(Actual e-mail exchange)
Me: These career placement bastards would have me believe that my life to date is completely bereft of accomplishments.
“And what was your major achievement in that position?” they’ll ask encouragingly, fingers poised over their ultraslim laptops.
“It was a summer job,” I say. “I didn’t have any achievements.”
“But what did you do?”
“Um, I carried equipment and analyzed samples. That’s what I did while I was there. Sometimes I had to move the truck from one pasture to another.”
It’s terrible to watch their faces fall, then watch them rally.
“So what did you accomplish while you were there?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. Unless you count carrying seventy-five pounds of fragile rhizometer parts over nine-foot chainlink fences while occasionally running from research buffalo. Or unless you count doing like two thousand carbon analyses in one day.”
“We don’t.”
“I see.”
None of my jobs have passed muster so far. My heart, it sinks like a stool-pigeon wearing concrete overshoes. I’ve never had anything except a temporary job, with a well-defined end date, till now. And there’s still nothing left to show for it. I’ve never accomplished anything because I never had a job that accomplishment would be allowed in.
“What about this stint at the research centre?”
“It was a government project. It had been running for eleven years. I was there for eight months. So no.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Oh, wait. I fell asleep in an incubation chamber once and woke up wheezing with allergic pollinitis. Nobody missed me. It was the government, dammit.”
“So your accomplishments were…”
“Look, can I go yet?”
They’re convinced they can make something of me if they just try hard enough. But I’m coming to the nasty realization that I may just be unemployable. The only thing I want to do is terraform Mars. And nobody will give me a job in that. Unemployable!
Dr. Strange*: Bad news then, When I asked a prof about terraforming mars he informed me that due to its lack of a magnetic field an atmosphere will never form.
Me: New plan:
1. Invent molten core.
2. Insert into Mars.
3. Start to terraform.
4. Discover Martians, panic, run away, realize lack of options vis-a-vis possible escape routes, return dejectedly, become Martian slave.
Dr. Strange: Martian slave girl? Can we paint you green?
Me: Yes, but only if you leave a small spot exposed at the base of my spine so I don’t get skin suffocation.
If James Bond says it, it must be true.
* Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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