I have a very dear friend who shall remain nameless, mostly because I don’t want her to read this post about how great she is and start thinking selfish thoughts like, “Oh hell yeah, Lorca thinks I rock. She’ll totally babysit my children any time I ask her to.” The dear friend made one fatal mistake several years ago: she decided to go to college and major in how to be poor.
More accurately, she became a social worker, which is just another way of guaranteeing you will never own your very own personal Faberge egg. Then, my wonderful friend got an even better idea. Apparently, you can become mildly less poor as a social worker if you spend thousands of dollars to get a Master’s degree in how to be poor.
INTERESTING NOTE ON WHY I’M NOT JUST BEING A JUDGMENTAL BITCH RIGHT NOW: I, too, have a degree in how to help society. I went to college and then got a Master’s degree in education, and let me tell you, teachers are the country club set compared to social workers.
My poor friend (poor as in life is poopy, not poor as in she has no Faberge egg because she’s a social worker) had to write this really profound paper for her first graduate level poor person class and the paper was entitled, “Why I Want To Be A Social Worker.” I swear to you, that was the real live topic of this paper in grad school. Unfortunately, it was such a stupid topic that my dear friend had a lot of trouble writing it, mostly because she couldn’t think of anything profound to say about her career path AND because it had to be cited in APA style.
“How about, ‘I want to be a social worker because I’m tired of NOT living under the highway overpass’?” I suggested helpfully.
“Maybe, ‘I want to be a social worker because all the other majors were full’?” she suggested.
“Or, ‘I’m Hindu and I was a total shit head in a previous life’?” I countered.
“I could go with, ‘I have way too much free time to watch reruns of Psych, and this should cut into my pointless me time’?”
Eventually we did realize that the amount of time we spent making fun of her paper was more time than it would have taken to actually write the paper, and that’s discounting how much time was spent mixing drinks during this conversation. Now that all the joking is out of the way, I will openly say that the world is a much better place because of people like my friend who have agreed to be poor forever. We should all totally chip in and buy her that Faberge egg.
Lorca Damon 
I would love to read a tongue in cheek paper about the whys and wherefores of being a Social Worker. Talk about a profession that is unappreciated and unloved.
It is completely unappreciated! This particular friend is a social worker who works in domestic violence. THIS is the amazing person who holds your hand at 2am during the rape kit. And it sucks that as a teacher, she refers to me as her “rich friend!”
Love this post! I majored in English AND Philosopy– at Vanderbilt. That education does not really help society in the way a social worker does–but maybe in some small literary/philosophical way? That said, I am poor ( except for a brief period of being married to a rich guy who flew his very own jet), and sometimes I think ‘why didn’t I major in something I could get a job in– like social work or teaching’–I swear!