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. 

Dear USC: Stop being such money grubbing jerks!

Seriously, USC, I’m a poor grad student and you have a $3.7 billion endowment.  How can you justify charging me $15 per electronic transcript, which requires no human do any work as it’s generated using an automated system and not printed out with ink or paper or any other consumable? (a transcript, I may add, I am only allowed to download three times and not allowed to share with anyone… thank goodness for printers and scanners.)

And then, on top of this, when I bought two tickets to my upcoming graduate student formal and your ticketing web system accidentally charged me twice, you only refunded me the ticket price (not the $3 per ticket “service charge”), despite the fact that it was your system that screwed up!  I mean, it’s only $6, but it’s my $6!  Which I could use to buy lunch or fund two writing days at Starbucks.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to be done with you.