Job prospects depress

By Jane Muhlstein

Approximately seven weeks and three days from the day I am writing this column, I will walk across a stage in Buck Shaw Stadium, receive my bachelor's degree and enter into an exclusive group: the world of exceedingly knowledgeable college graduates. The next day, I will become a professional bum. Or maybe a waitress.

Business and engineering majors should probably stop reading now. I know that your petty cash funds next year will probably amount to more than my total household income. I am writing to the virtuous masses, of which I am a member, who decided to follow their passions, rather than the promise of future employment and prosperity, when choosing their majors.

Sometime during the last week, the reality of being less than two months from graduation hit me hard. I am less than two months from the day I get cut off and my unpaid internship no longer cuts it. I have since spent countless hours desperately searching job listings.

I have to be honest. I am not entirely without direction for next year. I have already put down a first deposit for law school, so at least I know where I will live. But the very daunting question looming over my head is how.

If I really didn't have a plan, and was able to pick up and move across the country for a full-time job, this would be a different story altogether. But for those of us who are embarking on the long road to the development of a marketable skill, it seems as though our degrees may spend years collecting dust on a shelf before we are actually able to use them.

When I started the casual job search, still confident and collected, I assumed finding a job as a legal assistant of some kind would be easy enough to find. But not so, it turns out, if you have spent the past four years studying instead of working. While many office positions only require a GED, those without formal clerical experience need not apply.

Remember when your parents told you that you would live a terribly unhappy life, dying penniless and alone, if you didn't go to college? I'm starting to feel like they lied. And I don't really know why, because they were the ones paying for it.

I know that some day I will be a lawyer, and look back on my youth with nostalgia. But for now, I'm going to get used to asking people if they'd like ketchup with their fries.

* Contact Jane Muhlstein at (408) 554-4546 or jmuhlstein@scu.edu.