As I creep closer and closer to the real world, I am slowly discovering that I am a lot more like my parents than I ever imagined. Sure, I always knew that from somewhere in the depths of my parents’ collective gene pool, the benevolent gods of genetics blessed me with Mom’s long legs, blue eyes and blonde hair and spared me Aunt Grace’s droopy eyelids and Aunt Caroline’s hips. Yet not until recently did I realize how similar my father and I are.
As the slightly hipper, mirror image of my younger, 20-something mother, there seem to exist few physical attributes that link me to my father. However, what I lack in physical connection, I seem to make up for in a mental connection. In fact, my father and I are so ‘mentally’ alike that I can now stop fretting whenever my brothers tell the story of how I was conceived in a moment of weakness back in the spring of 1980 when my father traveled frequently and my lonely mother, left alone with a half-empty waterbed and her Michael Jackson eight track collection, had a brief, hot love affair with the Hood Milkman. That is, Dad and I are both so ridiculously neurotic that there is no question I am his biological offspring and it is unmistakably his anxious genetic material racing through my bloodstream.
Like me, my father is an obsessively organized ‘super-planner.’ From the last nickel in his 401K to tuition for my 15-year-old brother’s last year of graduate school, my father seems to have it all planned out. He copies and files everything, obsessively organizes his sock drawer, plans vacations years in advance and his biggest fear is whether life on this planet would be able to subsist if he woke up one morning and his Palm Pilot didn’t work.
Also, in every situation, my father always seems to have a reasonable alternative in case something goes wrong. For example, he maps out additional fire escape routes whenever we stay in hotels and knows how to rig the bumper back on my car with nothing but duct tape and dental floss. Even at 40-something, Dad is the epitome of the Boy Scout motto. And whenever my father asks the inevitable ‘Denise, do you have a backup plan for after college?’ I simply figure it is his way of making sure I am completely prepared for graduation.
Or he’s torturing me because he thinks I’m the milkman’s daughter…
But realistically, when it comes to life at May 18, 2003, I don’t exactly have a ‘backup’ plan just in case I don’t get accepted into any my prospective programs. Hell, if my applications even constitute a plan is doubtful.
However, considering the terrible economy, tight job market and ridiculous surge in the percentage of applications to post-undergraduate degree programs this year, I’ve devised a ‘post college contingency plan’ in the event that I need to enter the workforce sometime around 7 a.m. on May 19, 2003.
Contingency plan number one: If I don’t get into a graduate or law program, I can pursue fame, fortune and limelight in my secret desire to be a Victoria’s Secret model. Being paid to sashay up and down a runway in your underwear or roll about in the sand on some tropical island in a silver bikini has got to be as good as it gets. And I’ve spent a great deal of time modeling my best bra and panty sets for my slightly disturbed roommates, holding my breath and sucking in my stomach for hours on end and strutting down Commonwealth Avenue like a giraffe, hoping to be discovered as the next Tyra Banks.
Contingency plan number two: If I don’t get into a graduate or law program, I can pursue less stressful, minimal responsibility employment like bartending, which I did part-time this summer to make extra money and to meet the lowlifes of my community. While working behind a bar is not always as exciting and glorified as splashing through the surf in Cancun, I always felt strangely at home there. Maybe there is just something appealing about slaving your nights away in a barroom full of sleazy, drunk men, smoke, beer coolers and a cache of hard alcohol.
Contingency plan number three: If I don’t get into a graduate or law program, I could ‘go professional.’ While selling beer and panties are two great ways to make money and great ways to land a great job at a classy escort service employment in the world of academia or business would probably look better on a future resume. Hoping to find a job in the Boston area, I started looking around and found a few on the Boston University website that look appealing like a part time librarian position and a lab assistant job and even better, the well-publicized presidential position.
And while I hope to return to school after graduation, being the president wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, being a president of a university, a place where smoothies would be subsidized by our undergraduate student fee, all men would be required to take ballroom dancing lessons and, best of all, Silber would no longer rule, would indeed be a small comfort if I didn’t get into law school. And with the Boston Globe’s front-page announcement that universities are turning more and more away from academia for their presidential positions, maybe I, with my English degree, could be the next president.
Really, if Theo Epstein can manage the Red Sox at 28, I can surely juggle a world class university at 22.
Besides, President Spellman has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
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