I have overestimated society…

A text message conversation:

Me: Thing I have learned: if you go to a bar alone they give you liberal pours of wine
Boyfriend: Certainly with an ass like that
Me: They can’t even see my ass because I’m sitting behind the bar
Boyfriend:  That ass surrounds the bar (something to do with relativity) 
Me: Hey! No need to be mean…
Boyfriend: I meant in a good way!

And then the check arrives…  

Rule No. 1 of Job Searching: You do not talk about job searching

I am in the market for a new job.  I have been neglecting this blog. The two are not unrelated.

While I was abroad this summer, working a job which is a 24-hour-a-day commitment (the workday goes from 6:30 AM - 10:30 PM and it’s not unusual for us to get woken up in the middle of the night by sick students) there was no time to compose pithy musings. When I got back, it seemed too monumental a task to sum up two months abroad in a few paragraphs.

And then I found myself eyeball deep in the search for a new job.

What’s on my mind these days? Looking for jobs, applying for jobs, and interviewing for jobs. I have stories about all of these things, stories that might actually have some entertainment value, with insights into the current job market & economic crisis and the general state of employment and being a 20-something in America today.

The problem is, I do not keep an anonymous blog.  This humble tumblr is the first thing that pops up when you type my name into Google, and I therefore do not know who’s reading. If I gloat about getting an interview for a position I’m excited about, does make the next company less likely to call because I don’t seem as needing of a job? If I then rant about said interview, does that make me look bad to future employers? If I write about job searching and then still do not have gainful employment two months later does it make me seem unemployable? I just don’t know. In this economy, you don’t want to do anything to hurt your chances. So, until I actually get a job I feel like I have to keep my mouth shut. Which may mean a dearth in posts, because I have little else of import on my mind these days. That doesn’t mean I won’t find some ridiculous animal videos to post, though…

And if you’re a potential employer who happens to stumble across this blog: Hi! I’m awesome and will work hard.  You should hire me!

Those minor cultural differences…

I´m spending the summer in Ecuador (Quito, The Galapagos, the Amazon, and the Andes) leading a service learning trip for high school aged students.  Yesterday, I flew from Denver, Colorado into Quito to prepare for the trip.

I´ve been to Ecuador before - in 2009, leading the same trip - so it wasn´t completely foreign, but there are definitely aspects of the culture that you forget about.  On the plane to Quito, I got seated amoungst a large group of Ecuadorians returning home, and was reminded that they (or perhaps all South Americans?) have very different personal-space paradigms.  It started when a large man uncerimoniously smushed his hairy, protruding belly against my cheek as he hoisted his bag into the overhead compartment. No apology, no adknowledgement, just a mouthful of bellybutton lint for me to chew on.  He kept it there for a good five minutes, helping all the rest of his family members hoist their belongings, as well.

Upon landing in Quito, you exit the plane into a long, modern looking hallway.  It seems to go on for nearly a mile, and there are no doors to other gates or restrooms. When you get to that point when your bladder is just about to fill past capacity, you finally descend the stairs into the not-quite-as-modern immigration room.  There´s a single bathroom on the other side of the room, but if you´re anything like me, instaed you decide to hop into the immigration line while it´s still short, because you assume (erroniously, it turns out) that there will be a bathroom you can use in customs while you´re waiting for your bag to arrive.

Baggage claim and customs serves as a further reminder of how Ecuadorians view personal space differentally than we Americans do.  In America, we tend to wait politely for our luggage to come off the carosel (ideally, in my opinion, several feet back from the edge so people whose bags are actually there have easy access, but that doesn´t happen nearly as often as one would hope.) In Ecuador, it feels like you´re a character in a video game trying to find the Golden Egg.  First you search among the piles of random bags, stacked in precariously balanced pyramids.  Then you have to jump over and squeeze between the large luggage carts (because apparently no one traveling into Ecuador arrives with less than 6 large, hard-cased suitcases, most likely tightly seran wrapped for security purposes) to get to the carosel. At first, it appears that there´s only one, long carosel, but it turns out there are actually two! So after ten minutes of waiting at one, you finally realize you´re not in the right place at all and you have to hop back over the luggage carts to the other side of the room.  And careful of all of the other passangers trying to get their stuff! For the most part, niceties are ignored.  You don´t ask for permission to squeeze between people, you just plow on through, and you certainly don´t apologize after bumping someone. It´s easy to pick out the Europeans and Americans because we turn sideways, whisper “permisso” or “perdon” and try to slide slyly between people.  

Once you finally find the right carosel, then you have to pay attention that someone else doesn´t pull your bag off before it gets to you - I´m not talking anything malicious, it just seems that some bags are worth of riding all the way around the carosel and others are picked to be tossed onto the floor into a newly-forming pyramid. Of course, I didn´t know this until I witnessed my bright blue and orange backpack come in off the truck, then lifted up and off by someone else.  I, of course, freaked out, leveled up to super-speed, and navigated back to the other side of the carosel. And there was my bag, safe and sound.  From there, all I had to do was wait in a 45 minute line to have my custom form collected and bag scanned, then find my Chilean co-leader, Javier, who I´d only ever seen in his Facebook profile picture, from amoungst the hundreds of people waiting to meet their friends and family, and proceed to take a taxi (which Javier had arranged in the 2 hours he´d been waiting for me, not realizing it wasn´t a legal cab) to our hostal in the middle of the part of the city I didn´t spend any time in in 2009.  Easy Peasy.

