Buck Up, Grads

It seems like for the last few years around late spring/early summer, a slew of media put out stories describing what a bleak job market is lined up for recent or soon-to-be college graduates.  Since about 2005 (coincidentally when I graduated with my BA) television, newspapers, websites, etc have painted this picture of pessimism for the future leaders of the country.

"There's no jobs!"

"These fertile young minds will be forced back into a world of retail!"

"Isn't there anything we can do!"

Yeah, you can shut the fuck up.

Look grads, let me sit you down for a second and explain how the world works:  When you graduate college, no one expects you to have a "career" lined up.  And I'm defining "career" in traditional terms, like a job you're going to work five days a week for the next 20 to 25 years, receive benefits, etc.  Some of you may find "jobs" which are gigs you'll work for 2-5 years before you come to some sort of epiphany while seated at your tiny desk in a cube farm and realize this is not what you want to spend the rest of your life doing, and have a quarter-life crisis as a result.

No grads, most of you.... dare I say 80-90% of you, will move back in with mom and dad and spend the summer "looking for jobs" which will inevitably bleed over into the fall.  You'll be shell-shocked to find yourself still unemployed at a time when you, for the last nearly 20 years, have been your most productive.

One of two things will happen: you'll either go on unemployment and fall into deep depression, or you'll settle for that job listing on Craigslist and fall into deep depression when you realize there's no way for you to get your own place, pay all your mounting bills (mom and dad are going to cut off your cell phone, car insurance, health insurance, gas money, etc) and maintain that comfy social life all on a $10/hr "job."

To compound things, your $100K four year degree, you learn, doesn't mean shit in the real world... all the "careers" you apply for, touting your newly minted bachelors, you find, are being filled internally by guys with only "some college experience" who went to work for the company the moment they left high school, four years ago.

It's all about who you know and experience, sadly.  No one hires a 22 year old kid straight out of college, with his degree, who knows nothing about how the company works.  This has ALWAYS been the case.

So what do you do?  Do you roll your diploma up and smoke that cheap skunk weed you're forced to now buy?  Do you go eat a barrel at 1 am in the Kmart's parking lot?

No.  You buck the fuck up.

It gets better, you just have to give it time.  EVERYONE, except maybe for a privileged few, is going through the same thing you're going thru.

When I graduated college in '05 I only had a few options lined up, and they all fell thru within weeks of each other.  I was forced to pack my shit and move back home, which was soul crushing.  It's taken me nearly five years of hard work in various avenues to land someplace (just now) that's putting my degree to work.  And even then, it was a host of other experiences that really put me over the top.

So my advice to recent grads entering our so-called "job market": wait it out.  Every guy you see working today, in some way, shape or form, has gone through what you're going to be going through and their better for it.  You're like, 21, 22.... enjoy being young and free, without adult obligations.  Even kids who graduated from places like Harvard, Yale and Vassar tend to couch it out for a while and take "jobs" they don't really want to take, just to survive.

You're no where near rock bottom, trust me.  It's not you're turning tricks on Craigstlist.  Yet.