Out Of College, Out Of Work

Sherrill, 26, is a freelance writer living in New York City.

One of the things my classmates and I were not told at our college graduation four years ago was what papers we would need for a visit to the unemployment office. Luckily, however, in addition to being told that we were the future, etc., we were told to always be prepared. Thus, when I made my first visit a few months ago, all of my papers were in order. I had suspected that getting "processed" would be time consuming, and I was right. But that was OK; I wanted it that way. Like graduation ceremonies and funeral services, applying for unemployment insurance is one of those lengthy rituals whose duration almost seems designed to make one sit and think. It's a valuable time to take stock.

What I was not prepared for was the TV crew facing as I walked in. The "MacNeil/Lehrer" news team collar unemployment, and they had come to the right place. I had expected the office to be like a great mixing pool, like the Department of Motor Vehicles. But the people in the endless line ahead of me-with their trenchcoats and folded newspapers--looked like the same ones I used to fight with for a seat on the Wall Street-bound subway train every morning when we all had jobs. Like them, I did my indicted-mobster-leaving-the-courthouse imitation, evading the cameras as I inched ahead in line. After finally reaching the front, and giving the clerk evidence of the life and impending death of Wigwag magazine, where I was a writer, I was told to sit down in the next room and wait.

The next room looked exactly like a college classroom (when I squeezed into a seat I realized I'd forgotten how uncomfortable school desks are). Looking around me, I was struck by the number of people in the room who were, like me, twentysomething--not the middle-aged crowd I'd expected. But after giving it some thought, it made more sense. I knew that, along with seemingly every other industry, Wall Street and the big law firms were trimming down after the fat years of the '80s: last hired, first fired, sit down in the next room and wait. So here we were, members of the generation accused by our older siblings of being mercenary and venal, back in the classroom again, only this time having to raise our hands with questions like, "I didn't get the little pink form in my information booklet." Who among us would have guessed it in the heady days of 1986?

In truth, I was never that proud of my generation. I too had been scornful of those who happily graduated to fast, easy money. And although I had rejected that route myself, that suddenly seemed irrelevant. At this perverse reunion I found myself feeling a kinship with my new daylong classmates, squirming in their desks around me, who had embraced the '80s. Most of these wunderkinder were now counting themselves lucky to have found their little pink forms.

Like most of them, my notions of college and post-college life were formed by watching the '60s generation. To be young, energetic and full of conviction seemed important and exciting. The world had listened to them and we looked forward to our turn. There were many of us who would have liked to help stop a war, disrupt political conventions, take over deans' offices or volunteer in the South for civil rights. We would have welcomed the chance for a few years of world-changing before settling down to more responsible (i.e. lucrative) activities, as so many of the thirtysomething crowd, now with kids and mortgages, had done.