Oh, Nelly, I think Jay is in trouble.
Half of this semester is behind us, and when it’s over, pending final grades, I’ll graduate. I’ll sit in the Kohl Center with thousands of others. They’ll call my name, hand me a cover with my fake diploma in it, give me a pat on the back and say “Adieu.” And that will be that.
Four years ago, it was different. The last semester of high school before graduation was perhaps the most non-stressful period of my life. I’d already sent in my college applications, so grades didn’t really matter. And all of my teachers seemed to realize that they were dealing with the most unmotivated group of students in the school, so they didn’t really push us.
I knew where I was going to be and what I was going to be doing, and I was takin’ ‘er easy until I got there. I had a decent job at the Hen House Supermarket. My boss there was trying to kick me upstairs to being a checker, but I declined. Being a bag-boy was just fine with me. I didn’t want any extra responsibility.
I’d go bowling three times a week and watched an unprecedented amount of situation comedies.
But no longer.
Just as I have been predicting since I was in eighth grade, the job market has crashed just months before I am to enter it.
Disturbingly, I’m not as troubled by the difficulty I will have finding gainful employment as I am by the fear that I might actually find gainful employment. The fact is, I think I would be far more satisfied waiting tables at T.G.I. Fridays than sitting in a cubicle with fluorescent lights and bulk-purchased computers. At least at Friday’s I could drink all the Ultimate Margaritas and Mudslides my heart desired, and you know that your co-waiters are going to be peppy. Sounds pretty good.
But maybe its not even getting a job that scares me. Maybe it’s being kicked out into the vast realm of non-academia.
As much as I may have loathed taking tests, writing papers and putting together group projects on how to introduce Febreeze into the Belgian market (who cares?), I’ll desperately miss the campus environment.
At college, people are young and ideological. They care more about who picked their coffee beans than how they will pay the cable bill. And if they find out that the person who picked their coffee beans wasn’t compensated properly, they will not hesitate to let the six-dollar per hour employee behind the counter at Starbuck’s hear about it by staging a picket line. It’s refreshing — to a point.
Further, at college you meet people who are interested in all sorts of different things. When you go to work, you’re working with people who want to do the same things that you want to do. There aren’t any environmental studies majors working in the sales department of Acme, Inc.
Besides, where else can you party with 18-22 year old girls who willingly misplace their inhibitions every weekend? Not at General Mills or IBM, that’s for sure. Unless they’ve drastically changed their intra-office policies.
Maybe I’ll check into that.
Jay Senter ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in business.