Job Searching Sucks!

Now that I’ve officially finished my thesis and hence grad school, I actually have to start looking for a real, grown-up job.  What I would really like to do (and part of my motive for getting my master’s degree in the first place) is teach at the university level, but I’m also looking into some non-profit jobs with institutions that focus on causes I support.  In other words, I’d like a job I can enjoy, but I’m not shooting for the huge paycheck and corner office.  I think I’ve got pretty realistic goals, but the current job market is laughing in my face.

Since May(ish) I’ve sent out tailored resumes and cover letters to approximately twenty positions.  I’ve heard back so far from three: one wouldn’t consider me for the job because I had not yet received my master’s (even though it would have been completed by the job’s start date), the second - which was part time with hourly pay - did not even select me for an interview (though, kudos to them for being good enough to let me know I was no longer in the running), and the third contacted me to get some paperwork to guarantee that my degree was now, in fact, finished (which, luckily it is!).  Don’t know the outcome of the third yet, but it’s a position at the Community College in Marin (beautiful!) and I’m pretty excited about it.  However, I’m forcing myself to not get my hopes up about anything.  From talking to a few people I know who are on hiring committees for various companies/institutions, it seems like the market is so saturated right now that individuals who used to be desirable for these entry-level type jobs are now competing against people who are ten years older, with ten more years of experience and higher degrees. 

Not that I blame the schools/companies.  If you’re getting hundreds of applications for one job, of course you’re going to take the most qualified person you can get.  Though it would be nice if they could send out a form letter letting us poor younguns know our fate.  It’s really difficult to gear yourself up to spend another three hours tweaking your resume and composing a fresh cover letter when you know that 85% of the time you’re not going to get even a rejection letter, much less an offer for an interview.

And I know I’m one of the lucky ones.  I currently have a job (two, in fact) which, during the school year, eeks me out enough to get by, if not by much. Neither of these jobs has benefits, unfortunately, so I know this isn’t a long-term plan, but I can get another few months of health insurance from USC (the one good thing they did for me) which at least affords me the luxury to continue looking for a more permanent career in the field I want to be in. 

In six months though, boy, all y’all kids who just finished your undergraduate degrees had best watch out, because I’m gunna start applying to those jobs you want, and with my master’s and five years of work experience, I’m just gunna keep pushing unemployment further down the educational and experiential ladder. No hard feelings, I hope.

Selling out by ironically trying to not sell out: An open letter to MGMT

Dear MGMT,

Last friday night, three friends and I tried our best to dress like we hadn’t tried too hard and walked up to the Greek Theater in LA to see your show.  Now, I like your music, but I will admit that I am more of a casual fan than an aficionado: I have five of your songs on my iTunes, as well as two mash ups (my boyfriend really likes mashups.)  I didn’t really know much about your second album, as there haven’t really been any radio hits off of it (and, unfortunately, I’m totally uncool and the extent of my knowledge of new music comes from the radio or what Pandora thinks I might like). So the day of the concert I went through the whole album on iTunes and listened to the 30 second previews, because I wanted to be more familiar with your work before showing up to your concert.  Nothing really grabbed me enough to download. That was okay, though;  I could still go and see some cool, smart kids rocking out on stage, as well as hear a few favorites performed live.

The concert was fine; you played songs I knew and liked intermixed with things I didn’t know so well, that were a little harder, but worked well live (especially after I finished my extra-large beer.)  I could have used a little more audience interaction but, hey, everyone has their own style.  As expected (and anticipated), you closed with your most well known song, Kids.  This is where things took a seriously sour turn.  About a minute into the song, I noticed that there was keyboard music, but the keyboardist wasn’t play.  The others in my party were noticing the same thing: no one on stage was playing their instruments, you were all just dancing around, occasionally throwing your used water bottles (um, yuck?) to the crowd.  Basically, you were making it quite clear to anyone paying half an iota of attention that we were paying to watch you dance to your cd played over the sound system. 

