When you're not employed, people who were never interested before are now very interested in what you do day to day. While I was in school and working, at most someone would ask, "How is your thesis going?" But that was standard graduate student small talk. Now that I'm free of that, when people ask me what I'm doing, they really want to know.

Matt who used to ask, "How was your day?" now asks, "What did you do today?" His new habit of asking me of my daily actions vaguely reminds me of my mother who asked me that same question with genuine interest underlined with a hope that I didn't spend it doing anything immoral or illegal.

Several people are curious as to what someone who does not want to teach writing to a classroom full of college freshmen will end up doing with a MA in English. (For those familiar with the field, my emphasis was in composition and rhetoric.) I didn't major in English because I wanted a job in the field. I majored in English because I have a love/hate relationship with writing.

I imagine at this point you're now searching for grammatical and spelling errors while you pick apart my words and point out my sentence fragments. Just remember, I said I majored in English, I never said I was a good writer.

Other than my mother, it's usually those who have gotten their own college degree (or currently working towards one) who ask how things are going on the job front. No one really believes that a college degree will magically result in a good job, but I think we still secretly hope that it will help us along the way.