Go To School Get a Job

I recently turned 35. I look back on my life and if I had to do it all over again, there are certainly some things I would have done differently. But there are a lot of things I wouldn't have changed.

As is fairly common in people of my age bracket, I am nowhere near as professionally or financially successful as I thought I'd be at this point in my life. That is due to a number of variables, some I could have affected, some I could not have. Sure I like my job well enough....well....I like my boss well enough, the job is decent because my boss is decent this time around. The same cannot be said for previous employment choices.

I somehow fell into the job path I've pretty much been in for the last 5 years or so by accident. I thought I was on my way toward gaining good experience and making some good upward progress until I lost my job a couple of years back. Sitting down and hammering out resumes all day long gave me time to reflect on what I really wanted to do with my life. And I came to the following conclusion:

I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

Some people have certain "callings" in life, or so they say. I've never had that. There are a lot of things I enjoy, but unfortunately the things I enjoy have never panned out to profitable opportunities.

So I'm here, like millions of Americans in a job that isn't really where I want to be, but it pays well enough that I'm content for the time being.

As a kid in the 1980's and 1990's I had illusions of grandeur that someday I'd be the high powered CEO or the high priced lawyer. I had gotten good grades until I went to college. I bumbled around for a few years while I drank massive quantities of alcohol laden beverages, trying to figure what I wanted to do. I wanted to write.....but that doesn't get you a job. I wanted to make films...but that doesn't get you a job. After all, going to college is about getting a job, right? Isn't that why you spend all that money?

That's what I thought because that is what I had been told by everyone in my family, including the ones who never went to college.

And I found out that they were wrong.

If you enter an institute of higher learning with the sole intentions on getting a job, then find out what is trending in the job market, study your ass off even if it is in a subject you do not enjoy in the least bit, participate in every extracurricular activity you can get into, work a full time job and graduate cum lade. You will find a job when you exit school.
Of course you may also end up being miserable and shoving a shotgun in your own mouth when you realize that you've spend the formative years of your life doing what everyone else wanted you to do.

College shouldn't be about finding a job....at least that should not be anyones complete focus and rationale upon entering college. What you learn in the classroom is only a small portion of what you really learn in college. Kids should explore opportunities they are not afforded in high school. Go ahead, take that underwater basket weaving class. Who knows? Maybe that will be your calling. If you find out that you had some underlying basket weaving talent that was never exposed, was it worth taking that class and pursuing that passion?

I think so.

Join that frat house, drink too much once in a while (but not all the time!) and have those stupid drunken "I was in college" stories to share with your friends throughout the years.

People need to experience college. It's more than just classes, term papers and GPA's for most people. There are social aspects to get involved in, life lessons to be learned. Ramen noodles cooked 14 different ways.

For some people, it's only about classes, term papers and GPAs. We call those people nerds.

And you know what? There's nothing wrong with being a nerd either. People that become billionaire software and internet tycoons were/are nerds. So don't pick on the nerd at the frat party, he's going to be your signing your paychecks one day.

In my experience, the things you learn in college outside of the classroom are much more valuable than what you take away from analyzing Beowulf. I never once been asked about the things I learned within the classroom walls of my Alma matter. Not once.

One aspect of college that I wish I would have taken advantage of was networking. I'm not talking about Facebook or Twitter. I mean real  interaction with real people. You never know who you're going to meet. Some of the people I met in college were relatives of high-powered business owners, some are now radio and entertainment personalities and others are business owners.

You never know who you are going to meet.

Unfortunately I didn't realize the value of networking until later in life and believe me, I leverage it when I can. That being said, I  also do what I can to help out others within my circles.

But not everyone can go to college or should go to college and people who go to college don't necessarily need to go right after high school.
Maybe I was one of those people.


It was. Or so I thought.

What it really came down to was that my parents had told me that they would help pay for college if I enrolled after high school. If I waited, I would be on my own.

So I went directly to college, I didn't pass go and I didn't collect $200.
I also didn't go to class.

For the number of years I was in school, I should have "Dr." in front of my name.
But I don't.

And I don't have M.B.A, PhD., Esquire, M.F.A, M.D or C.P.A. after it either.

I often wonder what life would have been like had I not attended college or if I would have waited until I had some life experience under my belt. I certainly wouldn't have the debt I currently carry around every month. It's like a $500 a month period without the blood. I get moody and irritable every month when I have to pay that bill.
I'm pretty confident that I would still be in the same tax bracket had I not gone to school.

