would you like fries with that?

[kodalai]

Lately I have been obsessed with the thought that I have no marketable skills, no useful education, and no possibility of a decent career after graduation, and will end up hopping from one menial, low-paying job to another for the rest of my life.

I'd elaborate, but that's pretty much it.

Comments

[iniq.livejournal.com]

-_-; yeah...

and then you think about the skills you do have... you can type fast, but you can't prove it. you can operate computer systems but can't really prove it. everyone hiring wants someone with 'experience', and while you know you could probably pick it up real fast, they won't even give you the chance.

and suddenly you know why people start chuckling when you tell them your major. and you can answer 'but it's real interesting!'...

- and maybe you even look at ads in the newspaper, pretending to have graduated already, and the job market looks as miserable as it does right now. they almost always need people for stacking shelves in supermarkets, but damnit... when we were kids we were dreaming of owning islands, and our parents told us that we could become anything we wanted to become.
*grumps*

you know what? we should just continue dreaming until we've graduated. dream of islands and pirates and castles, and when the time comes, maybe someone will need a liberal arts major, or a polisci graduate. ^_~

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

when we were kids we were dreaming of owning islands, and our parents told us that we could become anything we wanted to become.

actually, one of the things that's depressing me about it is that some days I feel like I'm being railroaded into being a teacher. What kind of job experience do I have? Babysitting. Tutoring. TA. I want to go on the JET program, I really do, but that's because I want to go to Japan and work, not because I want to teach for the rest of my life. Why does it seem sometimes like the only options offered to me are teaching options? *quashes paranoid assumption concerning gender*

There's nothing wrong with teaching. But it's shit pay, little respect, and it's just not what I want to do with the rest of my life.

I don't know what I do want to do with the rest of my life, though, so I keep on picking up the teqaching jobs.

[(Anonymous)]

hey -- never read your journal before last week so probably shouldn't reply, but . . . I'm marrying a guy who taught English in Japan for two years and absolutely adored it. eleven years later, having FINALLY figured out what he wants to do with the rest of his life, he now pulls down a sweet salary at IBM, and partly because he had something interesting to put on his resume (and could tell recruiters great stories about his life in tokyo for hours on end).

you don't have to teach for the rest of your life, if you really don't want to. just do it long enough to find an employer who respects the fact that you did something cool and fun, that you really enjoyed, for the first couple years out of school.

(.....grad school helps though.)

--Les

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

That sounds encouraging. I know my plan to go to Japan will be overall good for me. I just get down in the dumps occasionally.

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

I doubt that will happen to you. You're such a smart, sensible person. You may not have your ideal job right when you graduate, but it sometimes takes a little while to find the job that suits you. I think luck will be on your side. *crosses fingers for you*

[(Anonymous)]

In supply / demand terms, the problem is not what skills and education you will offer, but the relative abundance of the supply of such skills, compared with an ever shrinking demand; the (mostly hereditary) plutocracy which has controlled both parties since the 1970s does not find job flight and downward pressure on wages and salaries to be a bad thing, so it will continue regardless of which party wins power (cf Clinton on NAFTA, GATT et al).

One result is a rising inflation in the amount of education and training you have to possess to differentiate yourself. An undergraduate degree has become the new "high school diploma" (though the most prestigious schools offer some differentiation), just as high school became the new "primary education" in the first half of the twentieth century. What you should be doing now is some heavy thinking about what kind of postgraduate training you want to pursue to renew your "edge" (in many fields, a Master's or better is necessary to get a foot in the door).

Daddy