Posted on 01/19/2006 7:17:16 AM PST by dukeman
This DUer needs your help. What would you advise?
StellaBlue (1000+ posts) Sat Jan-14-06 01:51 AM
Original message
Anyone else often feel filled with DESPERATION and DREAD? (long)
I don't mean just about the world political situation or about Dumbya or about the prospect of terrorists on your local train or of a nuclear holocaust. We all have to somehow continue to function while dreading these fears.
What I am talking about here is the feeling that the life we know, life as we have experienced it (all of us under about age 65), like as we expected it would be and planned for, is inevitably going to become quicksand under us?
I had this thought (again - it comes at least weekly) while reading the responses to a post in GD-P about house prices in California being out of reach of 86% of Californians. The respondents were talking about prices in their area, which were either ridiculously, prohibitvely high, or amazingly low (but in a sea of red counties and with very little to offer in the way of employment possibilities), as far as I could tell (i.e. California, NYC - prohibitive; Oklahoma - cheap).
I am 26. I was told my whole life that if I got good grades, worked hard, went to college - that I would get a 'good job' and be all set for life. By the time I was in college in the late nineties, I assumed this meant that I would get a job paying about $25,000, and that by age 30 I would doing considerably better, have probably bought a house, have maybe had a baby, and would have saved substantially toward retirement (all my old relatives lectured me about how that 10% taken out of your check every month would be worth millions at age 60!).
I now have two degrees, one a BA and one a masters, both from reputable universities. I got some scholarships, worked 20 hours a week throughout, and still managed to finish owing $43,000 in student loans at age 22. Great start in life. As it turns out, there is no longer a job market to speak of. My 'connections' through family no longer pan out. I have about four years 'real' work experience (and loads of resume-padding interships and odd jobs before that) and loads of skills, including the ability to write and speak proper English (a dying skill, IMHO! haha).
I was in the UK for three years after completing my MA there (due to wanting to stay with a partner), and during that time I worked my way through the following jobs: waitress, liquor store clerk, bookseller, events manager, administrator, planner-in-training for a large construction company (even though my degrees were not in that field!). So I must not be an idiot, right? I was earning about $40K plus great benefits over there, but they face a lot of the same problems we do (except for the biggie, healthcare - they bitch about it, but their system, comparatively, is FABULOUS, in my experience - and all free). But, like us, youngish (under-40) people there who do not enjoy the privilege of having parents who buy them houses and cars or who do not inherit property and cash have very little chance of owning of their own home. Prices are through the roof, thanks to a recent property price boom corresponding to our own. Pensions are shaky; the government wants to raise the age to 70. Meanwhile, they want to encourage MORE people to attend college. AND they've recently introduced American-style tuition fees, where previously the government subsidized undergraduates and very few of them even had part-time jobs during term.
What I face now, coming back here to the USA, supposedly the greatest country in the world, is this:
I am 26; I am working in a customer service position in my hometown earning $18,000pa. Granted, the company, a local one, is decent, long-established, and has comparatively GREAT benefits. But I don't want to work in customer service my whole life, and I don't want to live in a town where, out of 44,000, I am one of only 92 people who voted against a constitutional ban on gay marriage. I can't put my ACLU sticker on my car. I am one of the few people I know who doesn't regularly attend revivals or own a stockpile of firearms. You get the idea. So, while in theory I could stay here and be in a position to buy a house in a few years, I cannot, for I would surely go crazy!
Tonight I was thinking about how someone on DU recently posted about how Ted Kennedy keeps repeatedly introducing a Living Wage bill in the Senate. I made a little list of my current expenses, which include payments on a modest domestic compact car, gas, insurance, student loan payments to the tune of $210 for the next 25 years or so, rent at $400 a month for a small one bedroom apartment in a non-drug-infested complex, utilities at about $150 a month, groceries and household conservatively estimated at $400 a month, phone bill at $50, internet at $25, TV at $50. Well, you do the math. I couldn't make it. Even in this small, backward-ass town. I can't afford the $50 birth control costs per month (THROUGH MY INSURANCE!), so I guess I will also be sexually frustrated until middle age. I sure hope I don't have an unplanned illness. Even with my insurance. I can't afford a single trip to the doctor.
I want to move away, but, having applied for about fifty jobs over the past four months and been rejected from both (yes, only two) of the interviews I landed, and since all my all-talk-no-action relatives and 'connections) have borne no fruit, I am no longer even excited to see a new vacancy announcement. I guess there is just too much competition for too few jobs right now. I figure that, where I want to live, I have to earn at least $30,000pa to break even (e.g. no savings of any sort). I don't think that's a ridiculous salary in an urban area for someone four years post-graduate-degree, but, apparently, all my assumptions are wrong and all bets are off. People keep telling me to get a lower-level job, paying more like $22,000, to 'get my foot in the door' and to 'work my way up'. But I feel like I've already done that - I got to the $40,000 level already, for godsakes! After working in retail while holding a masters degree for two years! After starting as a temp, then becoming a secretary, then getting promoted into a professional position. What these well-meaning people just don't understand is, mostly because of my student loans, I actually CANNOT live on that amount of money.
So the future yawns before me. I'm afraid that these are just the circumstances of life. Right now, it's either pay the student loans or eat; later, it'll be buy the medicines or eat. I have no confidence that I will ever see any of the money that I give to the Social Security administration every month. I will probably never qualify for Medicaid. If I move to anywhere I would actually not be suicidal while living in, I can never buy a home. Probably even with a parnter and a dual income, much less by myself! I cannot even begin to think about having children. Not because I am a career-driven woman, but because I can't afford it. I will never get to travel again, and, even if by some miracle I did save enough money up, I will only get three weeks vacation AT MOST in this country, so that doesn't leave much time.
