College

Okay, so, I guess I've never told you how old I am or what I do for a living.  I am 23 and I am in college.  I am also about to graduate.  Technically, I should have graduated a year ago, but silly me, I had my rebellious phase during college and it wasn't against my parents, not really.  It was against my school's bureaucracy and the series of events that led me to be a management major.
You see, I didn't want to be in the business college.  Seeing my mother wrecking her brains and under heaps of stress every quarter convinced me that I didn't want to work like that.  Dealing with the problems that come with doing group work and being 'group leader' in grade school told me that I never, ever wanted to be a manager.  I wanted to get my bachelor's in SCIENCE.  How else was I going to become a mad scientist?  Alas, I'm stuck being just a step away from a dirty politician, a management major.  I hate management in the corporate business sense.  I'm a filthy Socialist Commy, or perhaps, I belong with the likes of Emma Goldman.
If you've played Dungeons and Dragons, you'll understand this phrase: Chaotic Good with Neutral Good leanings.  In other words, I'm a motivator for change, progress and enlightenment, unafraid to work in, around and under your machine with the sole purpose of tearing it down so you can see that it's inefficient.  I tear conventions down and find a way to make them better.  At the same time, I love to help, even if you're my enemy.  I can pity a person who doesn't care if I live or die.  I can walk up to a random, injured high school kid after they've gotten jumped on by 20 people, stop them from doing the stupid thing and going after their attackers while dabbing blood off them with my ever-present wet-wipes.  I know, I've done it before.
But, I'm not a manager, not in the corporate sense, or even the 'I work for the University' sense.  I'm not a back-stabber, a brown-noser, or a cut-throat business person... nor do I ever want to be.  It's too easy for people to slip into rationalization as a defense mechanism.  I know myself.  I do it too.  When that guy tried to come through my apartment window, I did the rational thing.  I called the police, calmly waited for them to arrive and when all was perfectly safe, a report filed, the window repaired and fitted with new bars, that's when I freaked out.  In the business world, danger lurks everywhere.  It mixes all of the shark-tank exploits of Wall Street with the jealousies and insecurities that some people never grew out of .  The business world is like high school, but with no teachers or parents with enough clout over these grown-up children intent on ruining your life.  There's no punishment for bad behavior unless it's truly illegal, and sometimes, not even then.
It would be best for me to be conditioned to that sort of lifestyle and behavior.  It would be best and even beneficial for me to become a cold, over-rationalizing human-faced monster.  I don't want to be that.  I don't want to rationalize my guilts for selling people products that could kill them with the idea that I have 'fiduciary duties'.  The other thing I don't want is this economic depression. 

Yes, depression.  The financial folks don't want to call it that, but we've sunk low enough, employment's in the toilet and no new advances have been made.  I don't care if we don't look like we did in the depression in the 30s.  People had fewer clothing items, food was cheaper and there were still jobs for unskilled labor.  Here, there's nothing. 
 It's a dead zone if you come out of high school and your family doesn't have cash for college.  Heck, it's a dead zone if you do.  I don't want to be that kid in the L station with their resume strapped to them front and back, asking for a job.
I don't want to become a vagrant contemplating college as an extremely expensive mistake.  I want to feel like I can make a difference in the world or at the very least be happily and comfortably successful at something I enjoy.  I want to make my parents proud of what I've done with my life.  That's why I fear the day's job market, my own unintentional major, and the negative possibilities that may follow.  But, that's part of growing up, right?