The e-mail was short: “Josh, me and you need to have a little chat. No problems, just want to talk.”

So, one night in Nov. 2005, I took a phone call. The voice on the other end was Chris Mascaro ’06, and he was offering me the opportunity of a lifetime.

What if you had the opportunity to go to every Cornell athletics event for free, home and away; receive an all-access pass and the best seats in the house to every event; meet and talk with all the players and coaches; befriend the staff and administration in and out of Athletics, at Cornell and other schools; chat with famous media personalities, coaches and athletes from around the country, in college, professional sports and beyond?

Would you take it?

Unless you’re an English or Comp Lit major, you’ve almost certainly never encountered George Eliot’s Middlemarch, a classic 19th-century novel that, some would argue, represents the apogee of Victorian-era literature.

In my experience, the English professors here have expressed a devotion to Middlemarch so ardent it borders on occult. Almost all of my professors have, at one point or another during the semester, abandoned their lecture notes and extemporaneously composed paeans to the novel. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the English faculty met fortnightly in a subterraneous lair beneath Goldwin Smith to don Victorian era habiliments, recite passages from the book and bow down before an effigy of George Eliot.

Junior year is some heavy stuff, man. Everywhere I look, the threat of Real Life looms. Mostly I just try not to think about it, but people tell me that now is the time that I should be figuring out what I want to do with my life (and by people, I mean my mother). I am not smart enough for academia (and by “smart,” I mean “pretentious”), I have no marketable skills, and I’m not interested in going to law school (zing!).

I know you are very concerned about me, but have no fear. I did some rull, rull deep introspectin’ and made the following list. Because I ripped this scheme off from High Fidelity, I think it shows that I am serious about my future.

(Rob’s) Elana’s Top Five Dream Jobs

1. A Shirelle.