• Sarah Ryan

Originally published August 26, 1998

Excerpt: Summer’s nearly over, and those of us heading back to institutions of so-called higher learning must be prepared for the perennial small-talk question: “What did you do over the summer?”

I’ve had my share of pretty typical jobs — an ice cream stand here, a retail store there. But this summer, not only did I further my education in an unconventional manner, I now have a reply guaranteed to stop anyone in their tracks: “I worked as a deejay at a strip club.” …

There are some who would say I wasted my summer. After all, I attended one of the country’s more prestigious small liberal arts schools, one with a tremendously popular outreach program. Why didn’t I take an internship with Time-Life, or study abroad in Malaysia, or at least pursue an independent research project with my adviser?

To these people I say, there is only so far in this world that book-learnin’ will get you...