It's All Downhill After Preschool: Learning To Survive The Job Search And Life After College

Jobs. When I was younger and in elementary school, teachers seemed to want to get me going on this idea: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" We were always asked that question. Whether it was the teachers or whomever was responsible for the curriculum, someone was pretty keen on knowing what we wanted to do. Possibly because they were afraid in twenty years we'd be the ones to take their job. Or maybe they wanted to get the inside scoop on what occupations would become obsolete thanks to robots we would invent.

Knowledge about the job world on this planet is pretty sketchy. Does anyone know why we ask children what they want to be, because it's is a pretty dumb question to ask a kid. First of all you ask the kid that, and he's thinking, "What is this dingbat talking about now? I am grown up!" The kid is right: he's got himself an impressive resume. Graduated from diapers with honors, vegetable consumption, intermediate fork use, learned not to touch his or anyone else's private parts too often. At five years old, that's not bad. So it's no surprise he's just going to look at you and smile thinking this is some sort of game.

When he realizes you actually want an answer, the kid starts racking his brain. What do I want to be when I grow up. Hmm, where do I see myself in twenty years ‹ of course speculating that the job market will be tighter then... "Batman." Then all hell breaks loose, because the next five kids are all complaining he stole their answer. Of course the first kid doesn't care, because he doesn't really want to be that anyway. He wants to be a My Little Pony except his dad acts kind of strange when he says that, so he doesn't. Kids don't know this. No one told them yet. That's why they're at school! You have to tell them why this is important. We're not going to ruin any surprises for them, and it's not like they can't handle this idea. If you can get them to answer honestly they're going to tell you adults seem pretty stupid for choosing to go off someplace they don't want to go. I bet most kids wonder, if you can do anything you want, why not hang around with your friends all day popping juice boxes in a parking lot?

Today I concern myself with this because the college doesn't seem to care that my life is suddenly going to change in a few months. Now that they've stripped my of all my savings, I'd like to have somewhere to generate income. Of course I'm still recovering from shock number two: "You mean I not only have to apply for a job, but even after I do, you might not want me?" This all happened ten or twelve years after the first shock when children find out their coloring skills aren't good enough anymore. At this point I knew I was wondering why the hell adults were so reluctant to tell their kids about life? Apply for a job, what kind of nonsense is that? From what I had gathered, if you wanted a job you walked around town until you saw a sign in a storefront. You grab the sign, bring it inside and the camera cuts to a shot of you sweeping the floor in an apron. There's no application! How could they not want you to work? Between bathing pets and mowing the lawn, your parents couldn't get enough of it. So what's John Q. Hypothetical-Storeowner's problem?

Do we get life experience? No, we get more shielding in the form of parents calling their buddies at the Junkyard or the Fertility Clinic to get us a job for the summer. BANG - more surprises. We have to apply to college, sending out a bunch of three to seven page synopses of our lives ourselves to people in states we don't even know. Then, after all that hard work coloring things and doing algebra, we get a bunch of thin little envelopes back saying we're not good enough. Now we've got kids locking themselves in their rooms, not out of depression, but in fear that their parents are going to return the unused portion of their children for a full refund. Either that, or I had closed off and just started figuring life out for myself. Good for me. My conclusion: I suck. Then, assuming you haven't been returned, you make it to college, obviously thanks to some skill at successfully applying to positions. When interestingly, BANG - there are suddenly dozens of resources on how the application process works and how to be successful. This isn't an hour-long-special-on-sharks interesting. It's break-down-on-the-floor-crying interesting.

All I can say is that people better begrudge me a little time from now on to research the upcoming stages of my life. Maybe it's my fault for being a small, uncommunicative human being for the first ten years of my life. But who knows what we don't know at this point in our lives? Maybe there's an application to get married, or the first-born of every couple must be sacrificed to Osirus. I'm sure we'll get the full story right after the information ceases to be useful. That's how the nightly news works, so I don't know why I haven't seen this all along. Unlike parents and guidance counsellors, television is chock full of people telling you what to do. Why the hell do you think college graduates watch so much of it?

My biggest concern is that people have begun asking me what I plan to do after graduation. Important people like my parents. I hesitate to answer for two reasons. First because all this freedom is too good to be true. I'm just waiting for them to suddenly say, "Well, whatever it is, you can forget it because you and all your classmates are being shipped to Amarillo to herd rattlesnakes for the tourist industry! Ha ha ha!" Possibly followed by booming thunder and a lightning flash. The second reason is that we've been told what to do all of our lives. Why are we suddenly free? Doesn't anyone care what I do with myself? I'm going to run a prostitution ring in Miami... "Great!" ...Or maybe I'll get myself a shed and harass hikers in the backwoods of Kentucky... "Sounds fabulous! Do you get dental insurance with that?"

Did the forces of education finally just give up? Because I'm telling you right now: once I go, I go. It isn't that I blame you, but I told you sixteen years ago I was planning a career as a Stormtrooper, and frankly I don't feel properly prepared for that position. I was expecting some blaster rifle training, anti-Jedi techniques or at least a ride on a space ship by middle school. Forgive me if I'm not as confident as you are that a Liberal Arts education is just as applicable working for a local consulting firm as it is cruising about and oppressing the galaxy.

With whatever seriousness I can muster at this point, understand that life for us is about to get pretty ridiculous. No matter how many people have done it before, it's happening to us for the first time. We don't even know why we want to do this. I was very comfortable back with the crayons. Financial independence is great, I suppose; I just don't feel ready to work for what might be the rest of my life. If I take a year off and then try to get a job, I imagine I still won't want to work for the rest of my life. The whole idea is that we burgeoning young adults need more time, but not on this end. I think you would have a heck of a lot more production out of young people if you told them early on why we can't all be firemen.

Get the idea of life into children's brains early. I understand being afraid to crush our dreams. Osirus forbids children having to face the reality they will eventually inherit. So rather than begin explaining it early, you wait until we're all going to have stress epidemics trying to deal, when as a child we would have another dream cooked up five seconds after the first. We probably have such a hard time dealing with reality now because we never had to when we were younger. For some reason I see Galileo running in circles with his hands over his eyes: "La, la, la, if I can't see it, it's not true!" If it's too late for us, maybe we can dish out the 411 to our own kids. Then they won't have to deal with the nightmare of tracking down the phone number for the Care Bears'' human resources department.