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by insaneirish
5149 days ago
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I'm a bit confused. He says he got his undergrad degree around when Lehman collapsed, which was September of 2008. So if he's 29 now, why didn't he graduate until he was 25 or 26? And if it took that long to graduate, I'd like to think he was doing something worthwhile in those extra years that would have easily turned into a job. There is no secret sauce. Work begets work. I started working as a [very bad] programmer and [mediocre] sys admin when I was 13. That job got me the job I had throughout college. The job in college got me the job I have now. Six years later and things are good. My anecdotal observations are that the longer people I know waited to get their first job, the longer they've remained unemployed or stuck in dead end jobs. |
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I was in the Army before I went to college, so I didn't graduate until I was 27. I got a 3.8 GPA in electrical engineering, but I was still unemployed for over a year before I got hired as an engineer. It was a pretty disheartening year, and I doubted whether I was worth anything to anybody. I finally got a job through a friend. All the cold calls, resumes and interviews were for naught, I got hired through cronyism.
I have a friend who got a degree in sociology, at the age of 28, by working at a hotel and paying out of pocket for a class or two per semester for a decade. She still works at that hotel, two years later, making just above minimum wage. I thought I had it bad being unemployed for a year, but I had military experience and technical skills that were at least somewhat in demand. She's was looking in the social work field, but now she's just looking for any job with benefits and growth, paycheck or industry be damned.
You could argue that sociology is not a degree you should get if you actually want to work. But this woman was written off as "not college material" by teachers and family alike, mostly because she was socially awkward in high school. She worked her ass off for a decade to put herself through school and I'm proud of her. She's shown more grit and determination than I have, certainly. And yet she's unemployable. Hell, she probably couldn't get that hotel job if she started now, because she's got a degree.
"My anecdotal observations are that the longer people I know waited to get their first job, the longer they've remained unemployed or stuck in dead end jobs."
Who is waiting?? We're talking about people who've been trying to get decent jobs for a long time, and have come up empty. So saying "They should have gotten jobs before" is begging the question. They've been trying all along.