A woman without a vocation

I miss college. I miss the sheer ritual of going to class everyday, knowing that I'm learning something, no matter how useless that knowledge may be and looking forward to writing papers. (yea, I'm a dork, I know)
I miss the group discussions about communication theory and why the author chose that word for that particular poem and why historical context has as much to do with each piece of literature you read as anything else does.
In college, I kicked ass. I was the smart, insightful girl who wrote thought-provoking papers that professors sometimes used in class examples or spent half a page writing glowing comments about. I knew what to do there and what was expected for a favorable result and subsequent experience.
Post-college, things have not been what I would call easy for me in the realm of intellectual fulfillment.
Perhaps because although I went into journalism, then communication theory, which encompassed all aspects of communication, I never really had a clear idea of what I wanted to do.
I originally majored in political science, planning to go to law school, but sort of lost my desire to do that mid-way through my sophomore year. Perhaps I should've stayed with political science, given my recent foray into politics and how much it affected me, but I just didn't want to at the time.
I decided that I wanted to write. I had always enjoyed writing, had written short stories on my parents' typewriter from the time I was about 7, and when I really though about it, writing was the only thing that ever made me happy, so I changed my major.
For some reason, though, rather than focusing on creative writing or English, I chose to focus on journalism. I think I liked the glamour it conjured for me, which, after working for a newspaper for almost four years, is almost laughable to me now. I imagined dashing about like Katharine Hepburn in a trenchcoat and reporting to someone like Humphrey Bogart who would say, "Did you get the story, doll face?"
That is, quite clearly, not what happened. I ended up as a copy editor at a newspaper that's very foundation is hypocrisy and mediocrity, and I stayed there for far too long while letting whatever love I had once had for journalism ebb out of me like the slow leak in a tire.
So, here I am. I don't know what to do. I've applied for everything from PR at both the Catholic Diocese and the Jewish Family Services Organization (I'm an equal opportunity desperate job-seeker), to a copy writer at QVC, the shopping network. To demonstrate my patheti-sadness (oh, it's a word), I wasn't even contacted to interview for the first two, and I was deemed "not worthy" for one reason or another to write about decorative, yet affordable porcelain dalmations for QVC.
It's a cold job market, or I'm completely incapable of getting a job that I like that pays me above the poverty line. Let me believe the former for right now because the latter is just too depressing for words.
But I soldier on with what appears to be a useless college degree and gross deficiency of useful work experience and genuinely hope that I don't have to install a phone line in order to make extra money as a psychic or phone sex operator.