So, in keeping with the theme of this blog (i.e. new beginnings) I've decided it's time to start documenting my experiences as a fresh faced adult. I'm not a student anymore, I'm not a child anymore. But I'm also not aged and jaded yet either. I'm somewhere in between, I'm an "adultette" as I'll coin it from here on out. I thought it would be funny to post something I wrote not long after graduation from the university. This reflected my thoughts at the time, however silly and pessimistic they seemed matters little. What is important is that I've grown from this attitude. The following jargon takes place between the hours of 11 and 12, beneath an avalanche of sheets and pillows:
07/29/2009
The Unemployed Undergrad Graduate: Diploma, Check. Dream Job, Uncheck.
I graduated from college, or a university rather, more than two months ago. What this implies, this word ‘university’ is that I should be a well rounded 22 year old with a wealth of knowledge floating around in my brain. I should be able to analyze Dante’s Divina Commedia, understand and commiserate with the economic troubles facing the lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, perform basic algebraic equations on my fancy TI-83 calculator, hell even identify and accurately describe slide identifications from artists like Caravaggio and Gauguin. The funny thing is, I can do all of this. That was not sarcasm, I can identify art and appreciate Italian poetry and yearn for better times to fall upon Haiti and St. Lucia. I didn’t just ‘go to college,’ I went to a university, a very good state school filled with great professors and smart kids. While some professors were not so great and some kids were not so smart I’d like to think that I strived to be, I gobbled up my classes, I bragged about how awesome my teachers were, I even studied! Like actually studied not just sipped on a wildly expensive dessert like coffee while texting on the 3rd floor of the library. And I did it with pleasure, I did it because somewhere in my sickeningly sweet goody two shoes reality I wanted to be that well-rounded individual all of the high school counselors and parents and school officials said I would become. But perhaps even more importantly I did it for myself. I did it because I wanted to learn and be employable and be a contribution to my society not a burden. I wanted to learn Italian to feel like a child of the world, not just of “Amurika” (as the stereotypically southerners might say). I wanted to write a paper about nothing regarding a play about nothing by Samuel Beckett. I wanted to be able to waltz into a museum and search frantically for at least one piece of art that I could accurately identify (one is better than none, one is something). So I guess at the end of all of my writing and researching and studying and memorizing and stressing I thought that there might be one measly entry-level job out there for me. One tiny broom closet in the back of some office where I could hang my sweater and file or push papers all day. And yet the future looks bleak indeed. After hours, literally countless hours of applying to every single job under the sun, my basket has come up empty. I’m bilingual, I can type very fast, I’m familiar with clerical duties and Microsoft programs and not to toot my own horn but I’m super approachable. So what’s it going to take for a young girl like me to land that “I just graduated from college and I’m not sure what I want to do with my life yet, maybe I’ll apply to grad school next year will you please hire me” job? In a word, experience. In this economy, which continues to look drearier and more solemn each day, the only thing that big fish in that even bigger pond wants from his minnows is experience. And that ladies and gentlemen I do not have. I have a nice G.P.A and leadership skills and loads of professors who would vouch for me if asked, but I do not have the faintest clue about accounting, or how to fire somebody, or how to make a Bible of an excel spreadsheet in under the amount of time it would take to make a cup of coffee. What I’m offering isn’t good enough and what they’re willing to train me on is next to none. This I’m finding harder and harder to swallow. It’s difficult to come to terms with the idea that all of your hard work (while not for not) really hasn’t gotten you where you’d like to be because that water marked piece of paper hanging in a frame on your wall doesn’t mean much if you can’t even pay the bills. These bills being student loans, those beastly dollar amounts that got you here in the first place! I guess all I really want is that small broom closet somewhere so that I can acquire some new knowledge, nurse a morning latte and be thankful that even if I didn’t land my dream job 8 weeks out of school, at least I’m sitting in a broom closet indoors instead of in a box on the street.
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