Cary! ANOTHER "I'm mid-20s, fabulously talented and don't know what to do" letter? Seriously, have you run out of ideas and taken a page from Tom Tomorrow and just started recycling the same 5 themes?

This is what happens when crank-letter writers meet a columnist who phones it in.

Why bother. I'm done reading your column.

One of my favorite blogs is AdventureGirl, http://adventuregirl.journalspace.com

She's a Dubai-based flight attendant who travels around the world.

Just read her blog a bit (she's college educated, and quite a solid writer) and you'll see someone bright, interesting, with great heart, and joie de vivre. She's spent a few years as an int'l flight attendant and enjoyed every minute of it.

I'm in my 40s, have a degree from a good university, and have worked the corporate world, and now am very happily self-employed, but if I were in my 20s, and had it to do all over again, I might spend a few years being an Adventure Girl myself!

Plus, as a child myself of an airline family, when you work for an airline, you get non-rev standby employee travel benefits -- basically, almost no-cost flying -- interline deals with other airlines, and fantastic discounts at hotels and resorts -- which is a fabulous benefit for your off-time!!

Cary's on target -- GO FOR IT!!!

(Just make sure it's a decent airline. Check with "Ask the Pilot" for recommendations! ;-) )

If you're so smart and gifted and talented and destined to do something important why has it never occurred to you to regard all labels and grading - particularly of young people who haven't actually achieved anything yet - with scepticism and suspicion?

Did you never find it revolting to be graded and streamed to the point where you earned all the good adjectives and no doubt there were a whole of others in your class who got all the bad ones? Sure, education has its reasons to do this - including getting mum and dad to pay up big to optimise the potential of their darling genius child - this to some extent, but then for you to hang on to these labels into adult life is pathetic. And it's even more pathetic to think that they actually still mean something. Being the kind of person who does Something Important has nothing to do with the labels you earned growing up - sorry.

Use your intelligence to actually see people and yourself for who they really are - which has nothing to do with competition, labelling and predicting. Give your colleagues in the airline a break and kill the idea that you are 'too good' for this job. They'll sniff it out fast and hate you for it if you don't.

All the labels don't mean a thing. What matters is your own happiness, and what you do with this brief time in your life before serious obligations like children, marriage or partnership, mortgages, lawns, and dogs. Absolutely go. You will still have your education, and an interesting resume for when you tire of being a flight attendant.

I have the corporate job, the house, the spouse, the kids, the lawn, and the dog. They're all great, I love them dearly and chose them. Mostly the corporate job sucks but pays the bills. I look back on the small amount of travelling the spouse and I did back before kids as the best thing we ever did, and wish we'd done more. You will be a better person for seeing the world.

Go!

I think that this letter, Tennis's response, and Salon's decision to run it, are very indicative of how Salon sees itself.

I think it is all the more telling that Salon probably doesn't even realize how nauseatingly classist and privileged it comes off with these little fluff pieces. Example #3,567 of why you should never believe your own hype.

Honestly, are all liberals this full of shit? If so, count me apolitical.

I had a 'trolley dolly' roomie a few years ago. She'd previously been climbing the ladder at a big ad agency. After three years of flying international (and all the adventures that go with it), she quit the job and slotted straight back into adland/suburban bliss. As reported in the NY Times recently, employers are becoming more interested in people who have travelled/taken an unusual career path, not just the pro-forma robots who've risen through the ranks like every other corporate peon.

What is it with the letter writers who are bashing this person? Ok, so she earned all the 'gifted' labels in school and has no clue what to do next. Does that make her a bad person? No. She's just genuinely confused.

Personally, I found Cary's response very inspiring, but maybe that's just because I'm a 20something who has no clue what to do after I graduate. (Next month... aaahh!!) This letter writer at least knows what she wants, and Cary is pushing her to take the leap.

Also, my best friend dropped out of university just last year to become a flight attendant. The job is exhausting and stressful but he loves it, and gets to travel the world. It's not the job for me, though I've dreamed of it sometimes - but for people who are willing and able to take it, do! If you'll pardon the cheesy pun, LW - go and spread your wings. :)

You cannot waste time or education, so relax and enjoy life. You feel you have been privileged so take a service job in an industry going bankrupt and cutting employee benefits every quarter.

It is a stressful and hard job with few benefits (besides travel, but you are working so it is not the same as free vacation time) and a very low salary out of which you might have to buy your uniforms. The environment is bad for you, dirty air, exposure to flus and germs, lots of radiation, lots of elevation changes every day, dehydration due to living at 12,000 feet which is the pressure you fly in etc.

Romance and fantasy of "flying" aside, it is as hard as any service job where you deal with the public as a servant. Essentially, you are serving meals on a large bus.

If you think you would enjoy serving 300 meals in an hour and cleaning it all up with a partner before you start walking down with the drinks, go for it. It looks to me like the attendants are running a tightly timed race the whole time we are in the air.