***WARNING. Rant about compromised ideals. ***
I am currently in search of a Real Job. Resume tacked up on every billboard. Can write. Can read. Can apply the psychology of Sigmund Freud to almost any situation. Likes tigers and milkshakes. Seeking employment.
Will "act" for food and water .
Not that waiting tables and teaching ESL part-time to baffled Japanese engineers isn't "real," that is...
It's just that I have this gnawing feeling that is constantly reinforced by the subtle comments of family ("when you get established...") and friends ("its a good job for now.") that I'm still not anything. Nothing more than a flesh-and-organ ball of selfish genes trying to replicate themselves. Than a bundle of misguided sexual energies internalizing themselves as neuroses. Than an individual trying to acquire and express the needs of power. Than an oppressed peasant struggling to control the means of production. Or at least get his say in his 401k.
Sometimes it's funny. Most of the time it just pisses me off.
So in the meantime I'm counting on that some hot shot executive picking at his fried fish dinner in the restaurant one night realizes that his server is EXACTLY what his company needs right now: a fresh face with excellent people skills, competence in complicated, high-stress tasks, and superior writing skills (as evidenced by the Frank Norris book peeking out of his back pocket.)
And other such fantasies that my expensive English degree has inspired in me...
But really the harsh truth is that things don't work that way. You got the degree but what you really needed were the connections, kid. You shouldn't have alienated that professor by disagreeing with the premises of the research that she put twenty years of her life into. You shouldn't have been reading books that you thought were better than the ones the professors assigned. You shouldn't have been planning ways to shock the campus into a spiritual consciousness or whatever other misguided, arrogant pursuit your mind concocted that week. No, you should have been schmoozing. You should have been at those campus organizational function things. You should have been NETWORKING, baby.
So that's what those job fair things were for.
And that's it. That's the magic word. It isn't about God. It isn't about Darwin's experiments. That stuff doesn't matter. It's not about what you know. It never has been. Its about--let me bite my lip here--WHO.
I don't mean to sound cynical here. Its just that this way of thinking rubs against almost everything I've ever believed in: hard-work gaining proper recognition, self-reliance in its purest, most independent form, ideals and intellectual\spiritual goals that are beyond the concerns of most people caught in the money/power rat race...
Eat those words, kid. Cause those are just illusions, too. Power exists. Deal with it. You don't like it? You'll be on the bottom like me. Unless you know the right people. Or persuade the right people. Or seduce the right people. But that's a whole different story...
So I'm sold: Networking is the key to success in the universe. Done deal.
Never ask for a job directly, of course, that would be violating the social norm: that we aren't allowed to acknowledge the power game of networking for what it actually is. Sly smirk.
Stock Questions that Slide the Conversation onto Your Searching for a Job.
I've asked almost everyone I've met in the past two months:
1) Do you have any advice for a recent college graduate?
2) Where has your degree in [X] taken you?
3) What did you do when you were in my situation?
4) What are the characteristics of a successful person?
Well how about that: I'm exactly the kind of person you're looking for!
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