Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: college, graduate school, higher education, history, humanities, new york times, recession, steampunk
There have been a rash of sobering articles focused on the state of higher education recently and I die a little more inside with each passing paragraph. Was I swindled? A more paranoid broke Millennial than I might assume society got together and decided that the more necessary education becomes for individual success, the more money can be bled from burgeoning generations. While Millennials seem sufficiently bludgeoned, another lie told to my generation (to extort more money?) has been debunked.
I assume that many others like myself were encouraged to head to grad school until this whole “recession thing” blew over, prolonging our education (and our debt repayment timeline) to insulate ourselves from the lonely, painful road to gainful employment post-graduation. A new piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education clues us clueless Millennials in on a little secret: Graduate School for the Humanities: Just Don’t Go. As the recipient of a BA in History, I also flirted with the idea of locking myself up in an ivory tower with a typewriter (or perhaps a steampunk’d computer), a few hundred books about the Cold War and a dream. But now I see I was a victim of that youthful idealism universities inject into their liberal arts programs. Some wisdom from the author, Thomas H. Benton:
It can be painful, but it is better that undergraduates considering graduate school in the humanities should know the truth now, instead of when they are 30 and unemployed, or worse, working as adjuncts at less than the minimum wage under the misguided belief that more teaching experience and more glowing recommendations will somehow open the door to a real position.
At least now I can tell my parents that I may be unemployed, but at least I am not continuing my education! Even after digesting this article, I still held on to the flickering flame inside that tells me I must someday continue my academic pursuits – I will just have to wait until I am filthy rich (society tells me that can happen, too).
And then the NY Times, in it’s continual quest to strip my generation of its youthful optimism, hopped on the humanities haters bandwagon. I have no proof to back up my claim, but I would guess that the portion of recent college grads who eagerly devour every word in this newspaper/website could be categorized as humanities majors.
“Although people in humanities have always lamented the state of the field, they have never felt quite as much of a panic that their field is becoming irrelevant,” said Andrew Delbanco, the director of American studies at Columbia University.
Heartbreaking. This must be what Latin felt like when it plunged into obsolescence. Wouldn’t you rather be poor than irrelevant? At least poverty is a struggle people care about and empathize with.
I have a whole slew of new student loan travesties I could shell out, but I think our spirits have taken enough of a beating for today.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: american heart association, breakfast, cheap, food, food and drink, heart disease, oatmeal, quaker oats, recession
I recently received a very passionate email from my friend Katie. Also a walking definition of the term “broke Millennial,” Katie has found a bright spot in her post-college financial abyss. It inspired me to think twice about passing over an ordinary-looking canister of oats, so I have provided the text of her email for all to enjoy. If you have any stories, feel free to email brokemillennial@gmail.com.
“confession: breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. and now that i’m unemployed, i usually prepare that first meal of the day around, um, noon. as the rest of the world transitions into lunchtime, I still prepare only breakfast foods to start off my daily meal intake.
because of my unemployment (read: poverty), i have to give each purchase i make some financial analysis – can i afford yogurt every morning? no. can i afford fruit every morning? no. can i even afford a frozen bagel w/ cream cheese every morning? no. my regrettable lack of funds led to a culinary rediscovery.
i somehow inherited two canisters of oatmeal a few months ago when a friend moved out of town. ok, i’ll admit…at first, i was hesitant and uninterested. i mean, it wasn’t of the individually-packaged, flavored apple cinnamon variety. it was literally a CAN OF OATS. but one day i had nothing in my kitchen, and decided to give it a whirl. and i was pleasantly reminded of how delicious this simple treat can be! and since that day, i have thought of many other reasons to appreciate oatmeal. so millennials – don’t knock the oatmeal till you’ve revisited it and given it a fair chance.
for those who need more convincing, here are the 8 reasons i recommend oatmeal to all you other broke millennials:
1. it is delicious! with one big canister of oats, you can try many different things: adding brown sugar, sugar, milk, honey or even maple sugar. there are boundless creative opportunities.
2. it is CHEAP – at target, you can get a big canister of Quaker Oats for just $2.32! and the canister says that it has 13 1/2 cup servings (which is a totally satisfying amount). so that equals about 18 cents per serving (WOW).
