Ask Clarissa

Spring Break your senior year is not like spring breaks of the past. I suppose this should not surprise me. In two months' time I will graduate and everything that has defined my life for the last four years will change. Most of my friends are going straight into grad school, including Lauren. And for a long time that's what I thought I would do. Anybody who hopes to do anything in business needs an MBA. I am starting to wonder if that's really what I want to do.

Partly it's because I see how hard John works for his paycheck. He's never NOT thinking about the next sales call he has to make or the next client he needs to impress or the next business opportunity to pursue. He acts like he loves it, but I wonder if he has conditioned himself to love it. You either love a life like that or you must hate it. And would you really want to hate something you had to commit to that much?

And partly it's because Abigail has asked me to think about something. Mercy's Gallery will be up and running this summer and will need a business director. She's asked me to consider taking the job. It's a not-for-profit thing, so I probably could make more elsewhere - like running around selling pharmaceuticals like John. And I'd technically be working for Lauren. She's going to be the executive director, working part time while she works on her MFA at UCLA. (Yeah, Masters of Fine Arts. Ask her about that sometime. She's the first Durough in a century to get a masters degree where you don't have to take econ. . .) Of course Lauren wants me to take it. She told me so.

My parents think I should take the job. Even if it is a not-for-profit thing. The economy for college grads is pathetic right now.

John is wondering how he fits into the picture. He doesn't particularly care what I do next as long as he knows where he is in the picture. I did ask him what he meant by that, even though I knew. "I don't want you moving away," he said. But I just wanted to hear it.

Abigail told me to think about it, but not to think about it too long, and then she smiled in this way she has now when she makes a joke about her dying. Lauren hates it when she does that, and most of the time I don't like it either. But this time I laughed. And so did she. . .