OK Anonymouse at 5:40 a.m., I'll be sure to check my credentials with you next time I take up my keyboard. I guess I must not be a writer then, because you say so.

There are loads of writers who actually do make a living with words, who aren't starving in garrets penning deathless prose.

Technical writers. Ad copywriters. Newspaper writers. Marketing writers.

Even though the shelf life of these writings may be rather shorter than the aforementioned's novel, they do take quite a lot of work, and someone who can string words together to do it. I would humbly suggest that you don't spout off nonsense in the wee hours of the morning about other people's professions. Especially if you know very little about them.

Thank you so much. I really appreciated that.

I found the kids to be great.

It's the parents who were obnoxious. I mean... these are my neighbors out here in burbland... I see them volunteering at the elementary school, putting on neighborhood garage sales, washing their cars, and so on.

Put them in a lawn chair at the side of a field watching a bunch of second graders playing baseball, and they turn into an entirely different animal. All of a sudden, they know every kid on the team. They "cheer" for their kids, but it sounds an awful lot like yelling at the kids to me. They get all their pent-up burbland emotions out on their sleeves for a bunch of second graders. The kids... some of them are actually interested in baseball, some are building sand castles in the infield. That's ok, they're kids.

Lucky for me, my son and daughter decided that baseball wasn't their thing. We tried it. Fine by me... there are plenty of sports/activities that they can participate in that don't seem to have quite the level of parental angst involved as baseball.

And... unlike the kids in the LLWS, I'm proud to say that mine still have time to do things like build stuff with Legos, read books, stare at the sky, and participate in sports at a reasonable level. Kinda nice.

We don't have cable, and the kids aren't allowed to watch TV with commercials (i.e. PBS or DVDs only). They see plenty of Sponge Bob and whatnot on DVD from the library, but I hate the commercials. Mostly I just tell them to turn off the TV and they find something else to do.

After one week on vacation in a beach condo with cable, where we slept late every day and let the kids watch Nickelodeon and other TV trash (hey, it's vacation), guess what. They're asking for all sorts of weird candy they'd never heard of before, for sugar cereals we've never had, my daughter (age 7) pointed out a dress in a shop as being "sexy", my son is asking for cheap plastic toys he never knew existed before.

My kids don't live in a box... they go to public school, they have lots of friends, they play at other kids houses, they're in sports and other activities.

Thankfully, we're back home, the TV is off again, and this will fade. I can't imagine letting that influence into my home every day, for hours at a time. There's this magical off switch. Works every time.

And changed my major to English. I was also the good student in high school who took all sorts of advanced classes, and then had an identity crisis in college when EVERYONE else was like me... and all of a sudden I was only above average, not outstanding any more.

I've ended up spending most of my career doing a job that mostly didn't exist when I started college--I'm a technical writer.

I won't say every minute is riveting excitement. But it is a good profession for someone with a technical mind, a desire to figure out how stuff works, and a decent command of English.

The other thing I've learned along the way is that technical writing is NOT who I am. It's what I do to pay the bills, I'm reasonably good at it, I have a 401K, a house, and I pay my own way in the world. But as a human being, I am many other things--a parent, a spouse, a musician, a birdwatcher, a gardener.

Speaking as one who has served on several hiring committees at work, the "ticket to ride" in almost any corporation is a college degree. Unless you're in a specific scientific or technical field (say... marine biology... civil engineering... medicine), any degree is fine. I've hired technical writers with completely interesting and largely irrelevant degrees--history, art, business, vocal performance, interior design, just to name a few. English literature has nearly nothing to do with tech writing anyway, but it's seen as relevant. I loved studying Chaucer and Shakespeare and Victorian novels, but have not used a whit of it in the workplace. Even the writing style is completely different.

After that degree, the important part is the resume and portfolio, which only comes with experience. I don't care about a person's degree in medieval history (other than interesting water cooler chat), but about which companies they worked for and what they did. I'm sure this is true for many professions that involve soft skills (people, words, ideas)--the degree subject really doesn't matter.

Get a bachelor's degree in something. Anything. Go join the Peace Corps or Americorps, and see the world. Try your hardest to stay out of debt in college and after, it will allow you to take more risks early in your career (before marrying, kids, mortgage, etc.). Don't go to law school unless it's really what you want--it's very expensive.

You'll do fine. Whatever career path you take, chances are it may not even exist yet. Good luck explaining this to your parents from the old country, they probably won't understand. College can be fun... but not if you're having panic attacks.

Good luck.