not enough sleep for my brain

[kodalai]

It seems like America just isn't a very good place to be a young person, these days. I say that perhaps because of my disillusionment of the idea that once you get out of college, life REALLY begins.* But for everyone I know who's my-age-but-just-a-little-older, it just seems like that date of Life Beginning -- getting the job in the career you want, finally beginning to date For Real, settling down in the place you want to stay -- is just being pushed farther and farther back. And people are stuck in places they don't want to be, in jobs they hate, either alone or with people they only tolerate. (ayelle, if you're reading this, I'm definitely not referring to you here. ^_~)

It feels like they're trapped in limbo, just waiting for someone to call on their training and resources so they can start a 'real' life. And it's just taking longer and longer for that to happen.

Of course, this is rather disenheartening, because it doesn't seem like America is a very good place to be an *old* person, either. We really don't value our elderly. I'm not entirely sure who America *is* a good place for right now.

At the moment, I can't think of much to be done for it, except to sit back and wait and imagine all the fun and exciting places my liberal arts degree is (not) going to take me.

Oh, and have fun in the meantime. Yeah.



*I'm sort of reminded of that so very, very truthful song "Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen Hello Love." If you're not familiar with it, it's a song about adolescence -- one of the best I've ever heard. It starts at age twelve and goes all the way up to age 18, and at every chorus the singers are anticipating *real* relationships and *actual love* to start at *any minute now.* "And now, life really begins," is the expectation that finished the song.

Comments

[okaasan59.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem may be our generation's tendency to expect "the perfect life." (And by generation I mean anyone born since WWII). Earlier, you didn't even have to think about your life. If you were a woman, you got married and stayed home to raise your kids. If you had to work, you were a teacher or a secretary or a nurse. If you were a man, it didn't matter so much what job you had as long as you could support your family. If you had a happy life, that was great - if not, well, that's just the breaks.

Now we put all kinds of pressure on ourselves to have the perfect career, perfect love life, perfect spouse and children. It some ways things are so much better now. Especially looking at the myriad freedoms and choices we have that didn't exist 50 years ago. But we put so much pressure on ourselves. I myself, keep waiting for the career that will drop in my lap - the one that is fulfilling and meaningful and garners me respect from my peers. No sign of it, yet. I am SO not in the place I expected myself to be in 20 years ago. But y'know *looks around* - this place ain't too bad. Now I'm trying to live my life to the fullest each day and not put off the things that I really want to do. Of course there are financial and family obligations that keep me from...oh, say jetting off to Rome or something...but I can glory in the little things. Like doing something out of character like wearing blood red fingernail polish, just because I feel like it. Okay, so maybe that's lame, but it's pretty radical for the pastel, Relena-type person I've always been!

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

I suppose, but I'm not really talking about an "ideal life." I was referring more to two other things -- one, that the development period keeps on getting longer and longer. Maybe you're right in the change, for instance, it used to be that having a high school diploma was enought o get you a good place in the professional field. Now, what can you get without at least a bachelor's in... anything? Even people who have gone through graduate school -- this is going on to ten or twelve years spent in school, preparing themselves for... what? There's just no *place* for young people, it seems...

...which leads to the second perception -- that young people just aren't *wanted* anywhere. Young equals inexperienced, so nobody wants to hire; unhired means poor, and unstable, so -- Excuse me, I'm having problems with my demon printer; I'll finish this thought later.

a long and depressing comment

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about your post... would have commented earlier, but I was too depressed about it. I know you didn't mean me, but I'm familiar with what you're talking about, all the same... I did spend two years in my college town after graduating, and while I was pretty happy there, part of it was that I didn't feel like I had any good alternatives, career-wise. I wasn't saving any money or gaining any useful experience. It was just better to be kicking my heels in Ithaca than anywhere else. Now I'm back in school, and while I love my program, I'm worried that I'll get out of it and be back to square one, only with a lot more debt.

America being such a bad place for the *educated* young is relatively new, I think. People graduating from college just one year before me were still being sought out by recruiters, landing decent jobs in bidness and publishing and tech companies so forth. So part of the problem is temporary: the economy's bad, people our age are near the bottom of the ladder, and a lot of us got pushed off entirely. And that'll improve sooner or later. Hopefully by the time I get out of grad school.

