List of Possible Avenues You Could Explore After You Graduate From College

• You could start your own hired-assassin business and put the “V” back in violence.
  
• Or, if you’re not into the whole killing-people-for-money scene, you could start a door-to-door lemonade stand, or open a restaurant with no chairs, just hammocks and tables.
  
• You could also start a medieval scribe messenger service, where all the messengers would be dressed up as medieval scribes and skip along while carrying messages written on rolled-up pieces of papyrus as they play the flute. The messages would of course be written in calligraphy with quill pens and read aloud in mock old English. And if you don’t want the flute, you can request a piccolo, but that costs extra.
  
• Then there’s always the option of creating a prison-themed restaurant called “The Pen.” Modeled after a composite of famous prison cafeterias from all over the country, “The Pen” would replicate in every detail what it’s like to chew down slop in the big house, right down to the leering eyes of the guards who are just waiting to blast you with their twelve gauge shotguns. Now when you first arrive at “The Pen,” you will be stripped of your street clothes, issued a uniform and number, shackled, and forced to shuffle through line being careful not to make eye contact with the dangerous men in hairnets serving you borderline inedible food. And instead of a maitre d’ there will be a soulless warden; a piece of advice: unless you’re looking to get thrown into solitary, don’t dare ask for a menu: just like in the state or county pen, there are no menus at “The Pen.” Oh, and every so often, a random diner would get “shanked,” because it’s all part of the experience.
  
• You could hit the road with a covered wagon and do the Oregon Trail. Your biggest decisions will be deciding whether or not to pay for the ferry or ford the river—clearly risking your oxen, fellow party members, and supplies—and whether or not to stop when someone inevitably gets a snake bite.
  
• Or if you don’t wanna travel, if you just wanna stay at home, you could write a biography on Ralph Macchio entitled: Paint the Fence: The Ralph Macchio Story, or your very own book on public speaking entitled: Just Picture Them In Their Underwear: Insert Your Name Here’s Guide To Public Speaking.
  
• You could become both the originator and central pioneer of “pirate rock” by forming a pirate rock band called Occupation: Pirate. All the members of your band will have the names of different positions on a ship: they’ll be the captain, the first mate, the cabin boy, et cetera, and your first album will be titled Land ho! and your first single, “Walking the Plank.” Other song titles will include: “Swabbin’ the Deck,” A Plundering We Will Go,” “Sea Legs,” and “Shiver Me Timbers.” Oh—and this is the clincher—every album will come with a free collectible eye patch. Arrrr! With this idea you’ll surely be setting sail for success.
  You could decide to run for president.—You can’t actually even run until you’re thirty-five, so that gives you about thirteen years to just hang out and get your platform, and vice-president and cabinet, and financial backing together.
  
• You could work the fields and till the soil of our earth with the quiet dignity of a peasant.
  
• There’s also the possibility of traveling the country performing impromptu hit sticks drum solos. Remember those things?
  
• Or you could be a warrior poet, or the guy back in medieval times who tasted the king’s food to make sure it hadn’t been poisoned, or a carpetbagger, or a mercantilist, or a muckraker—yellow journalism.
  
• Or if none of these possibilities I’ve listed work for you, you could, in a very controversial move, decide to retire before you even start working. It’s brilliant! You could move into a retirement home in Florida. Switch from Centrum to Centrum silver. Begin to have your “good” days and your “bad” days. Take to walking around with a walker and gab with the other old-timers about the “good old days” and how you don’t understand these kids today with their rock and roll and their MTV. The younger staff members would ask you to regale them with tales from your youth; to tell them of simpler times since past. You could begin to liken your daily experience to an old senile man or woman in a supermarket, who, every time he or she picks something new from the shelf mischievous kids steal all the items from your cart. And like a modern-day Sisyphus, you never get the boulder up the mountain; you never get out of the supermarket.