As a fourth-year student, I cannot begin to express my frustration toward all those people who continually ask me what I plan to do after I leave this haven called Charlottesville. In fact, frustration is probably an understatement; I think rage is the emotion that more accurately expresses my attitude regarding the topic. Sadly, 3,000 other Wahoos and I will soon embark into that elusive real world, which I regrettably doubt will resemble the one depicted on MTV. Some of us will start intense graduate programs; others will toil away in consulting and research firms for 60 hours a week, and those without solid plans will spend their days job hunting, searching voraciously for an opportunity to resign themselves to the dirty depths of the corporate world.
This mindset is typically commended as ambitious. It is undeniable that students at the University are characteristically Type A. I think students should take a step back, however, and go a bit easier on themselves. There are so many cool jobs out there, ones that aren't on Monster.com. They do not require grad degrees of any sort, either. Instead of pressuring ourselves to be the next Nobel Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner or Warren Buffett, we should really look at more diverse opportunities out there, straying from the logical path that we have ingrained in our overachieving heads. I wish I had adopted this attitude in October, as I compulsively wrote cover letters and checked CavLink, or even in my first three years, as I stressed about every exam potentially ruining my "dream" of becoming an i-banker. Now, I realize laboring in a cubicle at 2 a.m. is not quite living the dream; other jobs more aptly fit that ideal. We should all kick back and consider the array of non-traditional options out there, some unusual dream jobs. After all, we are only young once.
One of these dream jobs is a blogger. Just a few years ago, the notion of "blogging" as a career would have been scoffed at, but time has proven the non-believers wrong. In fact, people like Perez Hilton have even become famous for writing snide comments about others on the Internet. Clearly, this is a pretty lucrative field. Additionally, bloggers can set their own schedules and can work from home in their pajamas while watching Comedy Central. Along with choosing their hours, bloggers are their own bosses. As a blogger, you could choose the topics you want to write about and how often you want to write. You may not be rolling in the big bucks but would undoubtedly be having more fun than your counterparts working the nine-to-five shift in a stodgy office building. So get on that keyboard and start writing ... You never know what kind of cult following you'll end up cultivating.
If you like to write but do not have enough creative juices to maintain your own blog, you can be a ghost writer. Other than having a job with an incredibly cool name, you do not need to have an original thought in your head to perform this job well. Instead, you just write alleged autobiographies for uneducated people. As students of the University, we are highly qualified to write memoirs of uneducated, inarticulate celebrities. Seriously, how awesome would it be to get paid a nice paycheck to write Miley Cyrus' autobiography for a fourth-grade audience?
Another unconventional path to follow post-graduation is to teach some form of sport or recreational activity in an exotic place. This option is perfect for athletes out looking to have fun and earn a paltry enough sum to cover a crumby studio apartment. When I was on Spring Break in Cabo, I regretted having a legitimate job set up in D.C., because I realized I could wake up every morning to a sunny beach and support myself by teaching yoga or windsurfing. I have never windsurfed before, but hey, it can't be that tough. Other variations include teaching skiing in Colorado, tennis in Florida or yoga at some posh spa in Arizona to a bunch of fitness yuppies. These jobs may not contribute to that idealized r
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