what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

"please try to wear pants"

"watch your drooling"

have you tried finding a job in the last year or so?

I've seen the writing skills of people who've been hired in the last year or so.

yeah it's fine, i understand xps to dmac

Nah, of course it's a career path, but the term triggers some kind of horrible cringing effect in me. As if I'm living for my career. As if the career is the means, the end, the alpha, the omega, the definition of who I am.

Dan, I've had several jobs. I didn't mean that ALL jobs expect English writing skill AS A REQUIREMENT. I meant that especially jobs in a media or data sector merely expect you to be proficient in English, and if you're not, then hey no big deal, we can make you proficient with technology.

You should seriously look at jobs in technical writing.

basically the bare minimum the job market expects is "know when you shouldn't curse"

― wtf?!? just randomly started crying! (HI DERE), 09 December 2009 17:13 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
"please try to wear pants"

"watch your drooling"

― jazzgasms (Mr. Que), 09 December 2009 17:14 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we urgently need to convince the tortured LJ that this is 100% OTM no bullshit. everything above this level of activity is bright young executive styles

You should seriously look at jobs in technical writing.

yes

hey no big deal, we can make you proficient with technology

no

I'm kinda bad at the first two of those things :-/

http://www.xenon-kino.de/Medaia/spike2.jpg

^^^ First GIS result for "british pants," this explains so much

kind of lolling at the idea of LJ strolling into work pantsless and legs akimbo and being all "what, it's Casual Friday!" to his horrified coworkers

You don't have to be proficient in the specific technology but you do know have to work with technicians and tease information out of them, the information that the customers need, not what they want them to know or this is too obvious to be worth mentioning. Journalism school seems to be a good start for this. I would however recommend boning up on a specific area and focusing your assignments in on that so you look a little more targeted when it comes to Job time.

also LJ bone up on pants.

no, wait

technical writing isn't the only thing that your program calls to mind as a use of those skills - you could probably also do well working in marketing or public relations for a non-profit organization or some group doing advocacy on issues where they need to present interesting and compelling narratives about why their issues matter, especially if the issues are slightly complicated.

^also very good advice, a mailing list I am onI am on throws up jobs just like this from time to time.

Hmm. Maybe. I am usually quite a good spokesperson. I'd be interested in doing something along those lines. Marketing can fuck itself in the ass though.

if you don't want to have a "career" or think about being on some "career path" then don't. There are plenty of meaningless dumb jobs that lead nowhere, even in this economy.

Another option: fundraising/grantwriting

You're trying to piss me off now, aren't you?

Not at all - I'm just trying to think of jobs where the ability to write well would be desirable that isn't journalism or technical writing.

I'm more than just a good writer! I can lift tins of paint! It's on my CV! Forgive me, I'm going quietly catatonic here.

if you got a job working at an art supply store you could meet lots of cute girls.

if i could be in a band and write and see my friends, i would take that in a flash. i would bite your hand off. three stages of what is commonly reputed to be 'the very best education money can buy' have proven each as shallow as the last; at least i met some good people along the way

your experience is not rare.

The thing you're missing here is that you are supposed to use those good people to find jobs.

not all of us went to Harvard.

Yeah, some of us went to Brown.

LOL!

LJ most people go through the "I won't have my dream job and do everything i want" phase a little sooner than this, dig?

I think he's at a normal age to be having those feelings.

uh yeah i forget dude's like 20 sometimes.

may as well let him know that charlton peaked in the early 00's for his lifetime while he's having a bad day.

I don't even want a dream job (yet)! These things can wait. What I do want is space in which to do things I can control, i.e. creative output, social life, unpaid journalistic writing etc. However, I'm on a careerist path and everything about my education has ultimately been about that. Charlton will come back stronger than you could possibly imagine.

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I don't even want a dream job (yet)! These things can wait. What I do want is space in which to do things I can control, i.e. creative output, social life, unpaid journalistic writing etc.

I'm wondering how long it will take for you realize that what you are describing is actually your dream job.

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

That looks about right, Tombot, although where would you put the motivation which is 'contributing to the currency of literature'? The idea of participating in a discourse with others? I guess that's a sort of collective egotism, maybe. I think my own motivations are these days an equal-ish balance between 1, 2 and 4. A few years ago it was 1 and 2 but recently I have discovered the need for writing to have a purpose other than masturbation or entertainment. fwiw I would really like to work in politics or local administration or SOMETHING where my moral and intellectual principles can be to the benefit of society.

u should enlist in the spanish civil war then ~

lol or become a dishwasher (i think the french call it plongeur)

live with some working class ppl for lolz ~

well i'll be living in the penniless post-student class regardless of what happens, and every day will be a sitcom ^_^

some of them won't even have been students! amazing isnt it

work in politics or local administration or something

http://georgeorwell.org/burmacop.jpg

dude i am not looking for the perpetual student get-out that so many of my peers are, nor the city-centre scramble to the top, i just wanna contribute to a greener, more educated, more tolerant, more liberal society and maybe get some writing or some music done, also i wanna be part of a circle of poets, that'd be kinda cool

again with the pantslessness

seriously - communications/PR/outreach for some sort of non-profit/advocacy group sounds like something you would be good at and find fulfilling.

hmm. will think on't. would also like to get my teeth into tombot's breakdown...something tells me there might be a 5th motivation, or different boundaries, but i can't think atm

Another option: fundraising/grantwriting

― sarahel, Wednesday, 9 December 2009 12:46 (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is a very good option.

I think the 5th motivation is the national or international bettering; the idea that one's writing (or indeed music!) is contributing to a healthier and more varied artistic discourse. Aside from the thrill of creation, and the notion of being loved for what one has created, it is the immediate aftermath of creation, the enrichment.

see point (i) in Tombot's list

I guess that's a sort of collective egotism, maybe

yeah...

Being hard-left of politic and yet desiring to create special or individualistic art is the hardest conundrum my moral mind has to deal with. I hope it resolves itself well. Can any of you think of something that discusses this conundrum? A touchstone for me to explore?

I'm drawing a blank here - the only thing that comes to mind is the movie Barton Fink