A Little Comedy, Even in the Land of Terrified Disenchantment

Attempted Job Search #1: Employment in the Field of Editing.

Available positions: Senior Editor/Speech Writer for Global Financial Company, must have general understanding of brokerage business. (Ahhhh, no.) Proof-reader for pharmaceutical marketing communications. (Oh joy.) Content Writer to “develop some very industry-specific content for the automotive and high-performance drivers education markets.” (Uh-huh.) Technical Documentation Specialist for ConsumerReports.org. (Isn’t that the website you consult when you want to buy a vacuum or a car?) Grant Writer for a Medical Research Facility, or “Sector Institute Writer.” (What on earth is that??)

My mind wanders, my eyes start to blur. I am going to have to take a job in some office, proof-reading page after page filled with words like dividends, risk management, derivative, capital gains, or alternatively, words like biomolecular simulation, molecular mechanics modeling, periodic boundary conditions, implicit solvation and subcutaneous injection. Words that all have one important thing in common – I don’t know what the heck they mean.

Welcome to the Land of Terrified Disenchantment.

Attempted Job Search #2: Employment in the Field of Communications.

Paid Advertisement at the top of the page: Earn a Certificate in Social Media at the University of San Francisco Online. (Really? You need a certificate to show that you know how to use Facebook and Twitter?)

Available positions: Marketing/Communications Specialist for a Billing Company. Public Relations Associate for a University Hospital. Senior Information Delivery Specialist for an Insurance Agency. (My eyes start to blur again.) Clinical Research Coordinator for… Office Manager for…

Slightly more amusing is the listing for a “Marketing Director for Nice-Pak Products, the global leader of pre-moistened wipes for cleaning, sanitization, healthcare, cosmetics and personal hygiene.” But wipies??!? Seriously?!

I’ll admit it – I think I’m too good for this job. I'm such a snob sometimes, and I'm not proud of it.

I start skimming the page again, and then I see it –


“World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. has an exciting opportunity for a dynamic Corporate Communications professional to join our Corporate Communications team as a Publicist.”

I nearly choke on the chocolate covered pretzels that I am devouring to keep myself awake during this depressing job search. As I crack up, I can’t help but think of Steve, a friend of mine from high school. He loved the way the wrestlers put on such ridiculous performances—I think he even had one of those gigantic gold champion wrestling belts. He would be so proud if I were a wrestling publicist.

Could I even keep a straight face when telling people what I did for a living? I try to picture myself at a family reunion, amongst my more straight-laced, religious relatives, telling my ninety-two-year-old grandmother in a loud voice that “Yes, I promote wrestling events! Yes, those shows on TV—Raw and Smackdown!”

Now I am experiencing a different type of disenchantment. I won’t necessarily have to become an office automaton. But as a trade-off, I’ll have to sell my soul to the absurd wrestling industry.

Once Upon a Time in a Not-So-Far-Off Land Called Youthful Ignorance

Once upon a time when I was a little girl, I wanted to be an Author and write Important Novels. I must stress that my books had to be Important – not merely entertaining, but life-changing for those who would read them. That is why, when I was asked to start writing “books” in my first grade class, I wrote and wrote and wrote – and crossed out just as much as I had written. I wasn’t coming up with anything that was good enough. The teacher wanted me to write stories about things like my favorite flavor of ice cream, which I promptly rejected – a book about Mint Chocolate Chip was not life-changing.

And so although we were supposed to be “publishing” stories every day, I sat staring at the empty lines on the page, frustrating poor Mrs. Kries and the fifth graders who came in to help with our “publishing” program. I was the self-declared Author in the classroom, but all my classmates left me in the dust when it came to the volume of material that they “published” – printing up their treatises on owning a pony, their debates over Chocolate versus Vanilla in the horribly angular typeface of the old classroom Apple. (These were the days before the Mac, the days of the black screen with the neon green type.) They would draw a picture for the front cover and bind it all together with those plastic comb spines, then cal themselves authors. Meanwhile, I had nothing to show for all my talk.

Once upon a time, I also wanted to be an Interior Designer, like all those lucky people in my grandmother’s glossy-paged copies of Architectural Digest and House Beautiful who got to spend all day shopping for pretty curtains and re-arranging other people’s furniture. My four-story Barbie house, custom-made by my wonderful handy-man grandfather, became the canvas where I practiced my Art. And that’s what it was – an Art-with-a-Capital-A. I would be an Artist and an Author, rearranging people’s furniture and changing people’s lives with my charming and profound novels.