To me, right now, the future just seems bleak.
And, to top it off, I do not think it's farfetched to think we may see another real depression in this country and perhaps throughout the industrialized world.
This makes me heavy-hearted. And I am only 26.
But, it seems, there is nothing I can do about it. Despite this message, I am not depressed. I enjoy the sun on my cheeks, a good independent film, homemade pasta and a glass of wine, and lots of little, daily miracles. And yet I have this persistent dread, this desperation. I feel like I will never 'make it'. And I don't even have the same goals as most of my RW, consumption-driven peers. I just want a small, old house with a front porch to sit on in old age, a couple of kids to love, and a little time to travel and meet interesting people. I guess that's too much to ask for already, but I also want affordable healthcare and a dependable old-age pension after a likely 50+ years of work.
Is it postmodern existential anxiety? Prolonged teen angst? A 'quarter-life crisis'? Utopian folly? Righteous indignation?
I think it was John Lennon, who said (or sang), "Life is what happens, when you're making other plans."
End it now there is no hope. /sarcasm
All this is Bush's fault...how??
Was that Master's perhaps in Philosophy?
Twenty something angst. She made choices that were not geared towards the long term and this is where she is at. She doesn't sound like a bad person but rather one who needs to leave behind the assumptions she has held dear for so long. Her masters degree is likely in something that no one cares about or is willing to pay for, her talk of partner is really code for "I don't see marriage as something for me".
Lady, dump the liberal arts persona and go get yourself some skills that pay the rent. Realize that you chose a college influenced lifestyle that few people can make work. Get over your resentment for people not being able to provide for you and for crying out loud, stop looking down on the people in Red areas who work, pay their taxes and raise their families. You may not agree with their politics but they can show you something about how to go to work every day and take responsibility for your life.
It's called growing up and facing reality after a 13 years of liberal indoctrination and 'feel good' education.
How's your self-esteem now? wait - you mean all those non-competitive sports where EVERYONE wins did not prepare you for the real world? We conservatives have been warning about this for years- your TEACHERS did not listen.
My recommendation? Start listening to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis- he changed my life from liberal idiot to conservative successful business man. (started my own company- hey! there's an idea- why not do that instead of waiting for a better life to be handed to you)
That's why they pay ppl more $$$ to work in fields like finance, banking, insurance, engineering.
So she's applied for just TWO jobs, and not gotten interviews, and she's worried that she can't finance her birth control? GIve me a break!
I can't even remember how many jobs I applied for before I got an interview. And if you really want to leave, you have to take a risk show up in another city and try to get the job.
Her whole post is just idle whining. People who want jobs are finding them, as our economic numbers continue to demonstrate.
(She could also double her pay by working at Wal-Mart, but...)
"...dump the liberal arts persona and go get yourself some skills that pay the rent. Realize that you chose a college influenced lifestyle that few people can make work."
I could not agree more. I was a history major (not interested in business, not smart enough to be an engineer or pre-med), and quickly realized...okay, not so quickly, but I realized...you gotta have skills someone wants to pay for. Otherwise you stay on the low end of the totem pole and eat yourself up with bitterness toward those who did get the skills and move up the chain. I hope she deals with it...she'll come to our side eventually.....
Well, she sounds nice enough, and I do feel sorry for her. My situation was pretty similar. I got my college degree and still couldn't find a job in my field. But rather than wait around while blaming the government, I decided to start a business. It was rough going at first, but now it's finally taking off. I wish her the best of luck.
mI now have two degrees, one a BA and one a masters, both from reputable universities. I got some scholarships, worked 20 hours a week throughout, and still managed to finish owing $43,000 in student loans at age 22. Great start in life.
There you go. No one said to make college a career of some kind. You (by "you" herein, I mean the author of this self-pity-party) incur debt and then cry because you have debt. You go to England instead of entering the job market, then cry when you're not qualified, since younger people have taken the jobs at your level.
Like everyone here says -- life is full of choices. You chose unwisely.
Advise her that the prism for which she views life is the problem, not her per se. Her over-schooled socialist mindset remains that it is someone else's responsibility to provide a job for her. Remind her that the economy is booming because of efforts of small business owners that CREATE THEIR OWN JOBS like the rest of us!
(And that allows many of us to FReep 24/7!)
She should be an employer, not an employee.
Next Sunday, find a church and attend.
Accept that you have been duped all your life and move on.
"you mean all those non-competitive sports where EVERYONE wins did not prepare you for the real world"
Exactly. But conservatives are called "mean" when we argue against coddling.
You have warm, weather-tight housing; an automobile; a refrigerator; clean water piped into your dwelling, sanitation; a stove; no endemic parasites in your soil or water; advanced medical care including innoculations; a variety of clean healthy foods is available; and so on- you get the picture.
You are doing better than 80% of the world population. Perhaps that percentile is even higher, I don't know, frankly I guessed.
Why not volunteer for the Peace Corps, Habitat For Humanity, Heifer Project, one of the UN organizations that helps in the poor countries of the world, or find a church mission to Paraguay or Bolivia? Trade your time for room and board. You'd not only make a difference in the world but you'd soon come to appreciate your "old" life with new, globally-wise eyes.
Suicide is painless...
It brings on many changes...
Can you post a link to the original story?
If you have an english degree it means you can write and with that skill you can make money. If you have a communications degree you have skills that will allow you to get a good paying job. Philosophy can get you a job in sales, so can't sociology.
Art, history, dead languages, etc., you are hosed.
What were the degrees in, fine arts?, ancient languages? middle eastern philosophy? Nothing against these majors, I just think what you major is matters when assessing job prospects and future advancement. Just my opinion.
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