I am 25 years old. I am the son of two public school teachers. I was raised in the middle-class of suburban New Jersey. I have an undergraduate degree and a graduate degree.
For the first time in my life, I am unemployed.
Wow.
This diary starts with Friday night. My boyfriend was in Manhattan visiting me. Since it's Pride this weekend, he wanted to go out to a club.
I was thinking about what I would do at the club that night. I'm not a huge dancer, so generally, clubs involve drinking and chatting (okay, really, it's FLIRTING, but it's all window-shopping, honest). I was thinking about that standard question: "What do you do for a living?" That's when it struck me.
I don't do ANYTHING.
I have been working towards my law degree since I was 12 or 13 years old. There have been occasional temptations to consider a psychology degree or a political science degree, but really, at heart, I always wanted a law degree. From high school, I went straight to undergrad and got my bachelor's in History. From undergrad, I went straight to law school. Three years later, they gave me a degree and kicked me out.
Now, there's a dirty little secret about the legal profession--something they don't tell you when you show up at your law school open house. Simply put, it's hard to get a job. The mega-lawyers generally come from a very small group of hyper-achievers or grads from elite law schools. For the other 80-90% of us, jobs are tough to come by. The job search basically consists of mailing resumes all around your chosen location. Schools offer some on-campus interviews, but really, the advice from your career services office is going to be: "Just get your name out there."
Well, I've been doing that. So far, no success. But that's not really the point. The point is this: for as long as I can remember, I have been able to identify myself on loan forms and surveys as "Student." If I happened to be holding a random part-time jobs, I could put that down, too. But I was always SOMETHING. Now, I'm nothing.
And being on this side of the divide for the first time in my life, I have a new insight into toxic unemployment is. I mean, think about it: when we talk about our jobs, we say "I am a . . .." We don't say "I work as a . . .." It's "I'm a mechanic." Not "I fix cars for a living." Jobs are a huge part of how we identify ourselves as individuals. And not having it is pretty jarring.
That doesn't even include raw economic considerations. My boyfriend will be moving to Manhattan to live with me at the end of the summer. Now, he's in the healthcare field, and therefore, he shouldn't have any trouble finding a good-paying job. But, perhaps predictably, I feel pressure to get a decent job and provide for him. That causes more stress for me than anything else. I can only imagine what it would be like if I had an entire family to look after.
I'm not overly worried about myself. Some way, some how, I know I'll get a job. I have decent luck. But with General Motors announcing that it will shed a quarter of its work force, it's worth remembering how profoundly spiritually damaging it can be to find yourself suddenly out of a job.