Temp life
Did your college education prep you for this?/ Brett Nielsen
University students excited by lack of job prospects
With a tuition increase seeming likely and dwindling job market looking to be not far off, the future looks bleak for many U of R graduates. You’d think this would inspire some fear in the hearts of those soon to be clutching a degree in their grubby, little, middle-class digits but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, most are looking forward to the opportunities that being unemployed will afford them.
One such student is Jim Iaculis, who says that much fun will be had before he begrudgingly enters the workforce sometime between now and his descent into an early grave because of morbid obesity and lack of work ethic.
The svelte sophomore said, “Look, I’ve been here for two years. I’ve struggled through countless group projects, a few hundred pointless assignments, and what seems like the same number of laughable student governments. How bad can unemployment really be? I’ll be eating junk food and watching Netflix, all without the guilt of impending deadlines. It’ll be bliss. Maybe when I’m done relaxing, I’ll get a job in a pointless field like education or kinesiology.”
Others will try to get jobs immediately, but say they don’t think their time at the university has prepared them for their lives in the real world. Kaylah Inculte, a business major with a focus in marketing, has this view.
“I mean, the real world is going to be so much easier than here at the U of R. My degree is in marketing, and what my profs don’t seem to understand is that anything is possible with a good Twitter hashtag. I don’t need things like strategies to succeed; I’ll just attach a video of kittens to each of my posts and I’ll become a millionaire in a day, maybe two?”
Inculte did also mention in her interview that a recent job search she conducted returned zero matches. She told us that she hopes her consistent work ethic and positive personality will land her a job at one of her top two dream jobs: social marketing manager for a giant multinational-company that will suck the cheery little life out of her, or Subway, because, as she says, “I always looked at the fine arts kids, you know, with their punk bands and their avante-gardiness and thought, ‘man I want to be an artist one day.’ Then, I looked into what kind of artsy fartsy job I could get with my degree and found out that Subway was hiring sandwich artists.”
So, student with next to no chance at a fulfilling career, here’s what you do: create your own profession, start a blog, raise your middle finger to “the man,” leave the country, become a wanted criminal, or do whatever you need to do to feel good about yourself. Just never, ever, ever, put in a solid day’s work. Either that or you can fill in this puzzle: As one who serves ________.
Hint: the answer has something to do with fast food joints and arts degrees.
