Breakfast with Amber

January 2023: She'll Be Back Eventually

Here we are at the final semester of college. Technically, I didn't have to be here. I completed the last of my required classes in the fall. I just wanted the extra time to figure out what the heck I was going to do with my life after this because I had done painfully little for my job search. I had bookmarked exactly three jobs on Handshake thinking that was all it took. It was not. In fact, over winter break, Dad sat me down and showed me some first steps for conducting a job search, and he said I should start by compiling a list of 50 companies I could feasibly see myself working for.

Start.

With 50.

Do you have any idea how much of an insurmountable task that seemed at the moment? Dad said I didn't have to apply to all of them, but why not? I didn't want to be unemployed.

I started by brainstorming all of the newspapers, news stations, and news sites based in Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas that I could think of. I even wrote down Relevnt even though they're headquartered in Florida and the jobs I were finding were not on their staff like I was expecting but paid jobs making podcasts about the Jacksonville area. I wound up not applying. What the heck did I know about Jacksonville?

After I had exhausted all the journalism options in my brain, I still hadn't made it to 50. I took the advice of a web page my dad sent me and took a job aptitude test online to see if I had any untapped potential in other industries. I don't remember the name of the website, but it ended in .gov, so it must be legit. It told me my top match was model. (What?) Next were proofreader and historian. Fourth and fifth were "Poets, Lyricists, and Creative Writers" and "Writers and Authors," which not only took me to the same webpage when I clicked on them but were already what I was hoping to do as a side gig. Sixth was curator, which didn't speak to me, and neither did music director. After that was broadcast announcer, then choreographer. Tenth on the list was "Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary."

Hold on, what? I had taken classes in French and Japanese, but I didn't feel confident enough to teach them, much less at a college level. Let's scale it back. What's a language I'm confident in? English. And then let's dial it down to a grade level that doesn't require a doctorate to teach.

High school English teacher. I could do that.

That was the second career path I was pursuing when I returned to campus and found that my roommate was gone, and so was all her stuff. I remember both of us packing on the day I left campus for winter break, but I don't recall seeing her leave. My first thought was, "Huh. She's a really efficient packer. Well, class doesn't start for a few days. She'll be back before then."

Classes started on January 11, and my all-elective schedule went as follows:

I took a class on classical mythology on Mondays and Wednesdays. It was taught by Professor Kim, whom I could tell was trying his best to be funny, but it was kind of hit and miss. We read the myth of Daphne and Apollo pretty early in the semester, and he pointed out that there was a Daphne in the class, and all I could says was, "Uh...hi."

To say Professor Kim was weird was an understatement. He'd try to start these uncomfortable philosophical debates such as, "Is there anything really wrong with incest?"

And then one of us would say, "Well, yeah. Your kids are gonna have all sorts of problems."

"But what if it was guaranteed that you didn't have kids?"

"Why would you even want to have sex with your sister? That's not the kind of relationship you have with her."

"But, like, relationships aside..."

I'm just saying if there's anything below the devil, that's the kind of advocate he was.

Moving on to playwriting, which was taught at 8:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays by Dr. Joseph. In fact, I think I had 8:30 classes every day of the week this semester. Must have been punishment for not having any 8:30 classes last semester. I did precious few journal exercises in this class because my mind would simply draw a blank. If there was a prompt, I'd have no idea how to answer, and if it was a free write, I'd have no idea where to start.