What are you doing right now?

[EndOfTheEarth]

Besides posting on here and replying to this thread. Original credit for this goes back to Fate and Nathan on MX.

[nathan_p]

oh my god

 

Link? I.. what.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Ah.

It seems I'll be reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens next semester.

I think I'll have a medium fries, and gallon of hemlock juice with that, if you don't mind.

Also, since I suppose I'm not challenging myself enough, another one of my classes has me reading an entire popular fiction novel every week.

 

Also, since I suppose I'm not challenging myself enough, another one of my classes has me reading multiple Utopian/Dystopian novels over the course of the semester, and likely talking about each.

 

Also, since I suppose I'm not challenging myself enough, another one of my classes has me writing a lot of Essays and doing close reading, right along side the class that has me reading Dickens, which will have just as much.

 

Also, I'm doing a fiction writing class :) Hopefully that makes everything else alright.

 

If you haven't figured it out already, I'm a college English Major.

[Contradiction]

Have fun. :D

 

I'm not altogether sure whether or not that was sarcastic.

[Lamp Post]

Why choose English?  Just. . . why?  Where do you plan to go with that, may I ask?

 

And I utterly loathed Great Expectations. . . >.>  

But I was forced to read it for school, too.  Maybe you'll have better luck with it. . . 

[EndOfTheEarth]

I plan to combine it with a minor in Information Technology and get my hands in the online publishing and e-book industries, or the various other godzillion publishing and writing opportunities that follow internet journalism and marketing around...the ARG we did last February is, presently, part of an increasingly popular marketing system for everything from books to movies to videogames.

And, of course, English can't be imported, except maybe from NZ, Austrailia, the UK, or South Af, all of which rely on the US internet structure and share major publishing companies. That means that in the event that the economy goes to hell, China sucks up all the manufacture, Korea, Japan and Europe take all the Science and Engineering, and people with specialized abilities will find themselves out of a job, I'll have a degree that says I'm a good writer, and that I know a bit about computers, which would get me a job with almost any organization, whether in marketing, online administration, intellectual property, or actual storywriting.

 

Because, Ironically, the big-money jobs we hear about from the old people: doctors, lawyers, green engineers, none of them are hiring. My dad (an intellectual property attorney) says it's gotten so bad, that law schools are paying firms to take students and have them do full-day work without pay, purely to claim experience.

 

I haven't actually read any Dickens, no way of knowing until I try.

[Contradiction]

I read a good bit of Oliver Twist and it wasn't bad. For the hell of it, though; I didn't have to analyze.

[Lamp Post]

Fair enough.

Very logical and sustainable, I suppose, so long as you manage not to fall through the cracks.  Just, I dunno, wouldn't have guessed it to be a passion?

I mean, many love writing and it'd be great to get paid for that, but. . . *shrugs*  *has greater passions, otherwise*

[EndOfTheEarth]

What did you think my passion was?

 

Up through twelfth grade I was into Science, but during that year I realized that, looking back on my chemistry and physics classes, my ability to apply mathematical thought to either was simply terrible, and that I only really understood science in concept--which on the bottom line isn't useful for a proper science job, like engineering. So, when I looked back at my prior life and the four semesters of college I'd been through, I noticed the repeating factors were that I had my nose in a book more than was healthy, I spent more time freewriting than my peers, and that I excelled in college essay writing dealing with book analysis. So, after solidly frightening my suitemates with the concept that I was having fun writing an essay, editing their essays, and doing NaNoWriMo at the same time, they said "Damn it (my name), declare English already!"

Ironically, I first joined MDW when this whole process started, so you people may have been slightly involved, but I still don't know to what extent.

[Xuut]

IT is where it's at. But if you do a lot of computer programming stuff, you probably won't get hired in North America because we all do outsourcing now. It's cheaper since they don't have to adhere to Labour Laws. 

 

Are your referring to the U.S for the high paying jobs, or in the world in general? Because I know for a fact that Canada really, really, really, needs GMs (Alberta, specifically) so we steal them from wherever we can. Which happens to include impoverished countries in Africa...

 

Law on the other hand... Not so good here. 

[EndOfTheEarth]

True, line coding is mostly moved over to Inda/China, but a fair chunk of the network maintenence and web development is still over here. They say the demand for people who know Javascript is huge.

 

I'm referring to the U.S., generally. All the big engineering jobs here are tied to the government (which, as you may have heard, isn't-all-there), in the Law wtorld no one wants to hire anyone new due to trust and Experience issues (the people already in are doing fine though), and every time I go to a doctor of anything, they're telling me of all the other doctors wandering around trying to find a location to set up a practice. I'm sure the job market looks different in Canada/New Zealand/UK/Austrailia/other places I know some of you are from, but from here it doesn't look as magical.

[o0_flying high_0o]

I find the 'get any job' thing kind of odd. I mean there are people out there with degrees in marketing and intellectual property and creative writing, and courses in admin as well. 

However if you end up going into publishing I hope you'll be able to share what that's like, although I know it'll be rather different here in comparison to over there, because it's currently the job I'm second-most interested in... 

XD I am glad I'm not in America, here you can still get internships for law, and then they'll often offer you a job, otherwise, its hard but not impossible to get a post grad job (crap pay, but you're in the system and things), and then heaps of people drop out in the first year, so there are plenty of jobs, and opportunities for second year lawyers. There's still a 'never too many doctors' line of thought (like in Canada, we take doctors from anywhere, if we can get them, especially if they're willing to work away from one of the major cities), and the green engineering stuff is about to become a heap more import with the carbon tax.  

Dickens... Oliver Twist is a nice easy read, Great Expectations is a mildly intriguing novel, I'm vaguely interested in finding out how it ends but the writing itself just fails to grab you. And Hard Times is just bleak and dull. 

[EndOfTheEarth]

Thanks for the Dickens information. I just need it to be able to hold some of my interest, or at least have one interesting character, and I should be fine.

 

If I do get into publsihing, I'll have plenty to tell about it.