my future looks dim

I’ve spent lots of mental energy this year memorizing German nouns and generating ways to fall asleep amidst my neighbor’s raging dub-step music. But I've spent substantially less time considering what comes next. With less than a quarter left of college, maybe today should be the day I give some thought to my future.

So I head into the Career Services Center. After browsing the shelves (wishing I had done this three years ago), I decide to take an online careers test. It involves checking off boxes for specific programs of interest, special qualifications, school subjects you like, desired hours, and positions you want to avoid.

Imagining how my favorite classes in Linguistics, Psychology, Foreign Languages, and History might translate into a real-world paycheck, I mark hospitality and tourism; education and training; marketing; and human services.  I give myself mostly high marks for all forms of basic skills (“proficient” in Microsoft Word), and I’m not too picky when it comes to working hours or positions. Hell, give me the graveyard shift! I’m young and fresh.

My test yields 17 careers. Possibilities! Direction! Maybe today will be the day I set out on the path of adulthood. I never had a Bat Mitzvah or Confirmation, but perhaps a visit to Career Services will be my coming-of-age ritual.

I glance at the list.  Nearly a third of my options revolve around the food industry.  "Chef. Restaurant cook. Industrial/Cafeteria Cook. Short Order Cook. Fast Food Cook." The relevance to my Linguistics major escapes me. Is this all my degree is good for? Besides,   Be I'm a vegetarian who never eats fast food, so with the latter I wouldn't even benefit from the employee discount.

I'm a little spooked, and not just from wondering why I bothered to go to college.  I checked no box indicating the many hours I spend glued to the Food Network, and yet the computer seemed to intuitively sense my love for the show Chopped. Or maybe it discerned that the whole time I was taking the test, I was dreaming about the grilled cheese I’d make when I got home. Intuition has its limits, though: The computer failed to register that any inclination toward a career in the food industry had been thoroughly extinguished the day before at my dining hall job, when I removed the fibrous ends of sugar snap peas by hand for two hours. Anyway, I'm graduating from a liberal arts university, not Le Cordon Bleu.

I scroll on. Please let this quiz enlighten me. Please point me on my future path. There has got to be a high-paying Eat, Pray, Love sort of job out there. How did Elizabeth Gilbert make a living by eating pasta and meditating?

Next up, I read: Director of Religious Activities.

Perhaps that’s the “pray” part of the job. But is this test some sort of prank? I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to church. I’m an atheist. And would God approve of the beer pong socials I’d plan as Activities Director?

I reach the bottom of the short list, where the computer program suggests a final career option: Maid/Cleaner

So THIS is my college dream, come to fruition! Why my parents pinched pennies to finance my education! Maybe a Bachelor's degree is the new prerequisite for a lifetime of mopping in this ever-competitive job market. Did I mention my GPA is 3.92? That I'm hardworking, outgoing, and reliable? That I've scrubbed our shower and dusted our furniture exactly never this year?

I adjust my search in the side-bar to include my preferred salary range. Since it's too late to study computer engineering, I don't see myself making a fortune, but I want to be comfortable and independent. So I check the box for a reasonable $60,000 and up, hoping that more sophisticated titles like “Dean of Admissions, Harvard" might replace the entry-level jobs that seem to be my future.

A message pops up on the screen: “We're sorry, no matches could be found to fit all the selected criteria." Apparently both money and job fulfillment really is too much to ask.

Career Services has an entire wall devoted to “How-To" sheets; rows of GRE-prep books; tips on resume-writing, securing internships, or asking for letters of recommendation. But even they don't have a clue what I should do with my life. Perhaps on the far-back wall, tucked between “So You Want To Be A Therapist?" and “Jobs In The U.S. Government," there should be a special pamphlet just for me: “Learn To Settle: The How-To On Flipping Burgers."

spacial relations

           One of the textbooks for my Endangered Language class, Dying Words, is simply blowing my mind. I thought I'd share here some interesting facts I've come across, just to prove that reading for class can sometimes be worth it :)

           There are some (actually many!) languages in the world that don't use relative terms such as right or left  to describe spatial relations, but instead use an absolutist system. This refers to cardinal directions: north, south, east, west. So instead of saying, “My car is the one on the right," you would say “Mine is the eastern-most car," or what have you.
           This means that speakers of these languages are always intrinsically spatially oriented. Linguists did a study to test whether speakers of these languages had a better internal sense of direction than those that spoke a language that uses relative terms, such as English or Spanish. They went out into the middle of the Australian bush and asked speakers of the language Guugu Yimithirr to point to the direction of various well-known locations, and then checked these responses with a compass. The subjects pointed in the right direction 96 PERCENT OF THE TIME. Automatically. They did this in multiple studies, including in closed examination rooms with no windows. I hope your jaw just dropped.
           Think how hard it would be to learn this type of language, coming from an English background (or any other language that uses a relative system). The author explains the difficult process of learning Kayardild (a language indigenous to Australia, with only 23 speakers left!). He had to be acutely aware of his surroundings at every moment, because even the greeting in this language touched upon spacial relations: there is no word for hello, and instead a typical first encounter might be something like, “Where are you going?" “I'm going northward."
           And here I am, thinking it's nearly impossible to memorize all the genders and cases in German. Now I see I have it easy--just imagine if I had to whip out a compass any time I wanted to say hello to someone!

children of linguists

          What's the first thing you would ask when inquiring about someone's toddler? I would think to say something like, Has he started walking yet? How's the potty training going? Has he developed a keen interest in train sets and dinosaur figurines?
          Today I overheard a conversation between my linguistics professor and a graduate student in my class. It went like this:

Student: How's your little girl doing?
Prof: She's great, thanks. Her phonetics are still lacking; she can't quite produce consonant                clusters yet. Her syntax is really advanced though.
Student: Oh really? How so?
Prof: The other day she said to me,  “I don't like these crackers. Are you a fan?”
(Group laughter; a few expressive “wow”s. General consensus of amazement and approval.).
Student: How's her vowel space?
Prof: It's coming along. She's mastered several dipthongs already.

          At first I assumed they were joking. I thought they were recognizing their own linguistic obsessions and mocking themselves for it. I expected the conversation to turn at any moment to The Terrible Twos or first play dates. But no, it just hovered around vowel and consonant production. Linguists may have just officially beaten out astrophysicists for the Number One Nerd slot.