Beautiful Granada, where I first began blogging.

I started to have a quarter-life (or hopefully one-fifth-life) crisis today, now that I’m back from my year abroad and facing the reality that I only have one more year of college left before I enter The Real World. Many of my friends have already graduated, and although a substantial number of them are doing really Grown-Up things at impressive companies, there are others who don’t know what to do or, as would be expected in this economy, can’t find work. Which really gets me thinking, that’s going to be me next year. Studying Linguistics is great and all, but what in the world do I do with it? I don’t want to do more schooling, at least for a while. I don’t want to work in a 9-5 desk job and I don’t want to do an unpaid internship (sorry, but it’s English’s euphemism for slave labor). And I really don’t want to move home after college. (Maybe I should have put future security over true passions and studied Business, afterall.)

So before sinking into despair, I thought maybe I should focus on some do’s.

I do like languages. I do like traveling. And I do love to write.

About The Author

Jenny

Jenny Marshall studied Language, Culture, and Society at the University of California Santa Barbara, and now teaches English in Spain. Here she writes about the intersection of language and culture, and lives a life translated by travel.