Last week, we had a guest speaker in one of my English classes. He graduated from Tech in Professional Writing, got a Master’s in English, and now works for Carilion Clinic. He gave us his email and told us to email him with questions. I have been thinking about going to graduate school to get a Master’s in English. I wanted an opinion outside of someone in academia so I decided to email him to find out more details.
I began the email with “Hi, my name is Logan Hooks and I was in Sharp’s Professional Writing class yesterday. I am a Communications major and was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about grad school…” A couple hours later I received an email back. It began like this “Dear Logan, First of all I wanted to congratulate you on your decision to pursue an undergraduate degree in Communications. During these troubled times jobs are incredibly scarce and the knowledge and experience you will gain from your studies will keep you from being competitive for nearly all of them.” Wait, what? Didn’t this guy just say yesterday he wrote for the Collegiate Times and wished he would have minored in Communications? Am I really not going to get a job? Reading this email on my Blackberry, I was too flabbergasted to keep reading. I called my friend who is in my Professional Writing class. “Sam, what does this mean? Why would he say that?” She assured me it had to be a typo. No way was that a typo, the man is a professional writer! I don’t get it.
After my freak out, I grabbed my computer to read the full email. At the bottom it said, “I hope that I have been able to assist you in some way. If you have any further questions or wish to receive a non sarcastic response please double check the email address that Matthew gave you and contact him.” Oh. So I sent the email to the wrong email address. I checked the email and realized I had simply left off the numbers. Then I started getting really mad. Wait, you’re telling me this random guy took time out of his day to tell me I’m wasting my money in college and my degree won’t get me anywhere? YOU ARE KIDDING.
This guy wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. I’m convinced he was sitting at home (his mother’s
home) in Batman pajama pants playing World of Warcraft and eating Easy Mac. So, I emailed back. “I realized I had the wrong email address, so I’m sorry about that. But I highly doubt that you are competitive in the job market because you took the time out of your day to email back an innocent college student who made a simple mistake. Look for me on NBC in ten years.” I’m not even sure if I want to do TV news, but it sounded convincing. He emailed back with some story about how he couldn’t pass up the chance to mess with me and how he wished me luck in my career. Blah, Blah.
I couldn’t believe a grown man took the time to try to belittle a college student. Maybe he thought it was funny, but I didn’t. I’m passionate about my career path and I will do whatever it takes to succeed. I didn’t choose Comm because I didn’t know what else to do with my life; I didn’t choose it because it’s easy. I chose it because I love writing. So if you’re out there, Mr. Email man, eating your canned ravioli, reading your Playboy, and playing your silly war games, just beware — I’m keeping your email and will let you know when I do get an amazing job. Thanks for the motivation.