"It's a lot of walking around and I already have a career plan that won't need to get any more specific until they have yet another career fair. I might go with you, I guess, but we wouldn't be looking at many of the same booths."

"Fair enough. I haven't actually looked at any prospects, I only have this vague notion that people will pay me a lot of money to fix them and de-age them once I can do that, but."

"Yeah, my advantage is that there's a centralized place I can sign up with."

"Also I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing in the time between graduating and actually being a competent healer. And I'm wondering if they'll let me, like, intern somewhere, or something."

"They might. I honestly don't have a great interim plan either. College perhaps."

"Prrrobably community college in my case, if that."

"There aren't magic colleges as such the way there's magic high schools but you could look into scholarships," she says. "I think the government likes giving scholarships to eclipsed, if nothing else, and you're bright enough to pick up more, write some essays, ace some tests."

"Oh the joy of standardized testing and essay writing."

She prods him in the chest. "They're pretty joyful if you get a few thousand bucks a pop, I think."

He giggles. "I suppoooooose that's enough incentive to get me through it," he sighs dramatically.

"But the career fair might give you an interim idea."

"Yeah. What would you major in, if you went to college, do you think?"

"I'm not sure. It's not like I need a credential to make a living. Maybe I'd go comp sci, I'm thinking of looking into programming when I have my eidetic working."

"Ooh, that sounds fun. I think going to med school would be completely useless even if thematically appropriate. Comp sci sounds interesting, especially if I manage to finagle my way into the same college as you."

"Med school aiming at diagnostics might not be worthless," she says, "but probably not worth the time investment, they work med students really hard and you'd barely have more magic coming out than going in." Her hand's trailing idly over his chest in random patterns. "I was actually thinking comp sci because I think psionic tech is going to explode in the next decade or two and I want to be there - precog is my baseline occupation."

He looks down at her hand and smiles. "Well, that's a much better reason than mine."

"I mean, it also sounds fun, but lots of things would be fun and I'm not going to major in English and do recreational Shakespeare scholarship."

He makes a face. "Majoring in English does not sound fun."

"Maybe not for you. I like old British fiction."

"Well I don't hate old British fiction but it's my impression there's a lot of essay writing and finding meaning where there's none in an English major."

"There's meaning! I mean, I'm sure some people make shit up but it's not a requirement."

"If you say so," he says dubiously.

"All right, you caught me, everything Shakespeare ever wrote wasn't even in English, he just hypnotizes everyone with soothing stress patterns until we impose plot and character and humor and wordplay and literary allusions and narrative structure onto the text."

"Hey, that's not what I'm saying!" he protests. "I'm just saying that it often looks like choices that are completely meaningless are minutely analyzed for the sake of finding meaning. I mean, if I were a writer there'd be a lot of details I'd include merely for the sake of verisimilitude with no hidden symbolism whatsoever."

"Sure, but you'd have to pick which details somehow. Shakespeare wasn't rolling dice and may have made subconscious choices. It can get navel-gazey, but not all of it is."