The things I think when my brain hamsters

[feuervogel]

I grew up ... not poor, I guess, but definitely working class. My mom's a secretary, and my dad drives an 18-wheeler. (They divorced when I was about 9.)

This informs a lot of my insecurities and greatly affected my career path. Rather than study something I really enjoy (German language and literature), I took a rather more mercenary approach: there are jobs in chemistry, which pay decent money. Then after I went to grad school & learned that I suck at research-oriented things, I went into pharmacy.

This is definitely not to say that I don't enjoy pharmacy. Far from it, really. How drugs work in the body is pretty darn cool. I really don't like working in pharmacy, which is rather more problematic. (Interacting with the public? No. Working shifting hours in a hospital? Hell no. That sort of limits my job opportunities, there.)

But after I quit my job last year, I was much happier, even if I stress out over money frequently. Or at least when I haven't had a contract in months and could really use some income.

Where was I going with this? Hell. One problem with hamster-brain is that it goes in weird directions that don't always make sense.

In my quest to be financially stable and the like, I've become ... bourgeois.* I'm a fucking yuppie. I have a 4-bedroom house on 1/4 acre in suburbia. We have 2 cars in a 2-car garage. We shop at the co-op, and are owners. We buy locally-grown produce. We feed our cats the best cat food (made from actual meat).

But there's this part of my brain that worries that someone will figure out that I'm just a prole in bourgeois clothing.

*Technically speaking, petit bourgeois, since I don't own the means of production, just the knowledge inside my brain, which I use to generate income by contracting with those who own the means of production.

Comments

[kurai-seraphim.livejournal.com]

I got a degree in Communication because I'm legitimately interested in human interaction and feel that we could solve most of the world's problems if peopel would all shut the fuck up for five minutes and look at how stupid the things they say actually are.

That said, I ended up in a technical writing position because I happen to be able to write things clearly and concisely. I don't do so when posting online, as I get sick of being concise from work and rather enjoy rambling, but it's something I'm capable of doing when I want to.

Unfortunately for me, Communication is the evacuation major for people who fail at whatever their parents/coaches sent them to college for. It has a crapload of free credit hours and electives, so it's ideal for 3rd year conversion when your current major isn't working out. As such, it's a horribly bloated field full of people who know jack about anything, so I get the fun of having a degree that is generally frowned upon as lazy and get to compete with a much larger audience of people for jobs.

I got to blow my free credit hours pursuing my interest in Japan and Japanese Culture (double minors, woo!), but that hasn't exactly gotten me a job yet or done anything more than make me wish I'd taken Journalism courses instead. I've got a widely diverse skillset that unfortunately is also highly useless to include on a job resume and offers no practical experience should I be hired.

I don't know what I'm going to do for grad school when I get to that point, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be Communication. I'm kind of hoping giant robots will happen so I can hang out with bridge bunnies and survive 80% of all Gundam scenarios.

[feuervogel]

My boyfriend in college was a comm/business major (because at my school at the time, you couldn't be just a comm major; it had to be a secondary emphasis.) I took a couple comm classes (interpersonal and public speaking) and wondered how on earth people got degrees in that, and why anyone would couch everything they say in weasel words. Gah. (I might appreciate it better now than I did 15 years ago, however. Especially if there were a gendered communication course.)

You and smarriveurr should exchange notes on how to get a job with a diverse skillset.

(I got a degree in chemistry and German with a side-order of international studies.)

[kurai-seraphim.livejournal.com]

NCSU actually had an entire Gender Communication concentration in communication while I was an undergrad. I dunno if that's still available.

Most of what I studied in my concentration (Mass Media) involved how various media influence the way messages come across and how social groups are influenced by various approaches to internal communication. Obviously there's a lot more to it than this (as it was a four year program), but ultimately you get a crapton of interesting theory and studies with very little "and now you turn it into a job" stuff.