All Dr. Phil Books Are 80% Off. In Fact, Here's Ten Bucks. Take Them.

There is one thing that every recent post-grad English major knows he or she will have to endure at some point in their life.  It is something that is demeaning and humiliating and goes against every motivated writer cell in their body.  It is on the same page as graduating from the Culinary Institute of America and then becoming the head chef at Denny's.  It is, of course, working at Barnes & Noble.

Now, I for one am a huge fan of Barnes & Noble.  Bookstores make me happy and ever since I was in elementary school all I wanted was to one day walk into this bookstore and see my name on the shelves.  My last boyfriend and I used to go and hang out at the Barnes & Noble near the mall, and we would get coffee and I would read trashy novels while he read metaphorical psychosis type books that made him look super smart and me look super girly.  Those times were hands down my favorite of our whole relationship.

But still, when all you want in life if for your books to be sold at a certain place, it's a little hard to get yourself to work at one; especially one that is running thick with the entire population of your graduating high school class who four years later are equally as clueless about the real world as you are.

Any time I have gone to see a writer talk or gone to some speech about getting published, the first thing they always say is, "If you want to be a writer, work at a book store."  All of us English and writing majors know that this is an inevitability.  It's just that, well, we don't want to.  We don't want to be stocking shelves and dealing with miserable old men who can't find Reagan's autobiography, when we know that we have the potential to be squatting in front of the same run down laptop that chugged along during our four years of college, writing something that would knock the literary world on its ass.  I remember a week or two ago my friend Kristina (what up yang!) who has been in every single writing class with me since day one of freshman year, im'ed me and said, "I just applied to Barnes & Noble AND Borders."  It was tough to hear, but I knew that we would have to break eventually.

My closing statement?  This morning I applied to two different Barnes & Nobles and I wouldn't be surprised if I went out looking for a third one tomorrow.