Anxious doesn’t begin to describe my recent feelings about graduating and getting a job, preferably in the country of my choice.  On the one hand, I’ve been over college for a very long time, and when last week we discussed how to structure a five-paragraph essay for a full half hour, I knew that it was officially time to graduate (from like, middle school!).  On the other, who doesn’t fear the workforce when leaving college — especially in the midst of our generation’s global recession, especially when we can’t get experience to get a job.

But as I’ve said many a time before, I’m preparing to flee this country for one I happen to like quite a bit more.  It will cost me a very large amount of money to do so, but at least I now know that amount: let’s just say, several thousand dollars.  We have a goal, folks!  Now how do I reach it?

Most people would agree that the recession has been good for the greed in all of us, as it’s really turned down the snob dial and made being frugal a cool thing.  Everyone is much more relaxed about admitting where they bought clothes, which store brand cereal is the best substitute, and apparently, which items they regifted.

I’ve been especially proactive since summer 2008, when I made budget cuts and small lifestyle changes to save up before my great European adventure, and began keeping track of daily expenses through Twitter.  Over the summer I downloaded the iPhone app (used on my iPod touch, which I got for free for helping my brother get a new discounted Mac — cheapos unite!) called PocketMoney for several months now which has been crucial to knowing where my money has been going.  I track every last penny I spend — from the dollar I put in the basket at church (aren’t I precious?) to the dollar I put into the vending machine to the dollar I put into the washer and dryer.  And obviously the big purchases as well, I’m just making a point here with the dollar thing.  But at any and every point in time, I know how much money I have.

PocketMoney has also been excellent for knowing where my money goes.  I set budgets for myself and then see how well I stick to them: $25 on groceries a week, but only $4 on care items, and no going over my dining-out plan no matter what.  In the past two weeks, I have only spent money on groceries and the T.

And still, somehow it all slips through my fingers.  I cannot hang onto enough money to buy myself a train ticket home without feeling guilty.  I’m doing part-time work in web design but it’s barely scraping together enough at the moment (for perspective, I’m making three times less what I made at my internship this summer, and that sure wasn’t much then).

I know I can’t have a full-time job while in college, and I can just barely scrape together part-time hours.  So I’m formulating a plan of action, gathering together as many resources as I can, no matter how small their revenue.  I’ll let you know what these are and how you can help over the next few weeks.  Here’s the first:

I’m the Boston Study Abroad Examiner at Examiner.com.  I write a few articles every week on every fathomable aspect of studying abroad, specifically from a Boston-area student’s perspective where possible.  At the moment I’m focusing on the preparation involved, but today I did a piece on surviving Thanksgiving (as you probably don’t recall, I had my heart temporarily crushed the day before Thanksgiving last year and ate at an Italian restaurant 3,000 miles away, so I’ve got a bit of cred when it comes to the LONELINESS).

As my teacher said the other day, writing online is not Writing.  It’s just plain writing, as plain as you can make it, so don’t expect literary gold.  But I’m trying to make it as useful as possible, so if you know anyone thinking about going abroad — whether they’re in high school, college, or just graduated — and whether they want to study, have fun, or work — send them along to me as a resource.

Also, if you take a look around Examiner.com and decide you’d like to take a crack at having a column, please name me as your referral!  They’ll give me a $50 bonus for every Examiner I refer.  My reference number is 26829.

Okay, that plug is done.  Next, if you’d like a nice, affordable, homemade gift for someone, I’ll show off my jewelry for sale.

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Bought myself cupcakes today and immediately ate two.

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About a month ago I quit my English senior honors thesis.  I’m not sure where I got the idea that I had to do one, because it is entirely optional and only a handful of English students take it on, but I suppose since high school I’ve done a lot of things I never had to do.  I never had to take all those AP classes, or all those instruments, or all those internships early on–I’m pretty sure I was enough without them.  But they were there, and I could, so I did.

Going back through the Pretty Big Wheel archives, I see now why I decided to do the senior thesis:

So as to not totally close the doors on this, I need to set my sights on a senior thesis. And for ideas I have approximately… hmm, two and two is four… carry the one… oh, NOTHING.

