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Job Worries
2/3/04 21:52I feel sometimes like I wish my parents had taught me a useful, marketable skill, such as piledriving or meatpacking, but instead they encouraged me to play Bach sonatas.
I spent most of my formative years doing creative things--playing music, writing, doing art projects, and the like. I continued to follow my heart through college, because I realized, or thought I realized, that picking a major and possible career based on what would be marketable and make you money isn't the way to live a happy, satisfactory life, and that I would rather be mostly broke and be happy with myself than have more money and die early from stress and displeasure.
Unfortunately all the lofty ideals in the world won't get one a job.
I have 73 days until graduation, at which point my student loans will start kicking in, I will need to move, and I will need to start paying rent on an apartment in an expensive city where the job market isn't as good as it was a year ago.
All the fields in which I have job experience need you to show more experience or have a degree or both. I can't even get a job feeding lab animals because I don't have the right kind of certification training, despite having three years of experience. You need a bachelor's degree to make sure you've ordered enough bedding for the monkeys. Fields I know I would enjoy working in (book preservation, for instance) want you to show experience--despite interning in a museum over break and working for an archive for the past three years, I don't have the right kind of experience.
I feel really scared.
How can I have gone to one of the most prestigous colleges in the country and been completely unprepared for this? How can I have let things get this bad despite doing everything I could to find jobs over the past six years that were varied, interesting, and potentially useful as careers? Why did the job market die two years into my schooling?
How can I reconcile my heart with the fact that I need to keep a roof over my head?
I can't help but think of my dad at times like this. He's been running his own business in some form or another since before I was born. When the economy tanked in the mid 90's, he went to go work for other people for a while, selling insurance and stuff like that. He was keeping regular hours for the first time in his life; I got to see him; I felt glad that my dad was doing something normal for a change because I'd always really resented the way he'd put work ahead of family, even after I realized why he felt he had to do that, and even after I realized that he probably actually had had to do that. I still resent it, in fact.
But he wasn't happy, working for someone else. Neither am I.
That scares me so much I feel almost sick.
If I have kids, I don't want to doom them to an existence where they don't see their mother because she's off writing somewhere, and can't give all the opportunities they want to their children because they never had them themselves, and so weren't able to get the good job with the money to let their kids go off to the retreat that looks good on their resume when they get out of college.
But I write, damn it! It's precarious, but it's what I do--possibly one of the only things I would really ever want to do, through some fault of biochemistry, spiritual nature or upbringing--and it makes me happy!
But I want stability!
But I write!
Hear my complaint and celebration: my life will be precarious!
Fuck it.
I'm so fucking scared.
I spent most of my formative years doing creative things--playing music, writing, doing art projects, and the like. I continued to follow my heart through college, because I realized, or thought I realized, that picking a major and possible career based on what would be marketable and make you money isn't the way to live a happy, satisfactory life, and that I would rather be mostly broke and be happy with myself than have more money and die early from stress and displeasure.
Unfortunately all the lofty ideals in the world won't get one a job.
I have 73 days until graduation, at which point my student loans will start kicking in, I will need to move, and I will need to start paying rent on an apartment in an expensive city where the job market isn't as good as it was a year ago.
All the fields in which I have job experience need you to show more experience or have a degree or both. I can't even get a job feeding lab animals because I don't have the right kind of certification training, despite having three years of experience. You need a bachelor's degree to make sure you've ordered enough bedding for the monkeys. Fields I know I would enjoy working in (book preservation, for instance) want you to show experience--despite interning in a museum over break and working for an archive for the past three years, I don't have the right kind of experience.
I feel really scared.
How can I have gone to one of the most prestigous colleges in the country and been completely unprepared for this? How can I have let things get this bad despite doing everything I could to find jobs over the past six years that were varied, interesting, and potentially useful as careers? Why did the job market die two years into my schooling?
How can I reconcile my heart with the fact that I need to keep a roof over my head?
I can't help but think of my dad at times like this. He's been running his own business in some form or another since before I was born. When the economy tanked in the mid 90's, he went to go work for other people for a while, selling insurance and stuff like that. He was keeping regular hours for the first time in his life; I got to see him; I felt glad that my dad was doing something normal for a change because I'd always really resented the way he'd put work ahead of family, even after I realized why he felt he had to do that, and even after I realized that he probably actually had had to do that. I still resent it, in fact.
But he wasn't happy, working for someone else. Neither am I.
That scares me so much I feel almost sick.
If I have kids, I don't want to doom them to an existence where they don't see their mother because she's off writing somewhere, and can't give all the opportunities they want to their children because they never had them themselves, and so weren't able to get the good job with the money to let their kids go off to the retreat that looks good on their resume when they get out of college.
But I write, damn it! It's precarious, but it's what I do--possibly one of the only things I would really ever want to do, through some fault of biochemistry, spiritual nature or upbringing--and it makes me happy!
But I want stability!
But I write!
Hear my complaint and celebration: my life will be precarious!
Fuck it.
I'm so fucking scared.
