In one of my favorite scenes from "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, the main character Esther Greenwood imagines herself sitting in a fig tree. All the figs are the possibilities for her future: "One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attilla and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions..."
I am sitting in my own metaphorical fig tree.
I am blessed to be a senior in college and in a serious relationship.
I am blessed because I have succeeded in a job I love for two years.
But those two blessings seem to be in conflict with one another.
On one branch lies my boyfriend Creighton and his hopes and dreams.
On the other lies my future as a copy editor in South Carolina or reporter in New York City.
Let me elaborate: I have an interview for a job as a copy editor and page designer in South Carolina April 7.
The job would be a huge steppingstone for my career--it is at an up-and-coming newspaper, doing what I want to do for the rest of my working life.
Jobs in journalism are few and far between.
It is important to me--important to my career--to take the job if it is offered to me, and from where I stand right now, that seems like a legit possibility.
But my boyfriend isn't graduating this May--he still has at least two more semesters--and even if he was, I can't and wouldn't expect him to pack up and move to South Carolina to a town where he hasn't been offered a job (and it's totally implausible for us to subsist on a scant journalism salary).
Granted, it's only a five-hour drive, but long-distance relationships have failed for me in the past.
When I talk to him about it, he says, "It'll be OK; it'll work out. I'm not worried." My mom says, "If it's meant to happen, it'll happen." Josh Ritter says, "Some prophecies are self-fulfilling, but I've had to work for all of mine."
Long-distance relationships are grueling work. If we're going to make it happen, it's going to require effort and dedication on both sides of the equation.
(Not to mention the problem of the plethora of cute girls he works with at Foy.)
I don't want to be the woman who follows him around the country, even though he'll be making three times my starting salary when he graduates.
I never wanted to be a housewife. I want my own career, my own salary. I'm a strong, independent woman. (See previous column.)
And I don't want him to follow me, just "chasing tail."
I want to find a solution that's as egalitarian as our relationship.
We're young. We have virtually no obligations--no mortgages, no children--to anyone besides each other and our families.
The future is an open book--and that's great.
But it's overwhelming.
How do two people graduate college and find a job they're excited about in the same town in which they both want to live? How do people make this happen without one totally sacrificing his or her dreams, plans?
They should offer a class on this.
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