3. it is incredibly simple. basically, pour out what you want, add H2O and microwave it for 2 minutes – can’t get much easier than that.
4. It keeps well. oatmeal definitely will not go bad. It can make appearances at other meal times as well – for instance if all your other food is gone and you don’t want to make another trader joe’s run for dinner. the oatmeal isn’t going to go anywhere.
5. It is healthy! with 150 calories and 3g of fat per serving, it is a super good way to begin the day. the package has a big heart on the front, and claims to reduce your cholesterol. the american heart association endorses it. heart disease is the number one cause of death among women and the american heart association sponsors a go red for women campaign to promote heart health awareness among women. choosing oatmeal for breakfast and getting regular check-ups are great ways to prevent this disease.
6. It is incredibly filling. That 1/2 cup will hold you over until your next mealtime.
7. It is really warm, and feels great on a cold day
8. It is forward-thinking. once you are employed and can afford ingredients, you can even bake oatmeal cookies!
and plus, the quaker on the front of the package is a total silver fox.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: budget, cooking, cooking with clara, food, food and drink, great depression, great depression cooking with clara, recession
Since I am in no way capable of dispensing tips for the financially-strapped culinary soul, I present to you Clara, a 93-year old treat. She provides tutorials on preparing budget meals and colors her videos with stories from the Great Depression. She is an entertainment tour de force, whose perspective proves relevant to our generation of broke Millennials.
Thanks to Liz for introducing me to Clara’s wisdom.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: escapism, general hospital, millennial generation, millennials, recession, rejection, soap operas
Friends,
I have a confession to make. In my last entry, I was speaking to you as someone who thought she had forded the Rejection River (with oxen in tow), attempting to lend a hand or perhaps a bouyant surface to those of you getting sucked up in the undercurrent of wasted potential and dying dreams.
I see now that I was mistaken. While I had overcome recession rejection depression for the most part (the lack of food still gets me down from time to time), I did not realize that I was swept up in a different, yet just as dangerous, stream of consciousness. I urged you, my fellow Millennials, to grasp at some form of escape to get you through these unemployment doldrums. While I still stand behind the basic premise of that advice, I must warn you about the dangers of overindulging in escapism. Your judgment becomes cloudy, your perspective becomes shaky, and you begin to justify a lot of self-destructive behavior.
The following is a personal account of an escapist overdose. I’m warning you, it can get pretty graphic and more than a little sad. It might be uncomfortable to read. It brings me no joy to discuss this dark moment in my quest for employment, but if I can help at least one of you reach dry land, then it will have been worth it…
It really began 11 years ago, when I first tuned into General Hospital. I fell in love – as in love as a 12 year old girl could fall – with the angsty teen romance of Elizabeth Webber and Lucky Spencer and I have been watching ever since. Of course, life happened and I became a seasonal viewer, catching up during my lonely, friendless summers in Raleigh throughout college. Summer-induced social droughts, high school angst, pre-college jitters, post-college decompression – General Hospital was there for me through it all. So, it is no surprise that I turned to my soapy escape of choice as I dealt with the transition to the next phase of the rest of my life. It provided a one-hour daily break from writing cover letters, networking, and thinking about how I would ration each week’s groceries to sustain my body the longest.
Then YouTube happened. And with YouTube came hours, days worth of unlimited General Hospital programming. Lucky “died” in a fire in 1999, came back as a different actor in 2000, and the character has irritated me ever since. With YouTube, I could travel back to my formative years and relive the magic of Liz and Lucky. And relive I did. For three days. I cried, I laughed, I stayed mostly stationary. I stopped answering my phone. I stopped writing cover letters (a merciful side effect). I stopped leaving the apartment building. From 6 pm Sunday evening until 2 pm Friday afternoon (the other two days are a blur as well), I did not feel the crisp outside breeze against my skin, at all. I forgot that there was real life outside of YouTube, coffee, and Trader Joe’s Seedy Little Courant Cookies ($1.99: under the $2 individual item limit and it counts as a treat – bonus!). I forgot there was real life outside, period.
Last Friday at 2 pm, I walked out of my apartment building and back into the hustle and bustle of Washington, DC. While I had spent the week wondering why I had ever decided to move to this expensive city in the first place when I could watch the budding romance of Liz and Lucky from the (free) comforts of my parents house (mattress and box spring? check.), I reentered the world and remembered that I didn’t come to DC to escape. I came to the District to get involved, to work toward something I care about.
