It’s my last
month of college. My last month before I
become a “real person,” before I am (relatively) financially independent of my
parents. Before we snip the umbilical
cord, though, there’s one thing that needs some figuring out. I need a job.
This pursuit
is no fun, as most of my classmates know—employers reject you without even
seeing your face. As of late, my search
has become even more disconcerting because of my coursework. This semester, I’m taking the William
Faulkner seminar. Faulkner’s work in itself
is a mindbender. His sentences can be as
long as half a page. He winds you up,
and when you reach the end of a sentence, you’re not really sure where you
left the ground. His prose soars; it’s
celestial. So, this semester, I’ve been
grappling between two divergent writing styles: between Faulkner’s semi-colon-ridden,
long-as-hell sentences and business-like, clear and concise information for
cover letters.
What
makes matters worse is that my final topic for this course is a Marxist reading
of Faulkner’s short stories. All while
I’m trying to become a cog in the machine. Needless to say, these two activities don’t go
well together. Sunday morning, I sat
down at Summit, the local coffee shop, where I do a lot of my work. First, I hammered out some job
applications. After a couple hours of
capitalism, I shifted to Marxism and Faulkner.
This coupling of job search and revolution was like sitting down in a
nice restaurant, eating a hearty meal—heavy on the butter—and then, instead of
ordering my decaf coffee, I went for a bottle of the off-brand vodka. And then vomited. The two pursuits didn’t sit well together. My stomach is going to have a rough next few
weeks.
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