Fellow Orangemen, I could not be happier to return to Syracuse. How dearly I missed the rolling hills of Onondaga and the concept of wearing sweatpants for nine straight weeks. How eager I am to resume work on my senior thesis – ‘Pimping: Easy?’

Also, my parents ran out of beer.

Most of all, I revel in my return as a break from summer drudgery. During summer there is no football to keep me entertained, only baseball. Or, as we Washington Nationals fans call it, ‘Unending Contest of Shame.’ I did have a great internship – at least until my third strike for drinking on the job. Whatever. I made it a whole hour. I’m still putting it on my resume.

Speaking of resumes, I had to spend the entire rest of the summer applying for ‘real’ jobs, meaning those with better health coverage than a year’s supply of Band-Aids. I only have one semester until graduation, so I have to secure permanent employment or face returning to living at home. The only thing more embarrassing than a 22-year-old man who still resides with his parents, is a 22-year-old man getting arrested for trespassing after his mom changes the locks and calls the cops, who then gets Tasered on his own front lawn for giving Officer Bennet ‘attitude.’ Only, I wasn’t even talking to him, I was yelling at my mom in front of all the neighbors about how everybody knows those ain’t her real eyebrows. Yeah, that was really funny, wasn’t it, Mom?

Unfortunately, getting hired as a journalist is harder than finding a high school graduate at a NASCAR race. The problem is the horde of college students with ‘communications’ degrees. If you were to stop reading for a minute, walk outside and shake a tree, chances are 30 or 40 Newhouse alumni would fall out, most of whom would offer you a business card.

‘But I don’t run a publication or TV station,’ you would say.

‘That’s OK,’ they’d reply grimly. ‘I stole those business cards from the manager at Burger King.’

I even tried to break into TV news as an anchor based on my sex appeal by using the tricks of famous news personalities. But no amount of stomach stapling, ThighMastering or South Beach Dieting got me to look as good in a skirt as Katie Couric. I was going to try sleeping my way to the top, but that damn Charlie Gibson beat me to it. I did land one job offer as a morning news show co-host, but I had to say, ‘Look, Lauer, I’m not going down with your ship. If the ‘Today’ show was ‘The Simple Life,’ you’d be Nicole Ritchie, and Paris has left the building.’

So I have one last semester to find a major that will make me marketable in an area in which I excel. Let’s see: I can eat 17 pies in a minute, throw a puppy farther than 38 yards and, as Officer Bennet found out, take eight straight taser shots without going down. All these skills combined make me a basically no talent, useless drag on society. According to the SU guidebook, this qualifies me to be either a doctoral candidate in poetry or … a communications major.

Nuts.

Published on August 29, 2006 at 12:00 pm