You will never find a "sure thing" job. And if you find something even close, it will pay almost nothing, will require that you work with @ssholes, or just be a soul sucking job.

Unless you plan to go to to school for nursing, there is no "safe" job. Not in IT, not in business. They have disappeared. I worked a job fair recently and you can not imagine the number of PhDs in the room trying to get a job that made 30K.

I understand where you are coming from. You're shook. Shook by the loss of your student identity, shook by the lack of structure and guidance in the world. You are shook by the fact that now the world is asking that you be a salesperson, when it never mentioned it before, much less offered training.

Really, college should make sales training manditory every year that you're in school. The reality is that you are now expected to whore yourself to the world. You're expected to know your strengths, know where the best pimps are, and skillfully sell yourself to them.

Unless you plan on selling ice cream all your life or going into customer service, then I suggest that you figure out what you enjoy and make sure you're d@mn good at it. If its writing, then start thinking outside of the box. Everything isn't newspapers and ezines. Hell, if its sex, then make sure your body and abilities are tight, and put an ad in the paper for a committed sugar daddy.

But 3 things: 1. Recognize that doing nothing will get you nowhere. 2. No one is going to draw you a road map to living your own life. 3. You can choose to have any life you want, but you'll have to work your @ss off to get it.

Good luck!

"Plus, I lost my license to a DUI conviction (that got me fired from one of those newspaper internships)..."

See what you did there? That's called burying the lede.

Carey: Bravo.

MaxMillion: Blow me.

This metaphor was told by Louise Hay; a man spent his entire life climbing a ladder to reach Success. When he reached the top of the ladder, he realized he had the ladder leaned against the wrong wall.

That's what the letter writer did. He didn't pay attention to the obvious signs, and so I must print it in bold type to get through to the idiots out there. Writing is no longer a paid profession.

I wrote this. You think I got paid for it? Cary Tennis wrote this article. Do you think he got paid for it? Do you think any of these letter writers get payed ANY FREAKING THING????

Here's some advice to you, young college graduate: Learn how to flip burgers. Get a business degree: since all business management is entirely fictional, doing nothing real and tossing around meaningless words, this is a perfect field for a creative writer. Watch Breaking Bad and pick up tips for making crystal meth and selling it to school children, which is a more honest living than working for the Defense Department or Rush Limbaugh.

There is nothing wrong with being a plumber; it's messy and is not considered prestigious by Joan Walsh - until she needs the leak in her sink stopped. And she'll pay you - which is more than what she does for any writer.

I'm sorry you wasted your college money and your time. Take some comfort that there are a lot of other people who set their ladders against the wrong wall.

Get a real job

Isn't it kind of sad that the career this LW might have spent his/her whole life dreaming about is collapsing? Sure, journalism won't die, but it looks and will continue to look nothing like the journalism adults grew up with. Isn't that sad? It may be totally hip and cool to pretend you love change, but generation after generation mourning its old way of life tells me we crave stability.

As for you, LW, my sympathy for you personally went way down with that whole "DUIs are such an inconvenience!" thing. Maybe learn a lesson here and be glad you didn't hurt someone.

If you really want to work as a journalist, consider relocating overseas to a country where English is not a first language. Local publications often require native English speakers for writing and polishing. You maybe able to work as a stringer for international papers that won't hire you as a full-time employee. You won't make much, but should be able to support yourself which is an improvement over your current situation.

I swear there was something just like this about 3 weeks ago.

1. Find a new career.

2. Embrace poverty and marginlization and ostracism.

3. Attach yourself to an agenda.

Number three is your best bet for success in journalism. Seek out, find, and ingratiate yourself to those with power and money. Understand what ideas and views they support, then do your best to support and defend those ideas and views. Within a few years, you'll be set.

Heres a few ideas to get you started:

Gay and Lesbian rights
Women's oppression
Israel's security (actually, anything about Jewish victimization anywhere in the world)
Global warming
The menace of organized religion
Dangerous white men in America
Starving black children in Africa, and African orphans
AIDS
"Green" anything

Stay away from:

The "global warming" economic/financial machine
The overwhelming evidence that global warming is a hoax
Palestinian rights and issues
Zionism as an active force on the world stage
The good things organized religion does
Human sexuality as something sacred, spiritual, or meaningful
Starving white kids in America, or American orphans
Heart disease in women and men, and it's correlation with labor laws and the poison of our modern-day food industry

As a journalist who now happily makes his living writing pretty much whatever he feels like after years of nightmares but is currently struggling to be prepared when the roof collapses on me, I kinda liked Cary's answer. A lot.

Oh, and yeah, read Joseph Mitchell. A lot.

Um... stop drinking? I think it's odd that Cary skipped over that little detail, except to glibly urge you to stay off the streets when you are drunk.

Drinking might be a problem in terms of any career you attempt, and might be part of the depression, rather than some annoying legal thing that you wish would go away.