I�m always interested in why people became doctors. For a while when I was in college, I entertained the possibility of doing a post-bac program and then becoming a crusading gynecologist, no clinical research please. Mostly that impulse was on account of my then-boyfriend, who was a genius at finding subtle ways to remind me that he was the scholar and I wasn�t, and my subsequent, then-unexamined need to go find my own vehicle for success since the one I would have chosen was occupied. (He once said something like, "Different people are good at different things. For instance, I know about languages and literature and computer programming, and you make terrific coffee cake and are an expert on British pop music.") The fact of how the idea was propagated doesn�t mean that the idea itself was fraudulent, and when I tick down the list of the various alternate-version lives of myself � neither listing nor ticking involve regret � I still like and admire the doctor one, I think she is one hell of a right-on cat. I think I think about her more than any of the others, but that�s probably due to my recent proximity to so many of her brethren; though do I make myself think that because thinking anything else is so impossible? Hmm. I had taken for granted that other people who were interested in practicing medicine had similar moral and political motivations, but a few years ago I met some doctors and hung out with them on a few occasions and was crushed to learn how many of them had chosen their careers based on (a) not liking to read so they defaulted into science majors, (b) family expectations or the promise of inheriting a relative�s practice, (c) the money and vacation time, or (d) the social prestige that would accrue to them, and also the hot chicks. One of them had only four books in her house about subjects other than cooking and how to get more spiritual.

Other writers I don�t like: Perri Klass, Anna Quindlen. Others I do: Ella Taylor, Alec Haley Bemis, Cathy Seipp, James Wolcott, Julie Burchill when someone is editing her, Alex Ross when he writes about anything but classical music, and Keith Olbermann. And my boyfriend Frank Rich.

Actually, OK, I�m always interested in why people became whatever they are, but no, now that I apply the same grammatical formulation to a non-specific endpoint I must restate my position, because I don�t like the past tense of "became," and its implication of what I just called an endpoint gives me the Uncle Willies. (The right-on doctor does not say to herself, Cool, I am an M.D. and therefore am now at the still point where what I want from that will start coming to me. She is, rather, engaged in the present-progressive-tense act of doctoring; its components and the continuity of them, their value, are her way of life.) The narrative, the narrative. I like to make people tell their stories first of all because interesting people tend to have fascinating stories and also because it gives me a thrill to make them see themselves as the story�s teller and repository. This sounds so corny, but it�s amazing to contemplate that every story is singular, each one has its own specific gravity. What we�re doing with our lives is creating our stories. Sometimes, playing anthropologist and asking questions to draw out the narrative, standing maybe half a step back from being an equal participant in a conversation, I can get people to realize this, I can even see the instant of its happening, and, let me tell you, it�s better than drugs. One night when I was in high school I was sitting across from some friends of mine in a diner and I started asking them questions about themselves, and then I mimed picking up a camera and holding it on them, following their movements and dollying in for close-ups. The result was strange and poetic � awareness of the act of documenting came over us all like the opposite of a migraine, and along with it a deeper understanding of all that was there to be documented. So many years later, I still can�t explain why that would have happened and how those few moments of realizing could be so charged, but I was there and it did, and they were. And � again with the corn warning � with a little bit of re-training, you can experience your whole life like that, every hour of it.

Many hours have passed since I started this entry and there�s not quite an hour yet to go before I blow this taco stand for the whole weekend. Tomorrow I�m going to see No. 13 Baby at the Crocodile while Steve gets dined and whined, and later tonight it�s Linda�s for the second night in a row. (By the way: last night four beers, and nothing. Grr.) Last night I introduced into the public sphere a possible new idea for What To Do With Myself, which is grad school in criticism. Yes, I know, the temptation is to roll one�s eyes at the knowledge that such programs really exist, or you could also make Steve�s argument that the only way to get critical chops is to walk the walk first � be a writer, be an artist, be a filmmaker, etc. Both eye-rolling and righteous idealism are appropriate responses. But the fact is that these days, a non-technical graduate degree is effectively professional certification, and also like an intellectual version of trench warfare where your sacrificing takes the form of you paying lots and lots of money and what you gain are the contacts that will make it easier for you to do what you want. Suffering for your art isn�t what it used to be. And I have a problem with the concept of Being A Writer � if this being-a-writer is something that you can earn and get and have, is it also something that you can lose later on? And who gets to say, in any case, who is giving out the mantle? Woody Allen once said that he hated film awards because to accept one, you needed to buy into the idea that you were good because other people said you were, and that would also necessitate the opposite. I don�t know whether you can definitively say that I lack self confidence, but damn am I jealous of my Diaryland comrade who refers to things like "THE BIG PICTURE, which is my talent with words" like they are facts to her, just things you can nominalize like cars and sweaters and donuts � actually jealousy doesn�t begin to cover it, it�s more like stupefaction, what must it be like to be able to appropriate those judgments for your own, to say and to know that you are good, to have that confidence, my god I can�t imagine it, my head would explode on the spot � and one of the conditions of her life, which is to say having talent. What I wouldn't give.

Myself, all I�ve got is tangent. Sorry � back to what I was saying. So anyway, graduate program in criticism or cultural studies which I would parlay into, well, now there is the interesting question. This is from the most recent Chicago Magazine, from an article by Steve Rhodes:

Almost a third of the students from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University who earned bachelor�s degrees in 2001 have taken non-media jobs, while just 19 percent have gone on to jobs at newspapers, according to the school�s career services office. Nine percent work for magazines; seven percent in television; seven percent in new media; seven percent in "other media"; six percent in public relations, and four percent in advertising. Thirty-two percent are in nonmedia positions.

(What am I good at? What do I have a talent for? There has to be something, right?)

I bet I could get a nice shiny letter of recommendation to the American Studies program at Bowling Green. I know a guy who got his Ph.D. there and has published a lot of well-regarded research, Am-studs cred oozes out of him like this shit oozes out of me in my diary. I could be like Susan Douglas or something but but BUT you know how I feel about the wank-a-thon of academia, how can I justify writing bullshit theory that twelve other people in the world care about just because some institution will give me money to do it and because I want to? It's still not worth anything. The act of doctoring the way I referred to it above is like a self-effacement that one takes up willingly and does, and gives, for other people. It is, wow, a decision to be the person who brings donuts. The act of becoming an academic goes against most of what I believe in and respect. But what if the only things I might even kind of sort of possibly be marginally 60th-to-75th-percentile lowercase good at couldn�t be got at any other way? Because otherwise the logical conclusion is that I might have a moral duty to do something I don't like and/or am not good at and that incidentally doesn't pay well, and who would I have fucked over in a past life sufficiently to deserve to live like that? Or can you see, in some way I don't, that it's my logic that's fucked? If you do, please tell me.

Argh.

I am eating asparagus like it�s going out of style.