Out Of College, Out Of Work

Bicycle messenger:

But we had graduated into a different world-one so harsh and competitive that a Republican president would soon declare the need for something "kinder and gentler." AIDS, skyrocketing tuition, disappearing federal grants, the lack of so easy a common cause as peace and love (or hating hatred) and a dazzling job market offering salaries that, when offered to people so young with four years of loan indebtedness, left virtually no other choices. We weren't in the '60s anymore--we never had been. Those who hadn't realized this by graduation quickly found out that student-loan officials don't grant deferments for time spent "finding" oneself.

When comparing themselves to us members of the '60s generation, while using their own college years to rationalize their recent, less than idealistic choices, imply that we younger "careerists" didn't pay our dues before joining them in their 20th-story offices. Ironically, though, depending on the severity of the recession, my generation may ultimately come to resemble our grand-parents' generation more than the one we always wanted to be a part of. When I talk to my friends about job prospects and we compare our experiences at various unemployment offices (one ex-co-worker had two camera crews to dodge) I wonder if we, like our grandparents in the '30s, will be permanently shaped by these few years. Will we one day say, "Son, when I was your age, in the Great White-Collar Depression, we didn't fool around after college. We took whatever office-temp or bicycle messenger work we could get and we were grateful "

My name was soon called and, along with several others, I filed into another classroom for a 90-minute lecture on how unemployment insurance works-sort of a "Principles of Bureaucracy 101." The last item on my day's agenda was figuring out how to leave while avoiding the only people in the room with jobs: the camera crew. (I began to wonder if their eagerness was due to spending the day with a bunch of former job-holders). When we all finally left the office, most of us had been there for about 3 hours. But we were not the irritated, impatient New York crowd one would expect-we had lots of time on our hands and we were learning how to deal with having even more. We were at last getting the long-awaited "year off," albeit a crueler and less gentler version. Although we can't be quite as free and easy as our counterparts were 20 years ago--we have to mail in our coupons every week, and we've promised to look for work-this may be the only chance for a coming of age my generation will get.

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

© 1991