Ask Emily: 12-16-2002

Chris,First let me say that your email, complete with its excellent grammar and spelling, suggests a miserable failure as an English major.Secondly, let me say that you have to decide what you care about more: material success or doing something that you enjoy and value. I majored in English in college, and though it hasn't gotten me anywhere professionally (although I am going to get my PhD so that someone will pay me to write things and yell at college students all day), I am very glad that I didn't spend my college time working away at something I thought would bring me money but that I didn't like or that I thought was boring. If financial success is important to you, however, then perhaps you wouldn't be truly happy in a field where everyone is broke and penniless. Like I said, you need to decide that for yourself.Also, you are only a freshman now. You aren't even half of the way done with your first year of college. Believe me, if you are indecisive now you will change your mind at least a few more times before you finally settle on something, and that's fine. You are not expected to come into college knowing immediately what you want to do and the people who do that have things seriously wrong with them and are probably gay as well. Take a wide variety of classes and see what it is that you like. You shouldn't feel pressured to declare a major and you have at least a year (if not longer) before your school will force you to choose. If you pick something that your school isn't good at teaching you can always switch schools to somewhere that focuses on your field. Just take your time and figure out for yourself what it is that you care about. The rest will be the easy stuff.

If he chooses English I hope he's ready for a lot of pretension and assholes, not necessarily in that order.

Oooook, then.Assuming that this is for real (although it has me wishing that it was a cruel joke), I am not sure where to start on this one, but I'll just pick a place. Your problems are not with women. You are a loser and you know that you are a loser, but the thing that makes you a loser isn't what you think it is. Understand?Let me put it this way: If you are honestly so depressed and full of self-loathing that you are considering hurting yourself, what makes you a loser is that you are not doing anything to make yourself better. Rather than seek out help and try to make your life other than the stagnant cesspit that it currently is, you are behaving like a whiny little bitch and complaining about your shitty situation. This is completely unacceptable and if you are going to moan about how crappy a person you are and how women won't like you but you never do anything to change things then you might as well just die.I am sorry if I sound harsh here, but I really think that people have control of their own lives and that the decisions that they make are indicative of their quality as people. If I had the problems that you have I would waste no time getting my fucked-up head in to a therapist so that I could get my life back on track. You are in complete control of what you do and similarly you have the ability to make your life into whatever you want it to be. If you want to stay a pathetic jerk who has sex with prostitutes then you are choosing to stay that way and should learn to accept yourself for who you are or shut up. But make a decision about who you want to be and BE THAT PERSON. It is completely in your hands and no one is going to swoop down from the clouds and hand you a new life.I am glad that you see the woman problem as being secondary to your other issues. There is simply no way that you could have anything to offer someone when you are as twisted up inside as you seem to be. What I suggest that you do is get some help as soon as you possibly can. There is no end of helpful and trustworthy people who want to make you better, from therapy to support groups, and you are going to need help in order to get your shit straightened out. You need someone to talk to. The fact that you wrote this to me is a small but good start, but obviously an advice column on a humor website is not the place to look for serious help.All joking aside, if you are honestly thinking about hurting yourself, don't do it. It'd be pretty dumb to do that, and buddy, being dumb is never not dumb; you know the old saying. Additionally, if you need someone to talk to and it gets to the point where you are going to do something bad, there's a suicide and crisis hotline in NYC that you can call at (212) 673-3000 (I assume that you are in NYC from the hooker part, but if not, you can go here or here or here and find a number in your area).Your life is what you make it, so hang in there and make it good.

Poor guy. Poor hookers that had to sleep with him.