It’s winter. Winter at Vassar means claustrophobia, phallic snow sculptures and such low temperatures in the Joss House bathrooms that last week I opted not to shower for upwards of 48 hours. And yet, even though we have to trek across the frozen tundra to get to class every morning, summer is at the forefront of our minds. Deadlines for summer positions are weighing down on us like so many bites of an All Campus Dining Center quesadilla. If you haven’t already started your applications, you might as well just pick out a comfy cardboard box to furnish because your dreams of being this generation’s post-ironic answer to Ira Glass are straight up over.
I am not included in this year’s feeding frenzy; I’m not applying for internships or fellowships or any of those other -ships that people seem to be willing to sacrifice virgins over. I’m working at the same day camp where I’ve attended and been a counselor for the past eight years. My job is choice because it’s seven minutes from my house, involves teaching sassy children how to properly execute jazz hands and allows me to get home before naptime (mine, not the kids’). Most of all, though, it means that I get to hold the real world at bay for one more summer. I can barely handle stapling a psychology paper without drawing blood (true story), so why would anyone want to pay me to collate their files? It’s easier and a lot less scary to return to a position where I know exactly what’s expected of me than to submit my resumé to the judgment of total strangers.
The skill set on my resumé, incidentally, is downright laughable. What have I learned as a camp counselor? How to lead, I guess, as long as the followers are younger than 10. How to remain level headed in a crisis, like when Peter S. ate a pack of Reeses’ Cups on a dare despite his severe peanut allergy. I’ve also written a 17-minute show entitled “Opposable Thumbs: The Musical,” and I can play a mean round of freeze dance. Other than that, though, I wouldn’t hire me. I know Vassar students who have already worked for top magazines and newspapers, interned on Wall Street and single-handedly rescued starving Somalian orphans from burning buses. I think I’ve decided on a spacious refrigerator box, but we’ll see how the job market is doing in a few years.
The terrifying and oddly comforting fact about the world right now is that even with job experience up the wazoo, there’s no guarantee any of us will actually get a job. Grossly overqualified candidates are now applying for less than desirable positions, so the rest of us don’t have a prayer. I learned this the summer after high school when I lost out on a part-time retail job at Victoria’s Secret to a girl who had just graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology. I felt worse for her than I did for myself (and in the interest of full disclosure, my undesirability in that case may or may not have been related to an off-color comment I made regarding crotchless panties). So maybe the upshot of this sham of an economy is that we don’t need to freak out about our career trajectories right now. Maybe it’s okay to travel or lie on the beach or make art out of dried macaroni this summer. More power to you if you can snag a coveted position at some tragically hip art gallery in Brooklyn or at a consulting firm (whatever the hell that is), but I’d argue that there’s no shame in freeze dance.
1 comments
With your attitude you are going to have a great life. Whatever you end up dong I'm sure you will be successful.
Good for you for taking all this craziness in stride.