Dear Job Market: You Know You Want Me.
The panic is familiar, as is my standard duck-and-cover response, when adults start asking me questions like: So, what are you going to be doing next year? It strongly reminds me of being a high school senior and trying to figure out the college thing. And as much as I sympathize with what you, dear prospective student, are going through, this is much, much worse.
Having made my Kenyon bed and lain in it, I now find myself getting up the metaphorical next morning and going, okay, time to see where this liberal arts degree gets me. Like writing big papers and studying for exams, the stress of even thinking about such a scary thing as getting a job makes me want to ignore the process until it just, maybe, sorts itself out on its own... (If any future employers are reading this: I am a motivated and diligent worker who never EVER procrastinates.)
Winter break is almost over. In the last week home, I will force myself to do the following: Read that job-hunting book my dad keeps bugging me about, make a list of my skills (a possibly grim reality check), set up an appointment with Kenyon's Career Development Office, who presumably know what to do with people like me, and research places I'd like to work at. It's like finding a college, except that all of them seem to be reaches.
Here are some happy thoughts, though:
1. None of my graduated friends are living in boxes (yet.) They've got jobs, internships, scholarships, and adventures, and they are doing things they really LOVE. I am currently most jealous of a former roommate who is teaching at an elementary school in Japan.
2. Kenyon makes us into good communicators and confident people. I know specifics, like cellular respiration or post-modernist anthropological theory, but I also know how to think, debate, explain, and create.
3. If everything does absolutely fall to pieces, I can always run away to Bali and open a lucrative tarot-reading and juice-bar business.
