Well, Hopkins, you did it. You finally got past that rush of exams that marks the halfway point of the semester.
But if those all-nighters didn't pay off, and your GPA is looking more like your JCash balance after you’ve printed all your midterm papers, it might be time to reconsider your career plans. Here are 10 career alternatives you may want to look into:
1. Blue Jay Shuttle driver.
Driving the Blue Jay Shuttle seems like a mundane career alternative, but not when you consider how entertaining it must be on the weekends. Between Friday night and Sunday morning, Hopkins students transform from studious recluses into young adults who actually have social lives. With this comes some pretty hilarious (potentially drunken) behavior that often finds it way to the backseats of the Blue Jay Shuttle, so even though lugging students around gets boring, at least you’ll have plenty of them to laugh at.
2. Photographer.
Almost anyone with a cell phone can become a photographer, especially if they have Instagram – with the right filter, even a selfie will look like it came straight from Getty Images. You can stand out from the crowd by venturing to use the Blur and Saturation tools, or just be super artsy by taking close-ups of trivial things. Most people take photos when procrastinating, anyway; might as well get paid for it.
3. Congressman.
If the recently resolved government shutdown proved anything, it’s that being a Congressman is probably one of the easiest careers you can have. Don’t like a bill? Let the government shut down until you have it your way! If you’re a bit more ethical, help everyone relive their childhoods by reading Green Eggs and Ham during a filibuster. Beats cramming for an Orgo exam.
4. McDonald’s employee.
Of course the paycheck isn’t so great, but there are perks to being employed by Ronald McDonald. For starters, there’s the free food. Who wouldn’t want unlimited access to freshly made french fries? And don’t forget about the drive thru intercom, which is just asking for you to pull pranks on customers (“What was that you said, sir? 15 Big Macs?”). So when your GPA isn’t looking too ideal, don’t sleep on working at the Golden Arches as a Plan B.
5. BuzzFeed writer.
You’ve probably wasted enough time on BuzzFeed to know how the site works: make lists, be funny. To make things easier, you can throw in gifs to provide all the humor and entertainment you need. Show your sophistication by drawing parallels between current events and scenes from Mean Girls. Stir up some emotions with pictures of cute babies or cute animals – or if you’re really daring, cute baby animals. If all else fails, you could just plagiarize from Cracked.com. BuzzFeed does it all the time, anyway.
Now is a better time than ever to cross over into the rap world. All you need is a strip club-worthy beat and a super repetitive hook ━ extra brownie points if it mentions a designer label you can’t afford, or exaggerates the balance in your checking account. Got any gold jewelry? Throw it on. All of it. Invite tons of people to your living room to film a music video (twerking is a must) and give yourself a week to hit a million views on YouTube. Once Trinidad James hits you up for a collaboration, your career is set.
7. Professor.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. And have lectures but don’t post slides on Blackboard. And refuse to curve for insanely difficult exams. Are you from a foreign country? Perfect. Use your strongest accent possible. If not, make one up. Invite your students to your office hours, but don’t help them. As a matter of fact, don’t even show up to your office hours. That way you can get revenge for all the professors of semesters past who have ruined your GPA. Karma is a lovely thing, isn’t it?
8. Hop Cop.
Hopkins tends to oversell just how intense our security is, but in reality, most of the Hop Cops you see aren’t fighting crime; they’re standing on street corners or sitting in their CR-Vs parked in the dark like Batman looming over Gotham City. Not to say that I don’t appreciate the omniscient presence of Hop Cops around campus, but it’s probably really easy to get away with not doing much if you decided to be an officer.
9. Construction worker:
Judging by the progress on North Charles Street, being a construction worker doesn’t require very much effort. Sure, you have to get up super early, but you won’t be alone: once you start drilling you’ll be surrounded by all the angry undergraduates you woke up. You can drive your bulldozer around to make it look like you’re doing work, when you’re actually just pushing dirt around. Then, you can spend your breaks wolf whistling at attractive passersby while eating your brown-bagged lunch. Sounds way more exciting than saving lives.
10. Drug pusher:
