that i can attribute to whatever i want to do in life.”
immediately i asked myself, what the fuck does THAT mean? i wondered if he was believing this, because i sure wasn’t. i continued, “we don’t take classes in broadcasting, we don’t master computer programs for publishing, we don’t produce content in order to grasp and continue some style guideline that was decided upon generations ago…we spent most of our time dissecting the theory behind different forms of communication, so that we have more to offer the world than simply knowing how to use QARK or read a teleprompter.”
he seemed impressed by my response, so i decided to start stretching a bit, to see if he would take the bait.
“my intimate knowledge of the entertainment industry has allowed me to spot a pattern. many of the people in this world who are the richest or most successful in their given fields usually attribute some of that success to luck. in a sense, they stumble into their fame. hell, look at hollywood. the majority of those people are not really talented, they just found a way to usurp the system and took advantage of it. once i graduate, i plan on devoting my time, energy, and the wealth of knowledge i obtained enriching my mind at muhlenberg to exploit this flaw.”
there was a moment of silence before i added — tongue prominently in cheek — “don’t worry, you’ll be compensated financially once i figure it all out.”
despite my inability to verbalize what i’d do, he smiled and nodded. i had him hooked. “i mean, einstein was a clerk in a patent office and look what he did!”
“yeah, but that was a job,” he informed me.
i guess i pushed it just a bit too far. i needed to think fast.
“oh, yeah!? well…so is searching for a way to stumble!”