I know that's not the whole problem, though. I'm not sure I ever would have wanted the kind of job I just mentioned. Maybe publishing -- but even that's part of the corporate world. Insane work weeks -- get in at 8AM, if you're lucky leave at 7PM. How do you raise a family that way? How can you be part of a community (y'know, church groups, community theatre, girl scout leading) when you've got four hours of free time daily? I want to be part of a social community and a loving family, raise children and write books -- those are the only goals that are important to me, and it seems like America's not the most hospitable place for those just now.

So for me, it's not really a question of getting my real life started. It's a question of, in this day and age, how will I be able to *have* a real life -- ever?

As for whom America is a good place right now -- well, the economy's bad for everybody, but aside from that, I think things are best for the upper-middle-class and upwards in our parents' generation. Our own parents are horrified by the current administration, but that's because they're moral people, not so much because they're hurting so badly themselves... well, it's silly to generalize, of course, because phenomena like war and current fiscal policies spell catastrophe for every person in this country except the CEOs of the very richest corporations... but you know what I mean: economically speaking, the 'rents are doing all right. They've worked very hard all their lives in service professions, secondary education and nursing education, and they're being rewarded -- the current economic crisis certainly affected them, but they weren't left out in the cold like so many in the working class, tech people, employees of major corporations, small business owners and so forth.

So the question is: when we're the age our parents are now, will we be doing so well? Or by that time, will *everybody* be out in the cold, except of course the richest of the rich? Can I live the life my parents lead, earning a decent living in a job that's meaningful and rewarding to me, devoting my free time to my family, community, and intellectual projects like they do?

I wish I knew.

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

Our start was not smooth. I never got a decent paying or responsible summer job in high school or college. In college, I started hearing of people who either because they were prospective engineers being wooed (or simply had better connections) did well, but nobody ever suggested that my skills for employment were other than shit. It was always: you've got to go on or you are worthless in America. Well, I managed to get a Master's in History at Cornell, & for the remainder of that year got the same kind of minimum wage jobs I always had. We went to Louisiana to get help from my parents, and their connections got me a $5800 a year emergency-certificate teaching job at a rural black school nobody else in the state wanted to take; then they told me I wasn't good enough to be rehired for the next year. I took a job teaching mathematics (thanks to the county-wide organization of Louisiana school districts) at a remote Deep South small town called Vivian, which I kept for the one and a half years. Though I kept my job, the Vivian community made it clear that they did not like my political views, and tried to exert pressure for me to leave. Since that was my intention all along, I laughed at their efforts & we packed up everything to move Northeast (without a job in prospect). The age at which I was first treated as a worthy member of the American social and economic system, one whose intellect and training were valuable, was 30.

Your mother in 1973 took a staff nursing job at Rolling Hill Hospital in Elkins Park. Within six months, she had totally mastered the routine and was beginning to be bored out of her skull by the
unchallenging nature of her work. A year later she had come to the conclusion that she HAD to move to nursing instruction for a career. She quit again to facilitate job shopping; and finally got a position as nursing instructor at Einstein Hospital. Thus she was 27 when she got the job where she first felt job satisfaction as a professional.

Am I saying: just hang in there, baby, and it all works out in the end? Somewhat, I guess. For some people, at least looked at from the outside, life seems to go smoothly; but there's a lot of us who have always done things the hard way.

This in no way invalidates your conclusions about the dreadful way the American System (tr)eats its young (among other victims). The Mobile Economy (so different from the way most cultures have organized life) has increasingly emphasized the "swim or sink" model of launching young people into adult life. The stripping away of positions for the unskilled and semi-skilled through the 20th century has caused the beginning of adult life to be pushed further and further into the future. With double-digit inflation and the First Oil Shock marking the year, 1973 turned out to be the high point in real wages for American workers for the next 23 years (though for many families, the fact was somewhat masked by the increase of two-income marriages). Increasingly the Great American Middle Class has been unravelling, with a large portion submerging into desperation and a smaller part stumbling into (by older standards) the obscene wealth accumulation traditionally limited to the upper classes. For a generation, we have been truly creating what Marx called The Vast Army of the Unemployed, which he predicted would by reducing most people to desperation would eventually make the system easy to overthrow (the irony is that his prediction finally began coming true just as Marxism essentially disappeared as a world political force).

So maybe what I would have to offer is two-fold: on a personal level, your intelligence, skills, work habits and persistence will probably win through for you. At the same time: never forget POLITICALLY that there are forces steam-rolling this society into Third World status and creating hell for an ever great proportion of the population (for us and for the world); what Amerika is becoming has to be resisted with every erg of your political passion and moral conviction!

Oh, and have a nice day.

Daddy