Thoughts from a College Student Freaking Out About Internships

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This was the question that was posed to me most often as a child. As a college student applying for internships, this is something I ponder every day.

Things were rather humdrum at home in a suburb of New York City during my childhood. I was bored to tears. I always wished for grander horizons and went through various phases at different points. I wanted to be a television newscaster, a pirate, own an art gallery in Italy, write movies and own a zoo at various intervals of my kiddie-hood.

I’ve always found myself on the outside looking in at societal groups everywhere I go. They say to never underestimate the perspective of an outsider. Thus, I find myself these days looking at a future in marketing. If one is on the outside peering in, one can look at the situation without the usual biases. Outsiders have the uncanny ability of being to figure out what makes others tick, what attracts them, what will entice them like a moth is enticed by a flame.

I thank you, Jews of New York, for being so filled with attitude even against your fellow Jew that I have gaped on in disbelief on the fringes of the community my entire life. I thank you, modern era, for being so coarse that I wish I lived in any other time period. And I thank you, internet, for being there when I needed you and shaping my nonmainstream tastes.

And most of all, Creator, thank you for making the Jews of New York so full ‘o ‘tude and placing me in time period when the common man is so uncouth and the internet so gloriously quirky that these circumstances shaped my nontraditional personality. Being on the outskirts has its benefits. It is going to give me my livelihood.