The Graduates Blog: Just Plain Weird

It’s Tuesday “Like” or “Loathe” time. And I’m going to have to go with “Loathe” this fine, April afternoon. Thanks to Gawker, I found a new blog series on the “Times Select” portion of NYTimes.com called “The Graduates.” It’s a cool idea in theory: the blog authors are college seniors who currently write for or edit their school’s newspapers. It’s a chance of a lifetime for these aspiring journalists: contribute to the New York Times. The idea here is that they’re supposed to be the upper echelon of college writers, the cream of the crop, the Ivies of the blogosphere. The problem? They sound like jackasses:

“When we were kids, my friends and I played a game called MASH. This game forecast whether we would grow up to live in Mansions, Apartments, Shacks, or Houses, what our jobs would be, where in the world we would live, which of our celebrity crushes we would marry, and most importantly, what kind of pet we would have… Back in our MASH days, our dream jobs were firefighting, I-banking, sales and trading, consulting, wealth management, mergers and acquisitions, and real estate finance. We wanted to live in the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Greenwich or Great Neck.”

Ummm, STOP. REWIND. Dear student from Dartmouth College, did you really just write, “Our dream jobs were…I-banking, sales and trading, consulting, wealth management, mergers and acquisitions and real estate finance????” Jenni – back me up on this one. This is NOT how one plays MASH. MASH dream jobs should be more along the lines of a teacher, a moviestar, a veterinarian, and a professional football player…NOT someone in wealth management. I guess things were different in the ‘80 and ’90s.

Not to worry…this author doesn’t just focus on childhood fantasies. She later gets into some pretty deep philosophical ruminations when she writes:

“My class is graduating into a world that is changing faster than ever before. We’re living in a weird society today that will most assuredly be weirder tomorrow.”

“Weirder tomorrow.” That’s good stuff. I’m bookmarking that as we speak.

My point here is not to completely make fun of these graduates or the way the Times has executed on this idea (yes it is, no it’s not). Because, in fact, the other Graduate writers have some very astute comments on a variety of interesting topics. My point is to rebut the fact that all kids play MASH with the intention of living on the Upper East Side while making big bucks in Mergers & Acquisitions. Personally, I wanted to be a writer when my friends and I played MASH on the school bus. That or an astronaut (thanks to that tremendous movie, “Space Camp.”)

I’m not saying that, at the tender age of 8, dreaming of a job in wealth management, complete with eggshell-colored business cards on stock paper, is bad. I’m just saying it’s, I don’t know, weird.

I Never Blog About Pointless Topics…Right? Right? Why Isn’t Anyone Answering Me?

(All the credit goes to my fiance for finding this f’ing hysterical New Yorker cartoon) 

Aruba…Jamaica…Ewww I Wanna Take Ya to Hawaii

Well I really dropped the ball this week, didn’t I? My sincerest apologies to all of my regular readers who wondered where the hell I ran off to the last couple of days. My damn job got in the way of my blogging…damn job. Of course my dream is to quit the damn job and blog/write for a living…but in order to do that, ya’ll will have to keep passing my blog along to fellow readers, telling them it’s a “must read” that needs to be visited EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. (Hint Hint).

But that’s neither here nor there. The most important piece of information I need to share with you in this post is that yours truly is catching a flight to Hawaii tomorrow. Yes, the Aloha State is calling my name and I’m sure as hell listening. I’m leaving tomorrow and will be gone for a week, but if you’re lucky – I might just post while I’m there and let you know my current pina colada count (I estimate I will have consumed at least forty by Tuesday – if things go according to plan).

When I get back from vacay, I will be bronzed, beachilicious, and ready to blog my heart out every single day for the sake of entertaining the masses. I will be all yours – so prepare yourself.

If I had my way, I’d pack you all in my carry-on and bring you to Maui with me. But let’s be serious…that ain’t happening. So instead, I’ll write you all a postcard.

(That’s obviously me in 24 short hours…)