Then I started college and met Jeremy, who was a lot more practical. He asked me questions that my parents hadn’t asked: “What are you going to do with your degree in Creative Writing?” “I am going to be an Important Author and write Significant Books of all kinds,” I answered him. Unfortunately, his skeptical look wasn’t quite enough to deter me from my naïve, idealistic outlook on life that would eventually give me more whiplash than a ride on a badly constructed roller-coaster. I didn’t understand that as a Creative Writer, I wouldn’t even make enough to buy Ramen or pay for an unheated garrison in Paris. (I’m assuming that the rent has gone up since the days memorialized by Hemingway in A Movable Feast.)

But then I began the next phase of my naïve, idealistic engagement with the world – I decided that I would join the staff of New Life Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I would be a kind of at-home missionary; I would do things for other people that were Life-changing and Important. I would still write novels in my spare time, and just have to settle for re-arranging my own furniture. I probably wouldn’t ever have my work featured in the pages of Architectural Digest, but if you want to change the world, you have to make a few sacrifices. Here I was, twenty years old and still living blissfully in the Land of Youthful Ignorance.


In my mind, the Land of Youthful Ignorance looks a lot like the world from Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, with all those beautiful Truffula Trees.



Then came the first real crash-and-burn. It’s called a Religious Crisis, among other things, and it was/is far too complicated to explain in this particular post. But suffice it to say that even though I still wanted to help people and change the world, I no longer felt like I could work for a church. And that is when I had to start really thinking about how I would get a Real Job out in the Real World, with only a B.A. in Creative Writing and Literature. Thankfully, Eastern Michigan University calls it a degree in “Written Communications,” which at least looks more serious and competitive to directors of insurance agencies and corporate offices.

But after I have spent so much time imagining myself as an Author and an Artist, it has taken me another five years to accept that I need to become a grown-up and apply for the jobs that are actually being offered. These five years are another chapter of my life, with several more events of the crash-and-burn variety. But those will have to wait for another time, another blog post.



Fast-forward to 2011, where I am now living in the land of Terrified Disenchantment and applying for jobs in the corporate world -- but still trying to avoid job applications for air conditioning installation companies and auto-parts manufacturers. I would have eventually gone hungry in the Land of Youthful Ignorance, but at least I derived a sense of importance from being an Artist. Now I have to face up to the fact that I’m just another more-or-less average member of society and try to summon up a sense of wonder for the simpler things in life.

The Ugly Truth

I am going to revive a metaphor that I’ve used many times on this blog; I’ve said on several occasions that applying for graduate school is a lot like prostitution – and now I’m going to extend that idea and include applying for jobs in the comparison as well. Career counselors are always telling you that you need to market yourself--sell yourself--to potential employers. It feels a bit like parading yourself up and down a runway, if not quite like being out on the street-corner. I haven’t been at it long yet (I started applying for jobs about a week ago) but I already have that dirty feeling, as though I've been trying to sell myself. Of course, I genuinely would love to work for a university, a non-profit, or a social services organization, and so filling out those types of applications makes me feel better about myself, excited about the new directions that my life could take. But the prospect of all those applications for insurance companies and real estate agencies make me feel like I need to take a hot bath and scrub down with some bleach.


It doesn’t help that plenty of my favorite crime television shows are riddled with images of prostitutes trying to pick up johns. There are always scenes featuring the unfortunate hookers-turned-victims in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Angel, Dexter, The X-Files… In fact, today I chose a random episode of The X-Files to watch while I ate lunch (a well-deserved break from researching job opportunities) and it turned out that Mulder and Scully were chasing a serial killer who regurgitated on his victims in order to dissolve their skin and eat their fatty tissue. His victims were usually lonely women that he picked up in chat rooms, but when he got desperate, of course he went and tried to pick up a prostitute. So here I am, safe at home filling out form after form (“Please list your last five employers, in reverse chronological order”) and yet feeling a chill down my spine from the idea that people will be sizing me up.



"Tonight's the night. And it's going to happen, again and again. It has to happen. Nice night. Miami is a great town. I love the Cuban food. Pork sandwiches. My favorite. But I'm hungry for something different now."



The ironic thing is that I usually enjoy having people’s undivided attention. I’m honest enough to admit that my narcissistic streak is about as wide as an eight-lane highway; I love to talk and talk and talk… Let’s not forget that I have a blog, either. All bloggers should admit that we think that we’re pretty darn interesting -- interesting enough that other people should squander their time reading about our complaints and what we ate for breakfast. Heck, my chosen profession (up to this point) has been as a teacher and a professor – and I love being up in front of the class. Fortunately, I think I manage to entertain most of my students – it’s funny how talking comparing Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Charles Dickens can make you seem like a geeky academic out in the real world, but when you mention Joss Whedon in the classroom your students suddenly see you as much cooler than the other professors. I don’t think it’s that I love the sound of my own voice per se, but I do think I’m rather clever. After my last job evaluation, in fact, my boss told me something to the effect of, “You gave an excellent lecture and explained the poetry very well, but you aren’t letting the students do enough work.” (This could be translated as, "Shut up at some point!" although I don't think that's exactly what she meant, either.)