Well, I´m now here safe and sound, and have learned how to identify legal taxis for when the kids arrive (tomorrow!)

If you´re interested in the day-to-day happenings of the trip, my students will be keeping a blog at:http://www.lifeworks-international.com/blogs/allblogs.php I will also try to keep this updated somewhat regularly, hopefully with pieces that are a bit longer and more in depth on one particular issue.  But really, it will probably soon descend into your run-of-the-mill “you´ll never guess what I got to do today!” travel blogs.

Please Don’t Call Us “Generation Y”

I work part time for a small web design company; we rent our office space from a real estate agency. Today around 11:30, the woman in the cubicle outside our door took a moment off from her phone calls to nutritionists and personal trainers – she’s trying to lose 25 pounds, and fast! – to tell us that there was chocolate birthday cake in the kitchen. Without stopping to let pesky details like “I don’t talk to anyone else on this floor and certainly don’t know the person whose birthday it is” get in my way, I skipped down the hallway to steal a slice before it was all gone.

In the process, I passed the conference room, where someone was giving a presentation to a packed house about how to sell to different age groups. I cringed when I saw the slide-title, quivering ever so slightly as the middle-aged presenter smacked her pointer against the pull-down screen: GEN-Y.

Apparently we like things like the internet! And text-messaging (“SMS”). And if you don’t know something, boy-howdy you’re just plum out of luck cause we’ll go ahead and look that up for ourselves “online” and you’ll have lost a sale.

And yes, I mock, but not because I disrespect my elders – I actually find them quite charming in their cute senility, when they get all excited over learning things like how to download songs on iTunes, and how they take notes to leave by their computer so they’ll remember how to do it again in the future, when you’re not there to patiently wait as they actually read through all the terms and conditions of the service agreement¹ – but rather because it angers me that they persist in referring to us as Generation Y or, even worse, the Pepsi Generation. And when I get angry I deal with it through mockery. Even if my subjects are completely undeserving of that derision, in their adorable square-framed reading glasses, purchased in bulk from Rite Aid.²

The term Generation Y came about because we were born – get this – one generation later than generation X! And Y comes after X in the alphabet!

Every generation preceding ours was given their own unique name, based on the characteristics of their demographics or epoch³:

• The Lost Generation were those who came of age and served during WWI
• The GI Generation – or “Greatest Generation⁴” – grew up in the Great Depression and served during WWII
• The Silent Generation was born during the Great Depression but were too young to serve in WWII
• The Baby Boomers were born in the years following WWII and came of age during the 1960s and 70s.
• Generation Xers were born in the 60s and 70s and were thus named because they were “a group of young people, seemingly without identity, who face an uncertain, ill-defined (and perhaps hostile) future.”⁵ And came to be epitomized by the punk and glam rockers of the late 70s and 80s.

Each of these generation names makes sense, and is descriptive of its population. My generation is descriptively known as the Millenial generation, and is defined as those individuals who came of age in the new millennium (generally accepted to be those born between 1982 and 1995.)

So why do people persist on labeling us based on the generation that immediately preceded us?⁶ Not only is it lazy and disrespectful, but it just plain doesn’t make sense. For the most part, we are the children of Baby Boomers and the grand children of the GI generation. Our most significant interactions with Generation X came when they babysat us as children and forced us to listen to the Dead Kennedys, when all we wanted to do was play Math Blaster on our Macintosh LCs.

We are the Millenials. Depending on whom you ask we’re either driven or entitled, assertive or whiney, civic-minded or brainwashed liberals. We’ve supposedly been coddled all our lives and expect reward and respect without having to earn it. But then, since we’ve been told that we’re all winners our whole lives, we’re much more likely to be inclusive, team players.

So, from the deepest nucleus of my whiney, entitled heart, I’m asking you: please respect us? You don’t have to like us; after all, we don’t hold the older generations up on pedestals, and will feel no remorse in mocking your high-waisted jeans or inability to figure out touch-screen devices. But please, respect us enough to call us Millenials? And lets nip this whole “Generation-Z” crap in the bud before it really starts to take off? In exchange, we promise to teach you how to use your TiVo. We’ll even go so far as to set up season passes to both NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles.

1. Hi, Dad!
2. Hi again, dad. Well, assuming mom hasn’t walked off with – and subsequently misplaced – the purple pair you keep by the computer and you can actually read this.
3. I only listed those from the last century or so. You can check out a whole hecuva lot more of them, as well as read a really interesting theory on cyclical generationalism here
4. I take issue with this name as well, but that’s mostly thanks to a really poorly written graduation speech by Tom Brokaw given at my college graduation. It is better saved for a later rant.
5. Author John Ulrich. Thanks Wikipedia!
6. Even the Wikipedia page detailing “The Millenials” forwards to the Generation Y page.

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.

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?