An American Nightmare

*I wrote this last October. I just found it now and decided to post it.

A Twenty Something’s Struggle to Join the Professional Working World in 2008

By Jimmy Glenn

As I wander into my bathroom reeking of deer repellant and rotten pumpkin, I stop to wonder just where I went wrong. After graduating with a solid B average from Rutgers University in exactly four years, and interning at Marvel Entertainment (the guys that brought 2008’s blockbuster hit Iron Man) for both semesters of my senior year, one would expect that I would have ascended into the professional working world by now. But no, I spent the better part of my morning pricing pumpkins for October’s haunted Halloween hay ride. The afternoon was spent standing in a field filled with hay spraying said pumpkins with a deer repellant that, despite manufacturer’s best efforts, smells like vomit and shit with a bit of the funkiest parts of the Jersey shore mixed in. Indeed where did Jimmy Glenn go wrong?

Almost daily I hear someone gripe about the state of the economy. Sometimes it’s my boss who is struggling to keep a small family owned nursery afloat amid the influx of Home Depot’s, Lowes’, and other major home improvement centers. Sometimes it’s the media, even though most of them seem to have a pretty stable career. (Are there really that few TV weathermen in this world that Mr. G still has a job?) Sometimes it’s a sympathetic customer who, after I’ve helped her pick out flowers and load her car, asks me where I go to school.

“Actually I just graduated from Rutgers.”
“Oh yeah? What did you study?”
“Journalism and Media.”
“Very good…” (Like I am a child who just figured out how to use the toilet.)
“How’s the job hunt going? The job market is just so darn bad.” (…well I’m loading you’re car instead of using my degree so clearly things could be a little better.)
“Oh… (smile) it’s a little rough but we’ll see.”
“Well thanks, and good luck with the job hunt.” (The really nice people then tip me.)

Sure, why not lie? Explaining to them that I have been floundering for a year in the aftermath of what I thought was a successful college career takes way too long, and is much more depressing.

Lately, it’s me who is the biggest proponent of the “screw the economy” battle cry. As recently as yesterday I blamed both the struggling U.S. economy and George W. Bush for my recent unemployment (Vote Obama ).

I suppose it’s common to blame the economy or other outside forces, instead of scrutinizing myself.

Realistically, I can admit that I have a few debilitating habits and that there are a few nuances of the job hunting process that I was not prepared for. First of all I grew up in the age the Uber-Multimedia device. I can single handedly im, text, email, and Myspace message a virtual cornucopia of friends (or one unfortunate one) in nearly an instant. Due to that, and to the fact that the 21st century has spawned a whole new language (Ebonics is so last century) in which what is actually spelled wut, cool can be spelled kool, and what’s up is almost always spelled wassup; I have gotten used to slamming out an email without proofreading (or punctuating for that matter).

Also, no one sends these emails back with red penned instructions as to what I screwed up. So there’s a certain level of uncertainty every time I send out a resume. Now let me be clear, I am not saying I had any LOL’s or ROFL’s in my resume… but some of my initial email cover letters were a little rough.

Finally, as much as I hate to admit it there really was a safety net. I know if you’re my age or younger you don’t wanna hear it because everyone says it, but there really was. In high school and college, I could make little mistakes and get by. I could write a brilliant paper comprised entirely of run-on sentences and it was the content, not the grammar that the professor took into account. I could hand in things late with a not so great excuse and, most of the time, only have a few points deducted from the final grade. I could miss class, not buy books, and sometimes flat out not pay attention, and still, most of the time, get by. I am even ashamed to admit that throughout most of my college career my mother proofread my papers (I WAS A JOURNALISM MAJOR!!!).

Yes, perhaps it is my own laziness that’s to blame for my current state (and odor).

Following that brief moment of self deprecation and doubt, I am simultaneously comforted and horrified by the National Unemployment Rate which, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, was somewhere around 6.1% in August of this year. Being that most people don’t surf the Department of Labor’s website on a regular basis (or at least I hope they don’t) that means that about 9.4 million people who are willing and able to work, are not. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that in this year alone almost 2.2 million people lost their jobs. And though that’s not a direct indicator of the number of entry level positions available to a college graduate like me, it sure does paint a pretty good picture of the current state of the job market.

The reality of the situation is that despite my initial mistakes and inexperience, I honestly have been working hard to find a “real” job. I send out anywhere from five to ten resumes a week. I eagerly troll Monster.com, MediaBistro, and Craigslist religiously. I look in the paper, ask friends and occasionally ask complete strangers if they know about any job openings. And so far it’s to no avail.

That’s because the job market in America really is that fucking terrible right now. The recent meltdown involving finance giants like AIG and Merrill Lynch, coupled with the state of the stock market isn’t making things any better. There are very few jobs, and I personally think that most recent graduates aren’t prepared to face such a grim situation. The chances of yours truly, or most other recent grads, finding the jobs we expected to find seems increasingly slim, at least for the time being.

I know that far more people in America face situations that are far worse than mine. It seems may seem selfish to complain, and arrogant to act as if I am entitled to something better than what I already have, however it’s an undeniable fact that there are certain expectations placed upon you when you go to college. Whether it’s by your parents, professors or society, at some point you begin to expect that immediately after college comes your career. And however trivial it may seem, any sort of hiccup in this process really can throw you for a loop.

It’s scary when your applications and emails go unanswered and it’s demoralizing to tell friends and family that you’re still working at the same job you had throughout high school and college. But at the end of the day the worst part about my job isn’t the rotten pumpkins, the manual labor or shitty pay. It’s not the annoying kid who constantly talks about Death Metal and South Park, the customers or their inane questions. It’s the anxiety that I feel when I remember that I’m off my parents’ health plan in December. It’s the feeling that I failed, and continue to fail each and every day. It’s feeling like I let my parents down after they worked so hard give me more than they had.

For a kid who made Dean’s List three semester’s in a row, it’s very hard to wonder if it’s really the system or just me who’s failed.