Things I Realized as a 23 Year Old Looking for a Job

Before the hopefully conclusive analysis begins, I would like to state that I am a writer who recently left the benevolent and banal world of academia with a Masters in Literature and Cultural Studies.

Education Leads to Entitlement

And though you may be right about yourself and your intelligence, the world just doesn’t agree. In the process of looking for a job I applied several assuring filters on job-searching portals, because I obviously  CANNOT do a marketing job, an assistant level work or curate content written by lesser qualified people. Having spent a total of 5 years in the study of society, art, culture and literature, I found myself looking for a pedestal which I would step right on after my feet exit university gates.

You Will Give Tests

A lot of demoralizing tests which will evaluate your abilities to write cohesive sensible sentences, and the fact that you were actually writing thesis papers before this godforsaken journey into the ‘real’ world will not  stand by you. And these tests, interviews, subjection to questions which are probably general knowledge or utterly insignificant will take away whatever entitlement you associated with yourself. As a writer, you will be penalized, materialized and almost dehumanized. Which will fill you with a weird sort of shame whenever you exit prospective office doors.

Free Time Will Haunt You

Not immediately. Initially you will thank your stars and heavens and family and friends for making the period of joblessness and euphoric sense of accomplishment last as long as it will. But then, the friends will go to work, and everyone around you will have better things to do than just read a novel or spend disturbing amount of time on YouTube. And no one will understand that. People will ask you to cherish it, because life, when you “grow up”(leaving to wonder exactly when does the fortunate event hits you) becomes passionless and caught in unaesthetic web of duties and responsibilities.

Compromising is a Quality

So I managed to join a place (for one day, but that’s a different story), and in the eight hour rollercoaster of dread-excitement-patience-PATIENCE-existentialism-FTW, I came across an extremely important lesson. “You need to adjust”, “Everyone does this, you also have to try”, “Haha. See, these things are tough, no one will listen to you” and “You weren’t possibly expecting to be fully satisfied there, were you?”, are some statements I received from people. I realized, that compromising your passions becomes a necessary skill. The ability to efface yourself in order to obey an institution which functions purely on money, is a marketable and applauded ability.

There Are Too Many of Us

The moment you feel even a slight bit ‘exclusive’, your face is shoved into an absurd visual of millions of similar prototypes waiting in the same lines, giving the same tests, asking the same questions, boarding the same metro and hoping the same depraving hope. Your trust on your writing (or whatever skill) will fall short, your future appears to be a Lynchian tragedy and your present is reduced to hours of hypothesizing the fate of our generation.

We Have One Thing On Our Side

Youth.

And a million start-ups who want to do million things which will change the world. They will hire you, only to make you realize that you are probably better than a lot of those content regurgitaters. So, you will try again, a better place that at least has a better name, and then again to the place a cousin suggested, and probably then to a corporate company because you know, “hobbies” don’t really make money. After all this, you, me, will probably go back to a start-up with over enthusiastic people snorting altruistic cocaine.

There is a huge possibility that that won’t work out either. But even if this torturing merry-go-round in the amusement park of 21st century mausoleum fails to quench the thirst of my metaphorical pen and idealized dreams, I will still have the privilege of youth and the audacity of an unfailing passion. And I will happily step onto that merry-go-round again, spinning till I find my ground. On my own terms.