It seems to me at just this moment

It seems to me at just this moment (I am writing this at 7:55 in the evening of Tuesday, October 4, 1955, upstairs in the dormitory) that, should you choose to consider that final observation as a metaphor, it is the story of my life in a sentence -- to be precise, in the latter member of a double predicate nominative expression in the second independent clause of a rather intricate compound sentence. You see that I was in truth a grammar teacher.
It is not fit that you should be at your ease in the Progress and Advice Room, for after all it is not for relaxation that you come there, but for advice. Were you totally at your ease, you would only be inclined to consider the Doctor's words in a leisurely manner, as one might regard the breakfast brought to one's bed by a liveried servant, hypercritically, selecting this, rejecting that, eating only as much as one chooses. And clearly such a frame of mind would be entirely out of place in the Progress and Advice Room, for there it is you who have placed yourself in the Doctor's hands; your wishes are subservient to his, not vice versa; and his advice is given you not to be questioned or even examined (to question is impertinent; to examine, pointless), but to be followed to the letter.
"That isn't satisfactory," the Doctor said, referring to my current practice of working only when I needed cash, and then at any job that presented itself. "Not any longer."
He paused and studied me, as is his habit, rolling his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other and back again, under his pink tongue.
"You'll have to begin work at a more meaningful job now -- a career, you know: a calling, a lifework."
"Yes, sir."
"You are thirty."
"Yes, sir."
"And you have taken an undergraduate degree somewhere. In history? Literature? Economics?"
"Arts and sciences."
"That's everything!"
"No major, sir."
"Arts and sciences! What under heaven that's interesting isn't either an art or a science? Did you study philosophy?"
"Yes."
"Psychology?"
"Yes."
"Political science?"
"Yes."
"Wait a minute. Zoology?"
"Yes."
"Ah, and philology? Romance philology? And cultural anthropology?"
"Later, sir, in the graduate school. You remember, I --"
"Argh!"the Doctor said, as if hawking to spit on the graduate school. "Did you study lock-picking in the graduate school? Fornication? Sailmaking? Cross-examination?"
"No, sir."
"Aren't these arts and sciences?"
"My master's degree was to be in English, sir."
"Damn you! Englishwhat? Navigation? Colonial policy? Common law?"
"English literature, sir. But I didn't finish. I passed the oral examinations, but I never got my thesis done."
"Jacob Horner, you are a fool."
My legs remained directly in front of me, as before, but I moved my hands from behind my head (which position suggests a rather too casual attitude for many sorts of situations anyway) to a combination position, my left hand grasping my left coat lapel, my right lying palm up, fingers loosely curled, near the mid-point of my right thigh.
After a while the Doctor said, "What reason do you think you have for not applying for a job at the little teachers college here in Wicomico?"