Rejection hurts and unemployment is a lonely road. Every now and then, it would do your spirit good to let go of the fear, hurt, and sadness of the recession that is currently suffocating your youth.
But with this post, I offer one small addendum: Take a walk outside once in a while too.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: books, general hospital, job search, Mad Men, recection, recession, rejection, resume, soap operas, tofutti
While I would love to help my fellow Millennials deal with broken hearts and Valentine promises ripped asunder, I am much more qualified to tackle what I call “recection” – rejection brought on by the current recession.
A pep talk:
This is important. A broken spirit is a one-way ticket back to your parents’ house on Dead End Rd. That isn’t to say that those who live with their parents are doomed to watch their potential evaporate with each passing month. Indeed, us unemployed recent college grads living on our own are highly skilled at doing that anyway and without the comforts of cable and stocked cupboards. But let’s say you moved away from the finer comforts of home in order to live somewhere that allowed you to pursue your ambitions. And let’s say you often find yourself wondering why you gave up a land of plush pillows and never ending ice cream for a half-pumped air mattress and never ending rice bowls (never…ending…).
However naive, narcissistic, or noble, you needed to believe you could do more with your life and your college education than sitting around watching Mad Men and eating Bagel Bites (or, perhaps tofutti is a more apt visual for my dietarily sensitive generation). Then came all the rejection notes and kind-of-rejection notes and silent rejection non-notes from the receiving end of your resume, each utterance of “the applicant pool is just so large right now” chipping away at your resolve and determination. You pour your heart out – or as much of it that a conservative, professional tone can pour – in cover letters that won’t be read or, “due to the high volume of applicants,” won’t be acknowledged as read. And this is where the recession is most cruel: you are left wishing for the dignity of rejection. Without a conclusive email detailing your mistaken definition of “qualifications,” you linger in limbo, sort of knowing you should give up, yet sort of hoping there is still a chance.
So how do you absorb these corrosive forces and prevent your spirit from jumping off a roof? For starters, look in the mirror and remind yourself why you did it in the first place. If you can’t remember, then you should cut your losses and go home to a real mattress and box spring.
I would like to tell you that it is only a matter of time before employment happens for you and you should keep hanging on, but I honestly don’t know if that is true (hey, I’m unemployed too!). People wiser than I have told me as much and I haven’t heard otherwise, so I am inclined to believe them until I run out of money. I can tell you, though, that if you get rejected enough, it hurts less and it feels less personal. If you keep putting yourself out there, vulnerable to rebuff, the result is twofold: the blows are less crushing and your odds improve. Allow yourself to feel sad, to understand your employment limits, and to dream a different dream. But then move on. You’re too young to waste your life on what could have been; as long as you still think about what could be, then keep going and keep moving on.
Inoculating yourself to the parasitic pang of rejection requires an emotionally satisfying and cost-effective means of escape. Yes, I know – escaping real life only delays the inevitable. I suggest you dispense with this misguided logic immediately. It will only make you sad and sad is when you are most susceptible to damaging thoughts. My escape is General Hospital. A daily fix that meshes equal parts ER and The Sopranos, GH is my chosen means of escape due to the endless supply of clips and entire storylines encapsulated online at no expense to me. It is the only time during the day when I am not thinking about how I am going to pay for the next bowl of rice, let alone next month’s rent, so I won’t have anyone belittling my break from reality. If you like books, then get a library card and go at it. I like to say I love to read, but I confess: I would choose General Hospital over books. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, I’m just saying I found my escape and I’m still going, still moving on. Don’t like soap operas or books? Then you could take a stab at redecorating your space for zero dollars.
The one thing you don’t need while coping with rejection is more reality. Find your zen and you’ll be able to take the “recection” bullets like a champ. And then take a gander at this list of Great Depression success stories (and, whadyaknow, the soap opera is one of them!). Shunning escapism is only for the prosperous and the content. As long as we are the young and the restless, we all need a little break from reality now and then.
What’s your escape? How do you cope with rejection? Comment below or email brokemillennial@gmail.com
Stay gold, Millennials. Stay gold.