There are plenty of trades to learn and other industries where you can still rise to the top with little or no education at all: retail, the food industry, sales.  Some of the best sales people I know never went to college and many barely made it through high school. Sales is a talent that is groomed from natural ability, it isn't something you can teach in a classroom.

As I said, what you learn in the classroom is only a fraction of what you really learn in college, and you'll never use most of that shit anyway. Especially the crap you learn in your first 2 years of school.

I realize that the 100 and 200 level classes are the prerequisites to entering your major, but let's face it, most of it is just an extension of the worthless crap you learned in high school. I know some schools are actually structured in the opposite manner: you take your major first, then take the bullshit in your last couple of years. Schools are now offering credits for life experience.

I think that should be more commonplace. Even today, you learn more on the job than you do in the classroom in most cases. And let's face it, there are a lot of crappy teachers and professors out there that have never tried or never succeeded at anything else professionally.

So who the fuck are they to teach you how to do succeed?

With the exception of a few subjects such as math, life and business cannot be learned from a book. In fact, what the book tells you is often wrong. The theories were written by those same people who never ventured outside of the classroom.

My two favorite professors in college weren't even "real" professors. Neither had a doctorate at the time, but both had careers previous to entering the teaching profession. They didn't dictate to the class from a book religiously. Most of the time, their classes revolved around real-world projects with real local and national schools and businesses.

That is how college should be taught. In the real world. Let students experience what it's really like to work in certain industries. Require them to do internships, useful internships, not bullshit internships selling tickets for the Spokane Indians games.

I would much rather work for a person who has experience and expertise in their field as opposed to a freshly minted MBA. I've worked for both, and I'll never pick working for the kid fresh out of grad school. Ever.

People should go to school for two reasons: to learn new things or to supplement knowledge they already have. Study for enjoyment not for employment. If you enjoy what you do, the employment will follow.

I'd Rather Watch Football...and I Don't Even Like Football

President Barack Obama is scheduled to give his hoorah let's go create some jobs speech next week, which also coincides with the NFL season opener. I'd rather watch football...and I don't even like football.
While Mr. Obama gave some great hoorah speeches while on the campaign trail, his sustenance has been disappointing to put it mildly. "Oh it's the Republicans fault!" they cry.

Oh bullshit.

Think about this: who embodies the furthest thing from a rich, mumbling not so bright white guy?
That's right! A "self made," articulate black guy!

He was put in office to pacify the people in the wake of all the shit Lil Bush stirred up.
Yes I said put in office, as in installed. Don't kid yourselves people, your votes don't matter as much as you would like to think they do. They really don't matter at all. The people who still believe that their single vote makes a difference are the same people that believe gas prices aren't fixed and that the president really IS there to represent the people.

But I digress. This entry is about jobs, and not fixed elections.

I have a friend who has been out of work for 2 years now. It's not that he hasn't been looking, but he keeps getting doors closed in his face because people say he's been out of the job market for too long.

What do you do?

You lose your job. You try to find another job during some of the worst economic times in modern American history along with thousands of others looking for work as well. So you continue looking and at some point you begin to get the "you've been out of the industry for too long" line.

Let me tell you about my job hunting experience during this New Economy.

I lost my job just before the summer in 2009.
I honestly wasn't too worried about the situation because after all, this is Seattle. We were a year or two behind the recession bubble, so even then, you could walk out of one job and have another before you reached the other side of the street.

Or so I thought.

Some friends had helped me get potential interviews for sales positions at a few companies, but I hate sales. Hate it. So I thought I'd hold out and look for something I wanted to do.

But as I began looking, I started getting emails and phone calls from friends in the same or similar industries as mine, similar job titles as mine...all getting downsized and laid off. It was like we were a bunch of dominoes falling one by one with no arms or legs to help ourselves up.

We all got together once a week or so to carpool to various job fairs. I think it was more of a social outing than anything because anyone who has ever been to a job fair will tell you that all the jobs at the job fair is like all the stuff at the swap meet. It's shit nobody else wants and shit you don't want.

It was when the lines at the job fairs began to stretch for entire city blocks that reality really hit that everyone was out of work from entry level kids to seasoned professionals.

You know somethings wrong when you have to RSVP for a job fair. That's fucked.

So we quit going to job fairs. We shared ideas over email and on Facebook. My friend and former co-worker got together once in awhile to run errands because we lived up street from each other. But really, after a few months of sitting in front of the computer hammering out resumes and cover letters day in and day out, you reach a point where you don't want anything to do with the outside world.

