As always, I'm going to hang out with the fam this Thanksgiving. It's not really that I have plans for Thanksgiving, it's that my family has plans for me.
Seeing my family is always a trip because it's like reverting to the time before I went off to college. It's like they don't know what the hell I do with myself in San Diego. They know I pay my bills and support myself. They have a vague idea that I work with computers and do some sort of marketing thing on the grand old Internet. They don't know who my friends are or what I do on weekends or after work.
It's not that my family is uninterested in my life; on the contrary, they are probably supremely interested, and hate that I'm evasive and nonspecific about it, so they've given up on asking all the questions they would like to ask. But seriously, am I supposed to tell them that I had dinner with my girlfriend the other night and she talked about her crazy orgasms? Wouldn't that make them a leetle uncomfortable? Or that another of my friends has turned into a douchebag and I have fantasies of keying his car?
Usually when I go home for the holidays I develop a little game plan. Like, I take care to get a haircut and dress nicely, so they don't think I'm a hobo. And I bring along some smartypants books to read (though honestly I read those anyway). And I'm absolutely sure to be on my best behavior, which includes not swearing (even though all my family members swear like sailors. I inherited my dirty mouth from them).
This year my trump card is that I've finally decided, 100% no ifs and or buts, that I am going to grad school. I majored in sociology, which is like yeah whatever, but recently I've noticed that nearly every non-work conversation I have, I bring it back to sociology. And that most of the books I read for fun are, like, Durkheim or Marx or some study of Latinas in the Bronx or the sociology of cults or something. I'm a total sociology nerd, and I might as well have a fancy degree to confirm this fact.
Actually, I don't even care about the end point, it's that I always seem to gravitate toward reading sociology books, talking about sociology, playing with statistics, and designing experiments anyway, so I might as well do this full-time and give up on this whole yuppie thing I have going, because it's really not me.
Also, my GRE scores kicked ass, so I might as well do something with them.
So then comes the fucking terrifying part, which is getting recommendation letters and applying. This is truly terrible because I'm a year and a half out of college and I'm not sure any of my profs even remember who I am. Yes, I should have had them write me rec letters right as I graduated or took their classes, but I was a dumb undergrad and was not thinking ahead.
Though honestly, I'd be happy to attend the worst program in the country. As long as they let me read my books and do my research and maybe bark at undergrads at 8 in the morning, I'd be happy as a clam.
Anyhoo, happy Thanksgiving.
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If you were a good student, your professors will remember you a year later. I've written many recommendation letters for students who decided on grad school a couple years after finishing college. You can also jog their memories by reminding them what class(es) you were in and what your term paper topics were. I'd imagine you were memorable, though.
Speaking as someone whose example you shouldn't follow -- choose a research specialty and a mentor as quickly as possible; be aggressive about building your research into publications in one single concentration of sociology. Tenure-track jobs are hard to get, and habits like eating are difficult to give up.
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