Street: So what is it that you say you "do" in the Career Services department?
Peggy Curchack: Overall, what Career Services does is provide career advice to everyone from freshmen to the grave.
Street: When students come in and their ambitions are a little outrageous, what's going through your head?
PC: A couple of things actually. First, the most important thing to say is that I'm not God and I often feel like I'm being asked to be God. So the first thing that's going through my head is, "What can I say that is helpful?" Another question is "How do I at the same time encourage someone's ambitions and goals because sometimes they aren't realistic."
Street: Not, "this is crazy"?
PC: I'd be more likely to say, this is unrealistic, yet...
Street: Do you ever get the urge to give someone a completely wrong career advice?
PC: I'm not likely to say to somebody, "You know, I think you could make a great porn star." That's not likely to come out of my mouth. Even though we have a book in the library that has how to do it [laughs].
Street: Interesting, I'll have to look into that...
PC: But mostly, I don't think careers are crazy. [There] are cases where I'd wanna say, well, hey, let's get real and that's a hard thing to say to someone who doesn't want to hear it.
Street: You send a lot of e-mails and everyone wants to know...
PC: Do I do anything with the rest of my life besides send e-mails?
Street: And how many e-mails do you think you send per day to the college?
PC: I would say, never less than two and I try to keep it sort of at the hint of 12.
Street: So you wouldn't call yourself "Grandmaster of College e-mails"?
PC: I don't think I'd call myself that. I mean, it's fun to bitch about it, but in general I think people are pretty appreciative to see the opportunities of what's going on.
Street: So do you and Aileen [Kyung Kim] have some sort of rivalry going on as to how many e-mails you can send out?
PC: Absolutely not.
Street: So no bad blood?
PC: Haha, no I think whomever manages the senior list does more e-mails than anybody who manages the other lists.
Street: You always seem so cheerful; is there any hard partying going down in the office?
PC: This is such a nice office, it's unbelievable. It's not like you lose face because you don't know an answer. We also have an immense amount of food.
Street: So what you're saying is that you're on a natural high, no marijuana involved.
PC: That's right...no products, no products...yeah, food! Chocolate and baked goods.
Street: Do you have any shoutouts you wanna give to the career department or friends on the listserv?
PC: Um...
Street: It could be imaginary.
PC: I don't understand why the College of Arts and Sciences lets itself be intimidated and accepts a kind of second class citizenship and it makes me mad and it makes me frustrated and I don't get it. It's the largest and most diverse school and people are apologizing! I wish we could move the culture of Penn in all kinds of ways to embrace far more diverse work options as interesting and acceptable.