(I’ve really only included the second sentence because I love realizing that I was funny once upon a time.  I crack me up.)  The pressure of graduate school is big, and I’m still battling with people who seem to think that I should be going when I’m fairly certain that I do not want or need to go.  If you’re going to be a doctor or a teacher, yeah, you should really go, there’s a lot of textbook learning and exams and special degrees and specialization involved.  And you’re also going to be pretty lucky because when it comes to gaining beginner experience, you’ll get clinical and classroom placements.  With publishing, not so.  No publisher would give a shit if I said, “True, I don’t have 2+ years of editorial experience, but! I know the history of Harper’s Magazine.” I’d get met with a big fat, “Who the hell cares?  Do you know what you’re doing when we sit you down with some copy or not?”

I just have to get into it.  It’s extremely tempting to put it off another year or so, and actually it would solve my immigration issue so fast because students are the luckiest people in the world.  But I would accrue more debt than ever and be nowhere closer to the top of the publishing food chain.  It’s a business where you just have to prove yourself, and I should stop getting so clammy about the fact and just get into it already.

All this to say, the honors thesis was a joke of an idea.  While other students were already beginning their research last spring, I was in another country, sort of toying with the idea of this one author, Flann O’Brien.  I’d enjoyed An Béal Bocht and thought I could like his other work too.  Oh, ho-ho.  Who knew this guy was an existentialist/post-colonialist/absurdist/meta-fictionalist master?  And everything else in between?  At Swim-Two-Birds took me ages to get through, because it is a book about a narrator writing a book about a character writing a book in which his characters can write back at the author.  I’d start that sentence again from the top, if I were you.  By the time I’d finished The Third Policeman (easier to digest, harder to discuss), my thesis proposal was due.

Oh, right, the thesis part.  The part where I explain very clearly which critical approach I am going to take with this author, and what threads I will use to tie his works together.  Let me just refer back to my notes from last year and the year before where I wrote down all the different types of literary theory and OH WAIT.  THAT’S RIGHT, I DECIDED ABOUT TWO WEEKS BEFORE TO RANSACK MY ROOM AND TOSS OUT EVERY SINGLE NOTE I’VE EVER TAKEN, BECAUSE COLLEGE IS ALMOST OVER, WHO NEEDS THIS NONSENSE ANYMORE?

So with that, I was off to an excellent start, one which made my advisor look at me with a withering gaze that said, You’re shitting me, right? He put it slightly nicer: “You have a very long way to go and I don’t know if you can do it.”  There’s that inspiration I was looking for!

I struggled throughout September, well aware that I had two months to write 30-something coherent pages on a topic I’d yet to narrow down, about an author who notoriously resists the application of all literary theory because THAT IS HIS POINT.  My other classes were not off to a good start either, with C’s and B’s on my first few assignments and quizzes.  I simply had no time for them, with 15-20 pages of thesis rumination due every Thursday.  And that’s all it was–rumination.  There was nothing solid about anything I was writing, nothing that made me go, ah, I’ve figured it out, I know what I’m discussing now! I got more and more confused, more and more frustrated.

I called my mom one night in early October bawling about how much work I had to do and how stupid it was to be doing it, how my professor thought I was stupid, how I thought I was stupid, how my whole stupid paper was stupid and pointless and optional and yet I was killing myself over it.  ”Why don’t you just quit?” she said.  ”That’s what I would do.”

Pardon me, madam, but Molly Griffin does not quit her academics.  She may have shimmied her way out of basketball, and at some point while you were blinking she managed to not play the saxophone in the last two years, but her academics?  How dare you.

Really, that’s how indignant I got, all huffing and puffing about how I would never do that, can’t just quit, that’s just embarrassing.  My mom said, “Well I think you should.  And we’ll dance in the kitchen on Saturday.”  After we hung up, I sprawled on my bed and moaned and wept like I was deciding which child of mine I had to kill.  Then I wrote a quick letter to my advisor and emailed it.  This is the start of his priceless response:

Hello, Molly.

this has been a very busy day and i haven’t had a moment to look at your paper. indeed, as 31 papers are about to descend tomorrow upon me, our meeting on Friday looks uncertain.

to be honest, i have doubts about your preparation and progress at this stage.

