Degree of Separation? Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Being A Humanities Major In A Shitty Economy

By: Ross Preston

Last semester, we ran a fake editorial that was written by everyone. You, me, our friends, your mom…everybody. It was posed as a question – the one that most Grinnell seniors are dreading to answer right now: “So what are you going to do with that?”

“Hmmm, let me think about that for a second,” recently became my favorite reply to the question. Pretend it's the kind of thing you can bullshit, show a sense of humor… ten seconds later the subject is changed. Though I might have the urge to explode at the one person that asks me on the wrong day, I've found that at least when Grinnellians ask the question, they generally seem interested in what answers I might have. Of course, I don't have any real answers at this point, but it's certainly better than when I've been asked by people that seem overly concerned for me. “Ohhh, you're an… English major? So what do you want to do with that?” To be perfectly honest, composing a witty note about how much I hate you doesn't seem like a bad option.

But that does seem kind of temporary and not the kind of long-term career thing I'd like to be doing.

What I'm trying to get at here is that I understand I need to come up with an answer at some point. But in the meantime, I think it's worth discussing why the situation that I'm in, as well as that of many of my classmates, isn't necessarily such a bad situation to be in.

I certainly realize that it might not be so easy to find something with the same credentials that someone else possessed five years ago entering the job market. But on the other hand, I'm always hearing stories about people that went to college for one thing and end up getting some standard, boring job that they totally hate and only do it because it pays 'not horribly.' If this is really the worst time to get a job in a long time, why not take that as a sign and simply do something else? Hike the Appalachian Trail. Find a way to travel for as long as possible. Move to California and start that “medicine shop” you've always been telling your friends about. If you're not immediately applying to grad school or already have a job lined up, then you're being faced with more freedom than you may have ever encountered before. So no big hurry, right?

I also think this unique time to not get a job forces us to think a little bit more about what it is we really want to do with our lives, in the long term. We've all heard this before, but you're almost certainly a crazy person if you think that your life is on some kind of identifiable path that you won't steer off of for the next 50 years. Come on, isn't it kind of fun to know that you're entering the job market at the worst possible time? Crazy stuff is going to happen.

We didn't plan it this way. But we do have to deal with it, and I think that in most cases, 'dealing with it' has a lot more to do with what you can say you have done ten years from now, as opposed to saving the world immediately after you get your diploma in May.

So if you're taking anything away from this other than the fact that I'm making my sad, unemployable self feel a little better by writing this, it's that there is no shortage of possibilities, and that a little appreciation for the extremely unique, impractical time to graduate from college that is 2010, might go a long way.