So if I usually like to be at the center of attention, what is it about job applications that I dislike so much?

I think the difference is that when I am in front of people, I love to talk – but not really about myself. I love to explain concepts to my class using funny illustrations, spin out frustrating experiences into comical stories that resemble Ben Stiller movies (it’s all about the timing of your delivery), and pontificate about the injustice of Dollhouse’s cancellation, the remarkable qualities of Pablo Neruda’s poetry or the brainlessness of Sarah Palin’s comments. But I don’t usually go around saying things like, “I’m an amazing artist” or bragging that “You should really check out that paper that I wrote – it was totally awesome.” Weeeellll… except on the internet, when I post an update on Facebook every time I write a new blog entry and shamelessly urge my all my Facebook friends to go and read my latest thoughts on the Profound Subject of Life. As I said – I can be very narcissistic, an exhibitionist of all trivial. I believe I am totally worth your time and attention – I just don’t like to admit that to myself too often.

But apparently this blog entry has led me to admitting the ugly truth – I’m more used to selling myself than I have been pretending. So what is it that I really don’t like about job searching? I guess it’s all those boring forms…

Lessons from The Breakfast Club

The idea of individual identity is a funny thing.

Many of us think we know who we are. We say things like “I would never do that” and “She would never say that.” Or we declare the opposite: “You know, that’s just the sort of thing that he would say.” Many people feel fairly confident about their identity, at least once they’ve gotten past the rocky years of adolescence, or perhaps gone through an extended phase taking random classes and “finding themselves” before they declare a major in college. Eventually, we settle down and pick a partner and a career; we come to think of ourselves and be known by certain titles.

For example, I have been comfortable (even particularly happy, pleased with myself) being “Lauren, a Literature and Film Person, a College Professor and Academic Writer.” I feel confident introducing myself as "Professor Schultz." Maybe I’ve even been so comfortable that I’ve forgotten some of the other ways that I could think about myself and use to identify myself. Perhaps I’ve forgotten the wonderful feeling of stretching out to reach for unexpected possibilities. I’ve put aside “Lauren, the Jewelry Class Teacher” and “Lauren the Watercolor Student.” I haven’t had much time to be an artist or a volunteer while I’ve been in graduate school studying Literature, or first establishing myself as a Composition professor. After all, you have to be FOCUSED to have a Career-with-a-capital-C.



But didn’t I learn anything from The Breakfast Club? At the age of twelve, I found that John Hughes’ classic to be a declaration of what was already swirling around in my mind – the idea that just because someone was pigeonholed as a geek or a shy person by their peers didn’t mean they couldn’t have strange interests or a crazy side to their personality. I longed to be able to do unexpected things, to try on new roles. I desperately wanted people accept and appreciate all aspects of who I was/am, whoever that might be. The Breakfast Club is about, at least in part, stepping out of your assigned role. If you are the class princess, go make out with the punk from the wrong side of the tracks. Stretch out your arms and reach for those unexpected possibilities. It’s an inspiring idea, that you could defy expectations and radically change your life. Be like Keri Russell in Felicity: follow some guy across the country, study art instead of medicine. When you’re in high school and college, even inspiring fantasies sound like good ideas.



But fast-forward fifteen years. I’m not twelve years old any more, or seventeen, or even twenty-one and fresh out of college. I’ve made a few big choices that have been based more on my interests and desires, trying to establish my identity as an artist and an academic, and not necessarily being very practical in all decisions. I’m twenty-seven years old now, though, and I feel as though I probably should have established some kind of career for myself. At the very least, I should probably have figured out how to get more than a part-time job. (My students are jealous of my flexible schedule, but they don’t understand that working as an adjunct professor doesn’t pay the bills. If my husband didn’t have a full-time job, I wouldn’t be snacking on gourmet chocolate-covered pretzels while I blog. Heck, I wouldn’t even be able to afford chicken breast and fresh veggies on my own. I’d be living off Ramen and gaining weight like a college freshman.)

So yes, I feel a little bit like a failure, which is a strange sensation because I’ve always identified myself as an achiever, an academic star. I suppose that could be due to an inflated ego—I won’t deny that I have one of those. But it’s also due to the fact that I’ve always succeeded in an academic setting before—I’ve earned all A’s, been awarded a full scholarship to graduate school, published an article while I was still in school, and gotten a teaching position right out of graduate school. And suddenly I’ve hit a glass ceiling: no full-time jobs for people without Ph.D.s, no room for people in Ph.D. programs who publish articles about Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But if I’m not an academic, who am I? I think I may need to go watch The Breakfast Club again to help me figure out the answer to that question.