Get a Bachelors Degree in Whatever It Was You Could Already Do

This Monday, I start my second job at the elementary school.  For those of you not strategically tapped into my brain waves, I'm going to be working in a functional learning skills classroom with children with some pretty severe developmental disabilities.  I know it's going to be hard work and there will be many challenging days.  Plus I'll still be working at my current job, so I'll be working literally every day of the week (around 60 hours per week in total.  Yup.  I'm badass).  Nonetheless, I'm very excited about this opportunity.  Which, given the hopelessness in my job searching since graduation, is no small feat.

It's been a year and a half since I graduated, and the only jobs I've been able to secure are the ones that I could have got with a mere high school education.  Don't get me wrong- I've enjoyed most of those jobs.  I've had fun, got some nice experience, and met some great people.  But it is slightly frustrating to have spent mucho mula to go to college to get jobs that I could have with my trusty high school diploma. 

Not that I would give back my college experience for anything.  I learned so much about the world I live in, I met a phenomenal group of women that taught me just as much as the professors did (a metric crap-ton), and I got some nice looking trophies to hang on my resume.  I got to be the first person in my immediate family to graduate from college and that is an achievement that I do not take lightly.  And my children got to see me walk across the stage to receive my degree, so they see that there is some value in hard work and perseverance. 

Of course, it's a good thing I learned to persevere so that when I graduated I could find a series of part time jobs to work hard at so we could barely stay afloat.  Post college life has been a struggle.  Before I got this job at the school, I hadn't been able to find anyone willing to hire me for more than 24 hours a week or $8 an hour (I don't count my time as an AFT because that was like a paid three-month tour of duty in hell).  Not from lack of effort- there's just not that much out here in the U.P.  I even applied at Target and Wal-Mart!  All I got was a 'Thanks but no thanks' e-mail from Target and no call back from Wal-Mart. I guess it was just as depressing for them to think about hiring a 32-year old college graduate as it was for me to think about working there.

I shouldn't take it so personally though.  The fact is that more kids are graduating from college today than in the past, and so the field of potential employees for limited jobs is now a much more competitive one (for better and for worse).  I didn't get a case manager position at the social service agency I work for now because a couple of other BSWs had applied for the same position.  Sure, I have reason to believe that I was the better candidate based on my resume (and my self-affirmation bias) but the reality is that there are more and more people who look like me (just on paper, thank God) in the search for jobs.

The structure of the employment market is different too.  Back in the day, you could afford to graduate from high school and get a nice factory job that would pay you good, middle-class money and you could work there for 30 years or whatever and then retire.  BOOM.  Sure, there were elite jobs that required college, but you could still make a good living without it.

Nowadays, the same hierarchical job structure is there, except that the factory-type job paying middle-class money with benefits has been outsourced to other countries.   So the middle and lower jobs saw a shift downwards in the income level, but now you have to spend around $50,000 just to have a chance to get rejected from these lesser jobs.  Unless you go to a rich school where you can make some meaningful ($$$) connections.

Even then, in this era of affirmative action and equal hiring policies you see the 'Old boys network' slowly eroding away.  Sure, there are places that you can get a job just based on who you know (and the reality is that social networks do play a role in getting many jobs), but it's getting harder and harder to simply cash in a favor for such work.  Trust me, I know.  I now have a negative favor balance and a restraining order from Shop-ko.

And even though I've had some nice experiences, apparently they haven't been the right ones.  In my quest to thrust myself into the upper-lower class, I have found a plethora of jobs that all seem to be looking for this one thing- experience.  Unfortunately you need experience to get experience and they won't hire you without experience.  It's like a circular logic merry-go-round, and I'm trying to jump on it...except the guy spinning it is the Incredible Hulk.

And he's drinking what looks to be Campells Grape-flavored soup.  Must have been a '70's thing...

Say what you will about Occupy Wall Street (I guess really I should just say Occupy X, since prit-near every city has their own Occupy movement now), but the basic premise of the movement is sound.  There is a disparity in our society.  It's easy to point the finger at poor people and call them lazy or entitled  or whatever, but there are people out there who are willing and able to work hard- there just aren't many opportunities to work hard and make a decent living.  Yes, my life as an American in poverty is much, much better than most of the poor people (and even some non-poor people) elsewhere in the world.  I'm thankful for what I have and for the opportunities that I've been afforded.

But the American Dream wasn't built on the idea that hard work and sacrifice will get you the exact same thing that just doing the bare minimum would.  No, that's just what the latest version of it has become.
PS- Since I'll be working around 60 hours per week between my two jobs, I can't promise that my blog will receive the tender love and care that you've come to expect from me.  I do hope to update it often enough for it to not fade into oblivion...but I don't know how much energy I'll have at the end of each day, either.  Regardless of what happens in the short term, I at http://www.youshouldknowjasonparks.blogspot.com/ am not leaving and will continue to sporadically give you the same level of post quality as I did back when I was a underemployed stay-at-home dad/bum.  Which I suppose could be taken as a sign to abandon ship, I don't know.

PIC- https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8a2R8quOv29yPI1rKBRuFk8hWLPhjcmv0BOuQwUmVUBVmc-QOC8lBKg8KKTak-nJQ-1xCKQnJvrGBzlAeoq2NZL8MEKUeh92kj1Ka1crRZbV6QA79x53P_OKh4CePgkTfcoC5gxEtFNsm/s1600/bixby_hulk5.jpg