It occurred to me the other day that I will be graduating from Graduate School in six months. Six months, people! That thought was immediately followed by this one: what the hell am I going to do after I graduate?

Ideally, I'd like to keep teaching. And I think I'd like to move south for awhile, maybe Savannah GA (I've been obsessed with Savannah ever since I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) or New Orleans (ok... I wanted to move to New Orleans when I was a teenager and obsessed with Anne Rice and found out she lives there) or out west to Arizona or maybe even Texas. Who the heck knows. I'll probably end up back at my parents house.

But here's the catch. All those "maybes" up above are all fine and dandy. What I really need is a J-O-B. I'd like a job teaching at a college, but as one of my friends pointed out, ya' kinda gotta start applying for those now. So there's one more thing to add to my hectic schedule. And if I get a job teaching, it'll probably only be a part-time Adjunct position, so that means I've got to find a second job. Ugh. Which means probably waitressing.

When I was a teenager, I waitressed at this mom-and-pop kind of diner in my hometown. I didn't mind it, I made a decent amount of money that allowed me to buy a car, buy clothes, books, movie passes... If I were forced to do this again, at the age of 28 (cause I'll be that old by then) it had better be someplace that requires big tips --although, I would say that I learned when I was a teen that big tips are a myth.

Maybe I should just take a year off, apply to some Doctorate programs, then try to get a position teaching full time? But then there's the question of what the heck would I get a doctorate in... Film Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, Literature... do I even want to do that? Wouldn't that cramp my writing? Would I then become not-a-writer?

Or, maybe if I continue to slog through two part-time jobs, I can write a book. And get published. It'll become wildly popular, prompting some studio big-wig to buy the rights to my book. I would insist that I be retained as the scriptwriter, with some artistic say in how the movie is made (yeah right--that never happens!). The movie would become an Oscar winning hit and I would be set job-wise for life. I'd pay all my debt, send my grandparents on a well deserved vacation, pay my parent's debt....

*sigh*

Being a grown-up sucks.