career?

I find the concept of conceiving a career for myself difficult. I think part of me just thinks that I'll spend my college years trying to figure out what I love, and then check job listings to see if anything matches up. I do know though that further planning would ultimately prove beneficial to this process.

At the start of this year I was sure I could end up happy as a web designer. One of the things that I'm learning in IM II Design is that there is a massive community of web standards nerds. Web standards nerds are basically a community of people that busy themselves arguing over web semantics and compliance standards. Part of me wonders what they would do if the web didn't have so many limitations (IE typefaces, boxy layouts, etc.) since they would no longer have anything to complain about. Probably they would gripe about the good old days when every graphic designer didn't think they could do web design.

Nevertheless, I still see myself involved in the web. Ideally I would like to be involved in advertising (this is somewhat redundant since all web is advertising). I have a love of narrative - if I could get a job with one of the more edgy web advertising companies that would be ideal. I feel like advertising is one of the few business-related fields where the demand for creativity is still rising.

//start rant

Eventually, I think all media will be advertising. I mean, think about it - all mass media is essentially built to trick the consumer into sitting through hours of advertising. This model is obviously inefficient when faced with the option of making advertising so engaging that it replaces regular media all together. It's already happening - turn on the TV for half an hour and you'll probably be more impressed by the advertisements than the programming. It's only a matter of time before they get rid of the filler.

//end rant