The Height of Salacious Sophistication
Issue date: 5/12/09 Section: Ask Alfred
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Graduation is coming up really quick and I don't know what to do about my relationship. My partner and I met at Sloan and have been going out for a while but now she has found a good (meaning, existent) job in Chicago and I am still looking for a job in the career of my dreams. The problem is that my best prospects so far are a phosphate mining operation in Kazakhstan or a pig farming business in Mexico. I like my partner a lot but I also have student loans to pay, and a career wouldn't be half-bad as well. What should I do?
Lost in Graduation
Dear Lost,
You randy ruffian… I get this question every year and every year the answer is the same. For starters, as you may know, it is a universally-accepted fact that like a venereal disease, the end of any academic cycle brings with it an automatic "Get Ot of This Relationship Free" card. This card can be used up to a month after graduation and is applicable even if:
a. You have practically been living together for the past 2 years after initiating relations at the Warren Center.
b. You have been known to the wider Sloan community as a couple rather than an individual.
Under the established rules, your partner is not allowed to recriminate you, cry, make a public scene and/or "accidentally" get herself/you pregnant. You are as an added bonus, allowed to keep up to half of their CD collection. Just remember to be as gracious if you are on the receiving end of the card as you expect others to be when using your Sloan-given right.
If you are not looking for a clean slate, long distance is hard to do, but it is made much easier by the "m" word. Sure, you might be thinking "but we have only been going out since that drunken night in Tokyo over Spring Break"… Those considerations do not hold in the current economic climate, especially if your partner has a good job and you don't. Remember, marriage means 50% of your student debt gets immediately wiped out (by being piled onto others). To keep things in perspective, no other job is offering signing bonuses that good these days.
The immaculate A.P.S
2. Dear Alfred,
I am a graduating Sloanie a mere two weeks away from the end of classes. I am aware that in less than a month I will no longer be able to share in the "getting drunk at the BHP every Wednesday night" tradition and will have to find another place for watered down drinks and chipped beer bottles reused for the umpteenth time in the city I am moving to. I somehow feel that I should be getting as much BHP action as possible now to compensate for that (front-load my alcohol intake, if you will) but the sad fact is I cannot stand it anymore. After two years, it seems like the same thing over and over again. Is there a way for me to get out of this routine habit without offending ancient Sloan tradition?
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