Kids graduating from college today are having a tough time of it, according to the researchers.  During this current recession, I’ve heard the stories – seniors bemoaning the fact that there just aren’t a lot of good companies with good jobs at the campus job fairs.

I had to laugh. At my little college in the middle of nowhere in 1985, in the middle of an epic farm depression, they didn’t even bother with job fairs; people came to campus to recruit nurses, and that was about it.

And when I left NoDak and moved to the big city, I met people whose experiences had been very, very different; people whose education…

…well, no – not “education” so much as schooling – had led them to expect some results.  It always puzzled me.  It still does.

I’m going through the reactions from “Millennals” to the current job market in Derek Thompson’s piece in the Atlantic about the anger the recent graduates are feeling toward their society, their background and their elders.

I happened on this young woman’s screed: 

“Serving people drinks was more rewarding than this full-time job, and it is killing me inside.”

In high school, I worked two jobs, took college coursework, participated in ten student organizations, held prominent leadership positions and earned a 4.0 GPA. I was rewarded with a scholarship to a top twenty university and had the whole world ahead of me. In college, I studied Business. I was active in campus groups, had multiple internships and held a 3.9 GPA. After seeing many of my older friends obtaining great jobs with signing bonuses and benefits, I decided to graduate 3 Semesters early. This was May 2008.

Society does have a way of telling kids “play the paper chase – especially if you play it well enough to get into a “great school’ – and the rest takes care of itself”.  There’s a big part of our society – educational classists, I call thim – that seem to think of life as an equation; (Tier of school * Grade Point Average = Worth as a person).

And our society does impart a mythology onto a “good education” – which is less about “education” than getting inducted into a gold-plated alumni directory. And if the alumni are out of work…well, you know how that works, right?

After graduation, I began applying for my dream jobs. I started to get some responses, and then the economy tanked. I tried to follow-up with those who had expressed interest. No response. I extended my search to other cities and states and could not even get a phone interview. I then began searching for less than ideal positions. Not a call back to even be a Secretary. So, I became a bartender.

OK, so I’m sorry the young lady didn’t get her “dream job”.  26 years after graduation, I’m still waiting on mine.

But that’s not the real issue here:

Eventually, I took an unpaid internship in a field I never imagined working in.

And is that a bad thing?

There I was, Miss 4.0 Honors Student, working for free with freshmen and sophomores in college.

I’m not sure if the writer thinks being a “4.0 honors student” was supposed to make her too good for having to scramble, think creatively, and maybe even swerve outside her field for a while, and maybe even permanently – skills I suspect she never learned on her way to her “honors”.

But even if she didn’t mean it that way, you don’t have to look too far to find young people who do think this.  In fact, it’s the mantra that our public education system chants; a college education, in and of itself, opens doors for you.

Notwithstanding the fact that degree inflation has made a BA worth about what a high school diploma was in 1940, the fact is that while the diploma may be an entry-level requirement, it’s still up to you to actually make someone want to open the door – if they have the option of opening one for you.  Which, often as not these days, they don’t.

Then one day, I got a call. The company I had interned for had recommended me for a position with another firm…Only this job was nothing that I would have ever wanted to do. I am still here to this day, only because I know how difficult it will be to find another. I continuously read articles about unemployed recent graduates and lend a sympathetic ear to my job seeking friends. I feel as if I am wasting my life, sitting here at this desk, doing trivial work and browsing news articles all day.

Not sure what the young lady expected – and, obviously, what she studied in the first place.  School, and especially the entertainment media, show graduation as an abrupt swerve from endless parties into a life of doing exactly what you studied and wanted to do.

That’s more the exception than the rule.  But nobody tells kids that – or that a degree isn’t a vaccine against the reality that all of us non-honors-graduates live in.

When people tell me that I am lucky for having a job, I want to cry. How can this mundane existence actually be envied?! I do have a roof over my head and health insurance, but my optimism about the work world has been severely damaged. I did not work this hard in order to obtain this outcome.

And if that’s the reason one “works hard” on academics, at least academics outside sciences and engineering, then one was very badly advised.  Any “4.0 honors education” that doesn’t teach you that life, to say nothing of the world of work, is a marathon rather than a sprint, is a waste of time and money.

Any “Education” that doesn’t teach you that you learn more, and benefit more in the long run, from adversity than from success, is just schooling – and apparently inadequate schooling at that.

Serving people drinks was more rewarding than what I do at my full-time job, and it is killing me inside.

Any “Education” that you don’t leave knowing that the challenge in life isn’t just to get a good start, but to persevere and try to thrive during the curve balls that life willinevitably throw you was no education at all.

It is terrible that so many of our nation’s top youth are going through the same struggles.

No.  It’s not “terrible”.  It’s life.