You don't want to hear about the fucked up economy because you're there living it. You don't want to hear the traffic report because you wish you were commuting to work. You don't want to hear about the world's problems because just dealing with your own shit is a full time job in and of itself. You go to bed every night hoping you'll wake up the next morning with that magic email in your inbox telling you that Company X would like to bring you on full time at a salary that was similar to the one you had before.

It never happens.

I sent out nearly 2000 emails in the course of a few months and only landed a handful of interviews. Of those interviews, two were willing to pay me half of what I made before....which was on par with what unemployment paid. One led me through a series of three interviews only to tell me that they wanted to hire me but couldn't afford me.
I thought to myself "well, if you pay more than unemployment, I'm willing to negotiate."
The last interview, which was for a position that I actually wanted and that actually paid me on par with what I had previously made, called me to extend a job offer only to rescind a few days later, stating that they were now on a hiring freeze due to lack of sales.

It was all very disconcerting.

I created a personalized website showcasing my accomplishments and some of my "talents," I tried to start a business with a couple of former colleagues which is hard when nobody in the group has a real source of income.

It's tough to get a bank loan when you're broke, which is ironic, because if I had money, I wouldn't have needed the loan. Motherfuckers.

After a few months of being unemployed, the "advice" from family members began to roll in.

Let me pause for this commercial break:

"Oh you should go back to school."
I'd like to, but I already have student loan debt and I'm not looking to add to that. Because if and when I do find another job, I'LL HAVE EVEN MORE LOANS TO PAY BACK!

"You should start your own business."
Please refer to previous rant about being broke and getting a bank loan.

"You should take a part time job or whatever comes along just to show you've been working."

This.

This is the biggest conundrum in the history of unemployment. You can't take the part time job because you can't afford to. I mean, you literally can't afford to. If you can afford to pay your bills on a $10 an hour part time job, then you don't have shit to worry about. You'll never be in this boat and maybe we should all take a lesson from you. But if you're like the other 99.9% of the people in this country, then you have bills to pay and $10 an hour at 20 hours a week just won't cut it. You're better off financially staying unemployed.

I know, because I made that mistake. Believe me, that's one mistake I'll never make again! After I realized that the unemployment checks were bigger than my employment checks, I scrambled to find another job....or to lose the current part time one I had.

The other side of the dish is this: if you take a part time job at the local supermarket or coffee shop or whatever happens to be in your neighborhood and it has nothing to do with what you did before in your professional life, you're better off staying home. Because the minute you put that on your resume or someone asks you "what have you been doing with your down time" and you tell them you've been making lattes, they're going to ask you "well, what the fuck does that have to with (insert previous profession here)?"

The obvious answer is nothing, and they know the answer is nothing. It's as if they ask you that just to hear some bullshit answer for their own amusement.

When I was asked that question I always wanted to answer with, "nothing motherfucker! And you know it has nothing to do with what I'd been doing  for the last five years before I lost my job. I just got sick and tired of sending out fucking resumes all day long and getting fucking nowhere!"

I still do.

"You need to target your cover letters and resumes better and you'll have more bites."
This may be bullshit. May not be. I've seen it work, and I've seen it become the biggest waste of time. I tried to tailor my documents for the first few months, but after awhile of getting nowhere, you just want to hit as many places as possible so you pull out the shotgun.

I eventually landed a job that paid enough to pay the bills. After a year of searching. It wasn't a job I wanted or a job that I ever thought I'd have.

Nope.

After spending half a decade trying to position myself for a decent career in IT procurement and product sourcing, I became an exterminator.

Yep. Bug man.

Well, actually I was a bug killing manager. But that's akin to being a fast food manager. Any way you slice the deli meat, you're still a peon at the end of the day. I still crawled under people's homes and got covered in rat shit.

So I spent a year killing bugs and rodents while I looked for another job to actually get back on track with my career when I stumbled onto a job opening that happened to be with a company a friend of mine and former co-worker worked for.

Sometimes it's not what you know.

Of course, when I interviewed for the position, they asked me what killing bugs and rats has to do with IT procurement.....

Now I have a job....for the next year. It's a 1 year contract and there is no guarantee that the contract will be renewed. They didn't renew the contract for the guy before me...or the guy before him... So now I think about what's going to happen next year. Will I be in that long unemployment line with my buddy?

It's very possible. Probably pretty likely.
But I'll enjoy what I have for now and try not to worry too much....

So I'll start looking again in the next month or so in hopes that I can line something else up.
If not, then it's back to government cheese and Ramen.

Maybe by then I'll finally be in a position to sell everything and go live on a beach in some country somewhere that you've never heard of.

But until then, I'll skip the President's bullshit speeches on how he's trying to create jobs and I'll watch football instead.