I knew that’s what I’d hear, as he’d expressed doubt the entire way through (on top of never having read my thesis to begin with).  I can’t blame him: he was very busy and it was terrible work.  He’d never laughed or smiled once in my meetings with him, although he’s a laughing man, which suggested that he absolutely hated being involved with my thesis, which was bound to reflect poorly on him as well.  When I told him in person I really was not going to go ahead with it, he said, “To be honest, I still haven’t read it.”  I said, “Oh, don’t worry, it isn’t any good anyway,” and he let out a big HA!!  Then practically skipped away with joy of one less stupid thing off his shoulders.

This is all very long and perhaps more melodramatic than it sounds like it was, but I was wrecked that week.  How could I just quit like that?  I’ve never dropped anything before like this.  Every resource or contact I’d used for the thesis seemed very, very disappointed that I was not continuing, like it was a personal affront to ACADEMIA.

But what can I say: I don’t really care about academics anymore.  I’m going to end up with evidence of this withdrawal on my transcript, a great big W, something I really argued to avoid but accepted in the end.  So what?  I’ve been really, really good at academics all my life, and it’s what has defined me especially in these later years.  But I’m not going to be in school forever.  I could hang in there for another year or two and hide from adulthood a little bit longer (and I’m still not totally sure that I won’t make a last minute decision to get my masters if things get too hard).  But I’d really be a lot prouder of myself if I held my breath and threw myself into the job force, excelled, and carved out a new identity somewhere else.

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Even when I’m feeling down, so low it hurts to smile, he can pick me up.  Over 3,000 miles away and he can do what no other person has ever been able to do–pull me out of the mire with words.

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You want to go to grad school.

No, when I graduate this May, that’s it, I’m not a student anymore.

Oh, so you want to do a summer program abroad then.

No, I’d have to be a student to do that, and I won’t be a student anymore.  Besides, a summer wouldn’t be long enough.

Well, you could sign up for this program and it would give you four months in Ireland.

Mmm but that’s really not long enough.  I want to leave right after graduation and stay in Ireland for at least a year.

You could go to Australia for a year.  Or England for six months!

Sounds terrific, but they’re not Ireland.

Can I interest you in a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany?

Not in the least.  There’s a reason I want to go to Ireland specifically.  You should really read my blog.

Well, but work visas are hard to come by if you don’t already have a career.  You’d have to get a company to vouch for you over everyone else in Ireland.

I know, I know.  And like, I think I’m special, but probably not that special yet.  So I understand that, while not impossible, that’s extremely unlikely.  But!  Ireland and the U.S. have finally started a working holiday visa program.  Do you know anything about that?

…Summer program?

Nope, not a student anymore.  See, it’s a visa that lasts a year, and you don’t have to have a job organized before you arrive.  Except, I don’t know much about it.  Any idea who I should contact?

We have a great alumni program.

I know, so I’ve heard.  Do they know about this working holiday visa?  Loads of Australians take advantage of it, I met a really nice couple last year who were doing it and the girl was doing short-term contractual work at my magazine company for someone’s maternity leave.  That would kind of be perfect.

Short-term, eh?  Four months?  Lots of Irish companies want Americans, like bars and hotels.  There are even some secretary gigs!

Whoa, really?!  No.  Not a student anymore, ergo, not able to live off of my parents or my barista job.  I’d really like a year, and I’d really like a real job.  I just mean, I wouldn’t mind covering maternity leave here and there at publishing companies.  Enough of those back to back would be good broad experience with real world pay.

America has jobs too!  Maybe you could move internationally in a few years?

BUT WHY IS IT SO IMPOSSIBLE TO DO IT NOW.  SURELY THIS HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE.  RIGHT?  ANYONE?  CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP A SISTER OUT.

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I just spent the weekend with the love of my life.  He makes autumn a beautiful season for me.

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