I don’t even remember what happened in the encore.  The entire 2-3 songs you were out there, all I could do was not clap and try to see if you were faking those songs as well, or if you were actually playing.  I became suspicious of your whole show!  I essentially left the concert feeling like I’d wasted my $40.  Boo.

When I got home, of course, I went to the Google and tried to find out what had been going on.  What I learned when searching “MGMT doesn’t play kids” (which my browser automatically filled in for me… wow, that’s not a good sign) was that you refused to play Kids at Cochella, as well as a few other venues, saying that you had “moved on.”*

So here’s what I think happened: You guys are “artists” and are all about the music, not the money, so you wanted to distance yourself from your past work so you could move forward.  I get that: as a fellow artist, I know that looking back on my past work, it’s really difficult to see past the mistakes and not think how much better I could have done it if I could redo it now, with more skills and knowledge.  And, I mean, only sellouts play music for the money, right?  In fact, if you kept playing Kids that would just prove you were sellouts.  Whoa, dude, I totally feel you; we gotta stop playin’ Kids or we gunna loose mad respects from the ironic mustache club!!!

Unfortunately, I’m gunna guess that this didn’t go over so well with the concert promoters: If you piss off enough people on the internet, it’s gunna get out there, and that’s going to hurt ticket sales.  I can picture the scene: Y’all are chillin’, comparing Ray Bans, when an overweight, cigar-smoking promoter in a plaid jacket bursts into the room and yells at you until his tomato-ey head is about to burst. You tell him to chill, but he threatens to cancel the rest of your tour dates for the summer and storms out of the room.  You are stunned to silence; you love the music, but you also got to pay for those Ray Bans somehow.  You come up with the perfect solution: Let the audience listen to what they want (Kids) but don’t actually play it!!!  ZOMG!!!?!?! Perfect.

Wrong.  In a superb twist of irony (I assume as educated, po-mo rockers you know what that is in the non-mustachioed sense) your solution to not sell out made you into the biggest sellouts ever!  You’re playing A CD player plays Kids JUST for the money, because if you didn’t you wouldn’t sell concert tickets. And lord knows, you gotta sell them tickets.  And all this because you think you’ve outgrown what Rolling Stone called one of the top 100 songs of the decade? 

I’m not going to say fans are always right (as mentioned above, I really knew nothing about your second album and I was basically just there to here you play those old faves; music snob I am not) but your fans did make you successful.  So sure, don’t write a song because you think it’s what the masses want, but pay some respect to the people who allow you to pay for a tiny old woman to sew you into your mind-bogglingly tight pants every day.  Without them, you’d be just like the rest of us struggling artists: sitting in your small, non-ACed apartment writing blog entries to famous people who will never read them.

Appreciate what you have, MGMT, you’re the lucky ones.

Most sincerely,

Kelly Morr

*There’s also a lot of gossip out there saying that you lip synched on SNL… I’m not going to go into that here, but it doesn’t help your reputation, fellas. 

I swore I’d never write one of those blog entries where I apologize for not writing any recent blog entries

And yet here I am.

I could tell you all about the wonderful progress I’ve been making on my novel, or the countless hours of old television I’ve been watching thanks to Netflix OnDemand, but I felt this a more suitable way of apologizing:

Kitten Riding A Tortoise - watch more funny videos

Ruminating on Reuniting: Dartmouth Five Years Later

Last weekend I went to my five year college reunion.  Like most… whatever-you-call-us-since-we-don’t-have-an-official-mascot-s*… I was super excited to go back.  Ever since Daniel Webster uttered those famous words - “It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And, yet there are those who love it.” - Dartmouth alumni have felt an undying pressure to freakin’ love the shit out of our alma matter.  (Seriously, I’m not just saying that.  Almost 50% of the class came back from all over the country and world just for this weekend.)

