| For a journalist at a weekly paper, especially one as | | | | to Wickenden's Career Promotion Center. There I filled |
| small as the Carrier, The Day the Paper Comes Out is | | | | out questionnaire after questionnaire, and I talked to |
| a day of rest. I usually strolled into the office around | | | | chipper recent grads with sweater sets and pearl |
| eleven, caught up on correspondence, read all of the | | | | necklaces, loafers and the beginnings of beer guts. I |
| magazine articles I hadn't been able to read during the | | | | looked through job ads that made no sense. My |
| week, made some long-distance personal calls, | | | | favorites were from the consulting firms: "You will learn |
| pretended to start thinking about next week's pieces, | | | | to implement strategic management protocol |
| and left at five sharp. If I was feeling virtuous, I'd file | | | | decisions," et cetera. I worried that I would turn into |
| some of my week's notes and clear a landing strip on | | | | some sort of cyborg after three weeks at one of |
| my desk, but usually I saved that for when I was on | | | | these places; I would return home for my first |
| deadline and needed mindless industry to clear my | | | | Thanksgiving and communicate via streams of ticker |
| head. Not that a deadline really mattered all that much: | | | | tape issuing from my mouth.After a couple of hours of |
| Lincoln, Connecticut, like many small towns, specialized | | | | Career Promoting, I felt certain that I would live a long, |
| in news with a long shelf life. Anyway, nobody was | | | | lonely, useless life and die alone and unmissed (did I |
| going to lose a job if an article detailing the controversy | | | | mention that I never bothered filling out any grad-school |
| over the high school's mascot -- the Fighting Sioux: | | | | applications?). It's self-indulgent, I know, but this is what |
| culturally insensitive, respectfully traditional, or | | | | happens to the overachieving but essentially useless |
| traditionally respectful? -- didn't make it. First of all, the | | | | children of parents who raised their children to do well |
| debate would recur next year, probably in the fall, right | | | | on tests but failed to equip them with the poison-tipped |
| about the time ambitious seniors wanted to polish their | | | | spurs of true ambition.Art Rolen called Career |
| agit-cred for college. Second, we had an endless | | | | Promotion as I was getting ready to trudge home and |
| supply of ads, announcements, notices, and just plain | | | | maintain a full schedule of feeling sorry for myself. I |
| filler we could recycle or resize if the cub reporter | | | | remember watching the face of my Career Finder |
| couldn't quite ride without training wheels.And the times | | | | become radiant, just beatific, as she nodded with |
| when I couldn't were getting more and more infrequent. | | | | increasing excitement and finally said into the phone, |
| I had been working at the Lincoln Carrier for almost a | | | | "Sir, I think I have someone for you sitting right across |
| year and a half, ever since graduating from | | | | from me. He's not from the college paper, but his |
| Wickenden University. I had friends who had slid | | | | Gibson-Montaneau scores indicate that he might be a |
| seemingly without thought from college to med school | | | | rilly, rilly good fit for you."She winked twitchily at me and |
| or law school, or to fancy consulting jobs or some sort | | | | handed me the phone with one hand while making a |
| of literary underling work in New York, as though those | | | | 1983-vintage thumbs-up sign with the other. I said hello, |
| things were just what you did. I had no such prospects, | | | | and this drawly growl in the earpiece said, "Well, I hear |
| nor did I much want to go back to New York, where I | | | | those Gibbon- Martindale numbers of yours are really |
| grew up. Actually, I had a vague plan to attend | | | | adding up. But here's what I want to know: What do |
| graduate school and eventually settle down to live the | | | | they mean? And can you write?"I tucked the phone |
| cloistered, quiet life of a history professor in some | | | | into my chest and turned away from my Career |
| picturesque little college town (steeple, main street | | | | Finder's blinding enthusiasm. "Well, I don't really know |
| called Main Street, movie theater with a marquee), | | | | what they mean, to tell you the truth. They seem to |
| someplace where I could get all of my aging out of the | | | | put some stock in them here, I guess. And technically |
| way in my early thirties and live without crises or | | | | I'm not from the college paper: I wrote for them every |
| surprises, changing only incrementally for the rest of | | | | so often. I guess I can write well enough. Where is it |
| my allotted threescore and ten.I hadn't really thought of | | | | you're calling from?""Lincoln, Connecticut. About two |
| becoming a journalist, mostly because I didn't really | | | | hours west of Wickenden. I run a small weekly paper |
| understand how one did it. I had turned out a few | | | | here, about sixteen pages. What I need is another |
| music and book reviews for my college paper, mainly | | | | fulltime, little-bit-of-everything kind of person. Right now |
| for the free books and CDs; I would read or listen to | | | | it's just me and a columnist, and we got an ad lady. |
| something, write a couple hundred words about it, and | | | | The other full-timer we had just left, got a job in Storrs. |
| a week later I'd see my name above some prose that | | | | Greener pastures, I guess. Anyway, you'd do a little |
| bore a passing resemblance to what I had written. A | | | | reporting, little writing, little editing, little paper shuffling, |
| racket, not a career.After graduation I had just stayed | | | | some office work." I heard the muffled hoosh of a |
| on in the same apartment I lived in during the year: I | | | | cigarette being smoked. "Some phone answering, but |
| had no reason to be anywhere else. A month into that | | | | no more than anyone else. Nothing fancy. No |
| stagnant summer, I declined my father's offer/mandate | | | | Woodstein stuff. Maybe a way to see if you want to |
| to work as a paralegal at his friend's law firm in | | | | do something like this or not."I shrugged, then |
| Indianapolis, where my father had moved after my | | | | remembered that shrugs don't translate over the |
| parents finally split. He made me feel so guilty about | | | | phone. "Sounds interesting. Sure. |
| not having a job that I went, for the first and only time, | | | | |