It's the unavoidable and inevitable question that each fall summons before the foliage: "So, what did you do all summer?" If any of you are like me, "all summer" feels like just a few weeks, a mini-vacation sandwiched between bouts of amnesia and a few scorchers on the Cape. Regardless, all of you better have thought long and hard about this stumper, even if it is just to provide an adequate excuse for the friends who thought you dropped off the face of the earth. I'll make it nice and simple:
Stats: Summer internship 2003; destination: NYC; setting: seventh floor of an un-air-conditioned NYU dorm room, equipped with two handicapped K-Mart fans; job description: unpaid nine-to-fiver propped in front of a dinosaur computer screen, indexing antiques by location, material and date; further: hostessing for Molto Mario's (any of you Food Network fans) haunt in the Village 'til midnight; sleep: five hours max.
When I entered the city, I was suddenly transported back to the indecisive days of my youth spent shifting my weight from foot to foot in front of an impatient ice cream man who gestured threateningly at me with his silver scoop. There were delis offering instant gratification in all departments, adorable little art deco cafes boasting authentic French signs and perfectly formed baguettes and strategically positioned Victoria's Secrets every other block in case you were in need of emergency lingerie. If you couldn't decide what you wanted on 51st, the same options would be available on 52nd, guaranteed, so that your "final answer" would not be so "final" after all. The problem was not that I couldn't find what I was looking for, but rather the opposite: I was inundated with head-spinning options. One moment I would be gaping like a country bumpkin at the monstrosities above me, awestruck that these giant mirrors appeared to topple against the moving clouds, and the next moment, I would trip over a woman having a conversation with her grocery cart, suddenly fearful that I would become yet another victim of the sidewalk. The minute I made a decision to patronize one cafe, upon exiting, I would find to my dismay an equally attractive eatery, if not even more appealing, because the grass is always greener on the other side. For a city made of mostly concrete, there sure was a lot of green grass.
Once the Boston girl overcame her sense of country-bumpkin-itis, which, yes, can happen to the best of us urban dwellers when faced with the Big Apple's daunting decisions, she was able to focus on the absurd floods of people that seeped from holes in the ground (a.k.a subways), and poured from elevators in the sky. And as if that wasn't enough, there were the whizzing cabbies, and more frightening to me, the neurotic bike riders who seemed to ignore all the rules and sped down sidewalks with reckless abandon. Amidst the chaos of agenda-crazed people, I was able to experience the thrill of being star struck: stalking "Sex in the City" star "Big" into his Starbucks, spying on Drew Barrymore and her dinner date and my most famous claim to fame, taking a kickboxing class next to Ms. Britney Spears herself. Occasionally, I would subtly try to sneak my way into a Jennifer Garner film as a jogging extra, but this tactic failed time and time again.
By the beginning of August, being overwhelmed with options was replaced by being broke without any, I was tired, hot and ready to go back to school. After the initial excitement of being in the working world had died down, I began to ponder the fact that after next year there would not be anymore getting sick of work. I would not be able to throw my hands up and declare, "My time here is through and I hoped you enjoyed squeezing my exploitable undergrad mind and body to its fullest. I have no more juice, time to go back to school." Nope, after this year, I'm supposed to be prepared for the real world. Here, another question, much more terrifying then the return to school "Whadja do over the summer?" began to take shape: the question of what I planned on doing after I graduated. It is at this point where "question" turns into "personal interrogation," then into "grilling," then into "target practice," and the connotations become increasingly negative until perhaps the only alternative to an explanation becomes feigning muteness and deafness. Drastic, yes, but still a possible escape tactic.
When people asked me what I wanted to do after school, I was programmed to say, "Masters in journalism, then launch on to the editorial board of The New Yorker." There would be the inevitable "you-don't-know-the-half-of-it-kid" chuckle, followed by, "and just how do you plan on getting there, my friend?" When I fell short of a definitive answer time and time again, I decided to change my response. This was not necessarily because my goals had changed, but more because of the simple reason that it was a hell of a lot easier than defending myself from prying adults trying to tell me that the real world was harder then my country club up at Amherst. So I started saying, "PR." Then I decided to tell people I was going to leave the country and teach abroad. That response caused a few raised eyebrows and a doubtful, "Hmmmm, escape artist, or so she thinks" stare. So I have narrowed it down to get the least response possible: shock them into disbelief perhaps. I tell people that I plan on working on a dude ranch out in Montana, meeting a cowboy and raising a herd of cattle while cultivating vast farmland to support agrarian ideals. I liked that answer the best and even entertained the thought of actually fulfilling that role. But then I realized, whom was I answering to if I wasn't answering to myself?
There are many questions thrown at you in life. Sometimes you have to evaluate what is more important: answering the question out of sincerity to yourself or seeking approval from your listener? Are you throwing out responses on autopilot, the ones in the driver's manual, pre-programmed and pre-yuppified? Does it really matter what you tell someone about your future as long as you hold the key? And remember, even if you miss out the first time, no answer is your final one because a similar if not more enticing offer might be waiting just up the block, or at least over one avenue.