Chris Demorro / Special to The Recorder
I like to think of college as more of a learning experience about self than any particular subject, and seeing as the class of 2009 is about to graduate, I feel like reflecting.
Have you asked yourself lately, who am I? It’s a tough question to answer honestly, and it applies on more than just a personal level. What kind of generation will we be remembered as? Tough times tend to make for a stronger, stouter generation than the eras of plenty and too much, but in an odd way, we are now a product of both.
Looking back for a moment, we see that life has a somewhat steep learning curve. The better we get at making ourselves comfortable, the bigger the consequences seem to be (as though the threat of nuclear annihilation wasn’t enough to make humanity to step back and analyze ourselves).
We live in a world where a comfortable minority ignores a suffering majority, even as commercials of crying hungry children desperate for some spare change and clean water are splashed all over Comedy Central during the “South Park” commercial break. But then again, we always think to ourselves, I don’t want to see this; I want to laugh.
I am aware of how tough I have become – tough because sometimes the situation demands it, and mostly because a college degree is depreciating in value. I have hope, despite all of the problems we are inheriting (and our potential to make them worse for the next generation).
But we can change all of that, with a Twitter, a Facebook invite, or an old school AIM message. If we can have flash mob pillow fights in the middle of a mall then I’m sure we can pull together something a little more productive, like cleaning up a local park one day, just for the hell of it. It’s not as though the job market looks sturdy right now; Instead of sitting around lamenting the consequences of our circumstance, we should be out trying new things, making differences, following our dreams. Cubicles be damned!
We have an advantage no other generation has ever had. We can interact with people on the other side of Earth instantly. That means we can talk it out like never before.
We can be individuals without being haters. We can organize and plan and share ideas with like-minded people by doing a casual Google search. Maybe we can see “the other side” a little clearer. Maybe we can make this sometimes sweet and sometimes cruel existence a little better for everyone. Maybe it’s worth a shot.
Frank Gentile • May 14, 2009 at 5:20 am
Chris,
I am a CCSU part-time graduate student (hopefully completing in Fall of 2009), I am 38 years old and have been attending CCSU since late 2006. I am solidly generation X, the generation that for the most part got out of college during the recession of 90 – 93 (economists will tell you that was a 6 month recession but the affects were around 3 years). I can tell you a little something about how things go when you’re out of college with your freshly minted BS or BA and people 2 times your age are looking for work.
Back in 1993 I spent 6 months searching for a job, I had graduated from Sacred Heart with a BS in Computer Science, my minor was business management. I finally accepted a job with really the only company interested in a CS grad. I was paid nearly 40% lower than I would have been if I graduated 2 years earlier and barely made more at my new job then I did at my part-time job at a grocery store. I was stuck living with mom and dad much longer then I would have liked because of that recession and the resulting difficulty in finding better paying work.
Eventually it did all work out but it took over 6 years to work out. For one thing living with mom and dad, trying to find better paid work, and trying to hold down a relationship or a social life was impossible. Women in the 90s didn’t understand or care to as I remember it, even if they were experiencing the same deal, hopefully that has changed. The dot.com boom skipped me since as times got better hipper, younger grads took most of those jobs, the dot. Com busted anyways. But eventually my career took off, and at the ripe old age of 28 (10 years ago) I moved out of my parents house and within a few years I mortgaged a much smaller tiny home that me and my girlfriend could afford.
I have been in this home since then, I have a decent career, I was able to go back to school for my grad degree thanks to how affordable CCSU is, and I survived that bitter recession and another one in 2001 despite the fact I had to make a few more job changes. I’m still employed (knock on wood).
The advice I can give you and other recent grads is that it will be tough, other graduating classes yet to come will do better then you because of the timing of their graduation and because hiring managers are afraid of gaps on resumes and will only pay you a little more then what you are currently earning.
What can you do? You can do what I didn’t do; you can stay in school and get a graduate degree while the recession ends. You are solidly right about one thing for sure, the BS/BA degree is now a requirement and worth much less then it was even 5 years ago, a masters is worth a great deal more.
Whatever you do don’t give up on finding a career that will pay well enough to live comfortably.
Oh and about the majority of the world suffering while the minority is in riches. Take some advice from an old dude: There’s a ton of suffering, human suffering, to be found right here near the CCSU campus. Yes we are a “global village” now but that will not change the fact that unless the U.S. and Western Europe can help their own citizens and solve their own issues worrying about other nations too much is pretty damn stupid. As it stands no matter what field you are in the fact that the US has shipped millions of jobs to India, Mexico, and Ireland in the name of cheap labor and economic anti-protectionism you will have a hell of a harder time finding a decent job even without a recession.
My hope is that your generation will not end up working as hard and as long as many Generation Xers, like me, have in order to find a solid career.
Good luck.