Re-evaluating my road to success
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. The longer you spend on the job market, the louder that cliché will ring in your ears.
For most graduates, it takes at least two years to find work in your field—whether or not that job is one you enjoy or one that pays a living wage is another story entirely.
I’m not sure where that number came from, but it’s what people keep telling me. Maybe it’s just a thing people say to show you there’s hope for you still—even if the clock is winding down.
At these transitional periods in life, becoming disheartened turns into an everyday occurrence.It’s easy to think of the years and money that you spent on your education and wonder: what was the point of all of that?
I suppose the point was that we were taught to go down this path.
We are given the impression from a very early age that if you go to school then you’ll find a good job.
“But these days, it’s not enough to have your high school diploma,” they said. “Everyone has a high school diploma.” Seems a bit privileged and naïve, but that was the lesson.
Now, it seems it isn’t enough to have your bachelor’s degree either.
“Everyone’s got a bachelor’s degree,” they say. “A bachelor’s degree is the new high school diploma,” apparently.
So then you go for your master’s or doctoral degree—to set yourself apart from the crowd of bachelors—only to find that you just spent a few extra years and thousands of dollars to be told that they’re looking for co-op students and those willing to do an unpaid internship.
After getting my BSc, MA, and PhD, I now have people tell me that it’s not too late to go to med school or law school.
“It’s not like you’re married or have kids or anything,” they say.
Gee, thanks. I’m positively drowning in the ocean that is this pep talk.
I didn’t study what I did because I thought it was going to get me a job. I did it because I loved what I was learning. I loved thinking about something deeply and then writing it and rewriting it until I had understood what was gnawing at me. If I ever decide to go back to school, it will be to learn something I am passionate about—not because of what kind of job it’ll lead to in the future.
Besides, I don’t think the problem is that the letters behind my name are the wrong ones. And I don’t think there is a problem with me as a candidate for a job either—even though sometimes it feels like that; and of course there are always things I can do to better myself. I don’t think I’m the problem because I know many others are facing this issue with me.
The whole experience is frustrating; either you’re overqualified for an entry-level position or they want five years of experience for an entry-level position. It’s nonsensical.
Another frustration is that you spend way too much time filling out these online applications for jobs that are most likely being filled internally. Is anyone even reading those? What if I spent my time doing this application when the other company might actually be hiring?
Yet another frustration is that it seems the only way to get an actual interview—regardless of how good you are for a certain job—is when you have some kind of connection. It’s a combination of networking and luck. A solid decade of education after high school and my future career prospects rest on a combination of networking and luck.
As frustrating as all of this has been, it has become bearable. Not because I am particularly hopeful that something will pan out, but because I now question the path to success we were all told to take.
It is a path that leads from one educational institution to the next and then to a job that is related to exactly what you studied. But then what? You do that job, get a few promotions, retire, and… that’s it? That’s a successful life?
If that’s what the road to success looks like then my lack of future career prospects might just be the rest stop I needed.
As much as I loathe transition periods and job searching and living with roommates while approaching 30, I know that my lack of long-term employment has been the best possible thing for my individual growth.
Not knowing what I’m doing next—for the first time in my life—has made me stronger, expanded my horizons, and brought countless wonderful people into my world.
I spend my days doing thing after thing after thing that I get paid little to no money for; but that brings me joy and I’m okay with that, because I know that underneath the exhaustion and frustration I am genuinely content in ways that I haven’t been for much of my life.
Right now, my life feels like that moment in zumba class when you get the steps wrong, but everyone else seems to be getting them right. You feel like you’re about to panic, but instead of freezing, you just laugh and make up your own steps. Once you’re having fun and get over yourself, you look around to find that no one is getting it right—we’re all just dancing to the beat of our own drum.
I think the lesson school never taught me is to be wary of the straight road to success; getting it right all the time might be wrong for you.
When I was growing up, my dad would take me out of earshot of my mom and say, “Sometimes, I wish you would fail—just a little bit; just at something small that doesn’t matter—so you can see that it’s okay. That the world will keep spinning.”
And so it is.
Photo courtesy of Flazingo Photos CC-BY-SA-2.0.