Up until now, I’ve spent my life preparing. In elementary
school, I was taught good study habits that my teachers told me
would prepare me for high school. In high school, I took
college-prep courses that would prepare me for college. In college
I took the designated courses that would prepare me for my career.
But nowhere in that myriad preparedness did anyone prepare me for
the most shocking change of all
– real life after school.
Up until now, I’ve spent my life preparing. In elementary school, I was taught good study habits that my teachers told me would prepare me for high school. In high school, I took college-prep courses that would prepare me for college. In college I took the designated courses that would prepare me for my career. But nowhere in that myriad preparedness did anyone prepare me for the most shocking change of all – real life after school.
In college there are required courses everyone must take to graduate. Along with English, history and science, a new class should be added to supplement everything you spend hours studying for and never use later – “Life After College 101.” There are some very tough lessons that should at least be somewhat expounded on before they send us out into the man-eating beast we so casually term the work force.
After spending four years in college – Chico State no less – going to the bars on Tuesday nights because I specifically scheduled my classes around buck night, and calling everyone who didn’t have the title professor, “dude,” the sudden jump into the working world has given me quite a jolt.
First of all, no one told me that getting a degree doesn’t guarantee plenty of money. After over a month of having a real job (versus my last job as a cocktail waitress – with all fairness to cocktails waitresses around the country, I just can’t consider a job where I get paid to drink a “real job”), this factor still has me baffled, especially when I open up my paycheck. I could have skipped college, worked my way up to manager at Baby Gap in the same time it took me to get my degree, and be making twice what I am now. Thanks Mom and Dad, good advice on that one.
Of course I know I have to work my way up, especially in this economy – jobs are scarce, even for a smarty like me. I know those dreamy manager positions at Baby Gap aren’t given to Joe or Jane Blow off the street either. Those people worked hard to get there. This brings me back to another thing my all-knowing professors failed to mention in school. You actually have to work when you have a job. And it’s not just for a few hours and then you can go home and take a nap or watch HBO like in school. It’s for the entire day, which for a newbie like myself is rarely eight hours – it’s more.
In school, especially in your senior year, all anyone can talk about is where they’re going to apply for a job, where they’ve interviewed at and so on. This is all talked about with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm, as well it should be because it’s the commencing of a major stage in a person’s life. For myself, and I’m sure quite a few others in my graduating class, that sense of excitement and enthusiasm for a career has been replaced with the sudden urge to go back to school. How do I know it’s not just me that feels this? Because half of the people I know who weren’t sure if they wanted to stay in school or get a job are sitting in class right now, working toward their master’s because it’s easier than working.
This brings us full circle back to my first gripe, money. Grad school costs a lot of it, so how does one pay for school when Mom and Dad turn the money faucet off? Being the smarty I am, I have that one figured out, too. For the answer to this question please send a minimum of $10 (larger amounts are encouraged) to the Hollister Free Lance, in care of Erin Musgrave. Cash is preferred, but I won’t hold it against you if you send a personal check.
Now, this may not be technically ethical journalistically, but in this terrible economy, a girl’s gotta make a living somehow. Right?
Erin Musgrave is a staff writer at the Free Lance. Her column appears every other Tuesday.