I spent a good deal of the weekend just walking around campus with old friends.  Nearly everyone I talked to remarked on how “weird” it was to be back, because it was all the same.  Well, except for those two giant new dorm clusters and new math building in the center of campus.  I tried to keep my mouth shut.  It wasn’t weird, persay, it was just… Dartmouth.  It had the same smells, the same sounds, the same lazy feel of sophomore summer.  But we knew it was fleeting; come Monday morning we’d all be back to our regular lives: jobs, law-school, residencies, freaking out about how unsuccessful we are because we’re unemployed creative types in a down economy… A friend (who just happens to be a lawyer who works 60+ hours a week) remarked how much she wished she were able to do college all over again, with what she knew now.  After a few minutes of giving her a hard time about the realism of such a thought experience (i.e. would you also know about political events?  would that give you the power to change the future? become really rich? etc.) I started to think about what I really missed from college and what I didn’t.  So after that exceedingly long, whistful, anecdotal introduction, here’s the list I came up with:

Things I miss about Dartmouth:

• Not having to constantly be thinking about money.  Don’t get me wrong, I was poor as poop in college as the only spending money I got came from my measly $8/hour campus job, and I was racking up debt via loans I only vaguely knew I had, but most of my daily expenditures went completely unnoticed: my parents got the bills and sent off the big checks to cover my room and tuition.  All I had to worry about budgeting was whether I had enough cash to order EBAs or not.
• Wednesday Nights.  Wednesday nights were fraternity/sorority meetings campus wide.  I was not in a house.  This left me with a delicious conundrum: if I wanted to go out and party, I knew everyone would be there and be game, but if I wanted a quiet night to myself, I knew no one would bother me.  These days, social interaction requires so much planning.  I can’t just show up at a bar and expect my friends to be there. 
• Canoe Club/Molly’s/Lou’s.  Not because the food at any of these place was particularly noteworthy (though Canoe Club definitely held up even after five years of living in a foodie city) but because going out to eat used to be such an event!
• People thinking you’re interesting for being a film major. In LA if your’e not in “the business” you’re the odd one out.  Going back to Dartmouth I got to talk about all of my “cool, insider Hollywood gossip” and it actually impressed some people (Hey, you know, I sat behind Christina Ricci at a movie one time.  Big whoop.)  Also I-bankers/Lawyers/Consultants all weirdly envy those of us that took the creative route.  Probably because they are envious that we have weekday afternoons off, but don’t understand that we don’t have the money to take ourselves out to a leisurely lunch to enjoy it.

Things I don’t miss about Dartmouth:

• Twin extra-long beds.  I stayed in a dorm when I was back for reunion.  Holy crap I had no idea at the time how uncomfortable those mattresses were when I was in school!
• Safety and Security.  Yes, I realize they were mostly there to keep us safe and/or secure, but those guys could be total tools just for the heck of it, too.  I was reminded of this when a skinny, twerpy little one wouldn’t let any of us grown up adult peoples swim in the river while we were up last weekend.  He seemed so gleeful telling us that it was, “college policy” while sniffling around his straw colored mustache.  
• Low standards of cleanliness. I didn’t even make it into a frat basement this weekend, the dorms were enough.  I’m not a clean freak, but it makes me definitely feel like a grown up that beer-covered floors are no longer considered totally sweet, bra.
• Keystone Light.  My beer palate has improved, thankyouverymuch.
• Paying the check when you’d go out to dinner.  Because I’d always end up covering people who couldn’t do math to figure out tax/tip.  And, like I said, I was poor as poop in college.  Not to say that this doesn’t happen sometimes still, but it’s become a much rarer experience. 
• Dick’s House.  Seriously, worst campus health services ever.  I mean, I hate most aspects of USC, but their student health center literally saved my life.  Dick’s house probably would have given me a pregnancy test, told me that my cancer was just viral, and refused to give me antibiotics until I came back two weeks later pushed in a wheelbarrow my roommate borrowed from some Sig Eps.

Speaking of which, this is all that’s left of Sig Ep these days:

In conclusion, I liked college.  Reunion was mostly fun.  But I also don’t hate being a grown up.  Ah, time, you make it impossible to ever go backwards.  For now.

* Dartmouthians? Big Green-ers?  Kegs?