Not Right Now

I'm not blogging today. I've been overridden by the fact that I have no job following a year of looking, and, as you can clearly guess, I am not really ok with that. I was always told that having a college degree was a useful thing, something that I needed to be a successful member of society. It only takes a few seconds to realize that all of those hours you spent slavishly writing a perfect research paper on the failure of Marcus Garvey's failed expedition to Liberia in the 1920s mean nothing if you don't have any experience actually sitting at a desk and doing work.

Even if you have an internship, it isn't enough experience to actually get you the most basic of administrative assistant jobs, jobs that I've done since I was about 14 and am overqualified for without the added benefit of my college degree. I shoulder a part of this blame seeing as I didn't know what I wanted to do in college well enough to pursue work in that field. At the same time, I do expect to be able to use my degree to find some semblance of work, not a constant sink into depression and mental exhaustion. I don't expect to be loaded; I expect to support myself, to put food in my fridge and a roof over my head. The fact that I can't do this, even with all of my efforts, is sad. The sadder part is that this is across all generations. People from 23 to 53 are being left out in the cold, unable to get decent jobs after 1, 2, 3, 4, up to 6 and 7 years of searching. These people are forced to resort to the most menial of positions.

The only options that arise for people like me are jobs that would require using a full day's pay to fill my car to commute to and from the job. The fact that I live at home does help things, but it doesn't really cover for the fact that I'll end up spending most of the money that I make to cover basic costs that aren't assisted by me living at home like paying down student loans, which I am buried in to the tune of about 30,000 dollars. The bad part about that is that number actually could have been about 40,000.

Anyway, all of these things are just things to think about. I'm not asking for anyone's sympathy since I know I won't get any. All I ask is that you don't call me a layabout, don't call me lazy, don't call me entitled. I'm none of the above. I sank four years of my life and thousands more into an education. I expect it to pay some dividends. Like anyone who makes an investment, you want to get a return on it and make a profit. For me, that profit is working a job that actually utilizes the skills that I learned in college. Unfortunately, I'll most likely have to settle for doing a job that didn't require all of the debt and work that college was. But, for now, I have to call myself an unemployed college graduate.