Career Matchmaker

Your Career Suggestions

1. Computer Trainer
[Eww...]

2. Corporate Trainer
[Eww...]


3. Foreign Language Instructor
[Not bad.]

4. ESL Teacher
[Not bad.]

5. Music Teacher / Instructor
[Not sure how good I'd be, but it'd be fun...]

6. Speech-Language Pathologist
[Hey!]

7. Professor
[Sweet.]

8. Special Effects Technician
[Huh?]

9. Actor
[No way.]

10. Desktop Publisher
[Are you kidding me? I have a visual-spatial IQ of 0.]

11. Set Designer
[Sounds like fun, but see the above.]

12. Animator
[Can't draw. Next.]

13. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
[Like I said...]

14. Costume Designer
[See #11.]

15. Musician
[Is karaoke a profession?]

16. Artist
[What kind are we talking about here...?]

17. Comedian
[If it's just writing, I'd like that. No performing, though, please.]

18. Casting Director
[Sweet. Don't think I have the necessary social skills, though.]

19. Critic
[I love that show!]

20. Print Journalist
[Meh.]

21. Sport Psychology Consultant
[Uh, no.]

22. Translator
[Sweet.]

23. Market Research Analyst
[Eww...]

24. Writer
[Sweet.]

25. Composer
[No way.]

26. Medical Illustrator
[No fucking way.]

27. Director of Photography
[Sweet. Though I have absolutely none of the requisite skills.]

28. Industrial Designer
[No way.]

29. Psychologist
[Sweet.]

30. Potter
[Harry?]

31. Communications Specialist
[Meh.]

32. Public Relations Specialist
[Bleh.]

33. Activist
[Heh.]

34. Political Aide
[Eww...]

35. Public Policy Analyst
[Maybe eventually...]

36. Occupational Therapist
[Heh.]

37. Exhibit Designer
[Sweet.]

38. Humanitarian Aid Worker
[Meh.]

39. Foreign Service Officer
[Eww...]

40. Technical Writer
[Eww...]

------------------------------

Well, straight out of college I landed a job that basically combines my #'s 4, 6, 29, and 36. Not bad.

What He Said

Ragnar Tornquist sayeth: That’s what makes some people writers and others not: writers come with built-in dictionaries. Have yourself tested, and see if you too can be a writer! Make millions! Earn the respect of your peers! Get laid!

Hmm. Hasn't worked so far. I think my built-in dictionary might have some misprints.

And, indirectly related, here's something to cheer you up [dead link].

Guilty As Charged...

Part One.

Part Two. Though not really. Two shows in two days doesn't exactly count as "following."

Also, drugs can inspire crazy art. Who knew.

Stuff and Paraphenalia

1. In several classes I took in college (it feels ineffably weird to use the past tense there) the connection between language and thought was discussed at great length. Most people couldn't fathom how a human could think without language; one example being provided by deaf Nicaraguans before the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language. How did they think? What did they think? What was their interior life like?

I always suspected thought was perfectly possible without language. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, while intriguing and seductive (and not entirely related to the topic at hand, but it's always good name-dropping to throw in for good measure), never really had me convinced. But I could never think of a solid refutation for these people's skepticism.

Now (too late to do any good, but we'll pretend it's relevant) I've found one. I give you Temple Grandin. A published and successful Ph.D. who "happens to be" autistic (actually, I think she's diagnosed with Asperger's, but to the layman 'autistic' is close enough). She describes how she, and many autistic individuals, find language counterintuitive and therefore do not use it when perceiving, processing, and interpreting the world. The substitute for words in the thought process? Pictures. Purely visual thought. Difficult to grasp for us native and enthusiastic language-users, but entirely plausible (and effective) once you give it some thought.

2. Professional authors writing bad fiction on purpose. Pretty funny.

3. Taking crochet to new (sublimely surreal) heights.

4. Finally, salvation!

Miscellanea

1. The Indian buffet that Sean and I frequent most weekends experienced a disturbing accident last Sunday. Glad we weren't there at the time. Here's to hoping they're re-opened in time for Saturday brunch.

2. Pop linguistics at its best. Or worst. Probably both.

3. “The book is not readable because of the overuse of adverbs.”

Ten points if you can guess the book before looking at the link.

4. Mayer gets street cred. About time.

5. The loud one got his own radio show.

6. Amusement [dead link].

Pretty Words

TextArc.

Inevitable.

1. Being sick for Campus Dance sucks. That is all.

2. More Wonder Boys:

It seemed to me that Q. was talking about the nature of the midnight disease, which started as a simple feeling of disconnection from other people, an inability to "fit in" by no means unique to writers, a sense of envy and unbridgeable distance like that felt by someone tossing on a restless pillow in a world full of sleepers. Very quickly, though, what happened with the midnight disease was that you began actually to crave this feeling of apartness, to cultivate and even flourish within it. You pushed yourself farther and farther and farther apart until one black day you woke to discover that you yourself had become the chief object of your own hostile gaze.

3. Last day at Greenlock was yesterday. Goodbye, Blue (a.k.a. "Jaws").

4. I hate iPods. And iTunes. With a vengeance. I will prevail.

Sad.

1. According to SparkNotes:

It all adds up... we feel 8% certain that you are...
A Man!

Compared to others...
26% more male than you — 6% like you — 67% more female than you

2. I've been advised to name-drop in my novella submission cover-letters. Rock.

3. I got a round of applause for my anal rententiveness in today's lab meeting. An appropriate ending note for my career as a student-employee, I think.

Elitism.

1. Am I an insufferable elitist for not submitting to a contest based on its lack of non-web publishing?

2. Pretty words:

"The midnight disease is a kind of emotional insomnia; at every conscious moment its victim -- even if he or she writes at dawn, or in the middle of the afternoon -- feels like a person lying in a sweltering bedroom, with the window thrown open, looking up at a sky filled with stars and airplanes, listening to the narrative of a rattling blind, an ambulance, a fly trapped in a Coke bottle, while all around him the neighbors soundly sleep. This is in my opinion why writers -- like insomniacs -- are so accident-prone, so obsessed with the calculus of bad luck and missed opportunities, so liable to rumination and a concomitant inability to let go of a subject, even when urged repeatedly to do so." --Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys