Doing As We’re Told
We did everything right. We did our homework in junior high school, because we were told, “In high school, homework will be a lot harder.”
We did our homework in high school, too, so we would be prepared for the tests. We knew we needed to do well on the tests, because if we didn’t, it would hurt our GPAs. “If you have a low GPA, you won’t get into a good college,” they told us.
And then we did it, we finished high school. Some of us did better than others, but we were eager and willing. We listened to what our guidance counselors and teachers and parents said; we toured college campuses and we filled out applications at the start of senior year, we waited for acceptance letters. We applied for scholarships and student loans and filled out our roommate preference forms.
But all the while the mantra was This is what you’re supposed to be doing. You graduate from high school and you go to college. That is just what you do. I told my parents I wanted to be an author. “That’s nice,” they said, “but not very practical. Get a degree instead, and then maybe, if you have time later, you can write those books.”
And so we went to college, because that’s what smart go-getters did. We signed up for our first classes, we learned quickly which classes you could blow off and when, where you should go for parties to relieve the stress of a college education, we met more and more new people, all excited about their own futures. We declared our majors - some of us in “impractical” fields to spite our parents, others of us doing more mundane things like chemistry, public policy, or business.
We took our tests. We wrote our papers. We went to lab, we did our assignments, we bought roughly $3,000 worth of coursebooks every year, but hey, that’s just what you do. We tried our best to be engaged citizens while still living in the bubble of college, brushing aside reports of rising joblessness, of weaker economies, of worsening debt. We were all aware of it, but we were doing what we were supposed to do
We took internships. We studied abroad. We did work experience. I worked in a legislative office for a year and then spent three months as an unpaid intern with a political party. Friends volunteered at hospitals, in labs, at banks, in South Africa, in Ireland - all with the promise that this was valuable experience, that these résumés we were building would make us competitive and attractive to the job market.
And then senior year arrived, and we met with our career advisers. “What do I do to get a job?” we asked, and they obliged, providing us with the information. They double-checked our résumés and cover letters and directed us to alumni, to career fairs, to job search engines. “Good luck!” they said, and they meant it.
And we applied for jobs. We looked for the ones we really wanted, in the fields we dreamed about when we first picked our colleges when we were still in high school because that was how it was done. And then we zapped our applications off to them, with sterling references to boot, because we did our internships and our homework and had good GPAs and the admiration of bosses and professors.
And then nothing. Maybe, three weeks later, we’d hear back, something terse and impersonal: “Over 300 people applied for this position, so we had to be selective in who we chose to interview.” Sometimes they were vaguely impolite: “We only invited the most qualified candidates in for an interview, and you were not among those.” Often, they just wouldn’t write back at all.
And then we gave the numbers a second look over. Only 54% of Americans aged 18 to 24 are employed; if you take a group of you and ten of your friends, almost half of you will not have a job.”What gives?” we ask. “We did our homework, we went to college, we did our internships, we took on this massive amount of student debt - and now you won’t hire us?”
“Sorry,” the job market says, avoiding our accusing glares. “Times are tight. There aren’t a lot of jobs to go around. We’re only hiring people with Masters degrees, with doctorates, for these positions.”
“Five years ago you were hiring undergrads,” we point out, a little exhausted. After all, applying for thirty or forty or fifty jobs without any acceptance is wearisome.
“Five years ago was five years ago. Sorry.”
So now here we are, about to move on to the next part of the game, but there’s nowhere to go. We stuff our hands in our pockets and come knocking on Mom and Dad’s door; it may be undignified, it may be frustrating, it may be humiliating, but hey, at least Mom and Dad have a spare room and will feed you. All we have to do is ignore those pointed questions like, “Why haven’t you found a job yet? Shouldn’t you have interviewed? Maybe you’re applying for jobs that you aren’t qualified for - maybe you should aim lower. Your cousin found a job last week. If you find a job in town, you can still live with us for the next few years - wouldn’t that be great?”
And we listen to them and don’t know what to do, because we did everything they told us and they were wrong.
My name is Ryan. I am graduating from college in a little more than three weeks, and I am about to be unemployed.
[College students graduating in the year 2012 are worse off than they were graduating in 1992. The number of young Americans employed right now is the lowest on record. The longer we’re unemployed, the worse it is for our country, but because of the recession and budget cuts at the private and public levels, fewer places are willing to hire us. If we remain unemployed for the first 10 months after graduation, 15 years on we are twice as likely to be unemployed and, if we are working, we will earn $10,000 less than what we might have made. This crisis is not of our making, and nobody is doing anything to fix it.]
