Jenny’s Pennies

What are you going be when you grow up? Who hasn’t been asked that question. As young children, we answer that we want to be fire-fighters, rock stars, football players, ballet dancers, fighter pilots (that was me). And that answer is seen as cute and filled with innocent hopes and dreams. It may even be encouraged, with ballet lessons, soccer practice, and a child sized fire-fighter costume for playing dress-up.

Then we enter the school system. Here, we are expected to sit down and be quiet, until it’s time for P.E. class, when we are instead expected to jump and cartwheel on command. We are supposed to be children, to be innocent and playful and curious. “Kids are growing up too fast these days” complain the adults and point to 12 year old girls in short skirts and eye shadow. “What are their parents thinking, they look like sluts!”, they say, while bemoaning that the 12 year old girls are being called “bitch” by their class mates. No, we are not supposed to grow up too fast. Not when it comes to clothes and make up and sex and drinking. But at 15, we are expected to make choices that, say the adults with very serious voices, are determinant for our future. And you need to know long division to pass this course, if you don’t pass it that is going in your grades, and your future employer will want to look at those grades, so you better learn long division, otherwise you may be doomed, doomed I tell you!

Now, when being asked what we are going to be when we grow up, answering football player or rock star or ballet dancer isn’t cute and innocently hopeful any longer. By now we need to have realized that life isn’t fair and that those were just silly dreams (not having realized this is usually the fault of lax parenting and a school system that puts to much time into drawing and singing and talking about feelings instead of teaching life-necessary skills such as long division and sitting down and shutting up).

The “perfect girls” in this age are now dreaming of becoming lawyers and doctors and international aid workers. They are striving for perfection, for getting those good grades that everyone tells them are so important, and they know that it’s never too early to have a good CV and make yourself employable, so they do volunteer work and start projects and write blogs. (I say girls, because it largely seems to be girls who are striving for this kind of perfection). But somehow that is wrong too, they are being told. Don’t they realize that perfection is impossible? Don’t they realize that there is more to life than getting a high status “exciting” job? Don’t they realize that you need time to relax and “just be”?

When we’re out of school, we are given some leeway. When you’re 20, it’s kind of okay to work in a café, save money and then go off to Laos for three months. Sitting around playing guitar hoping to land a record contract is frowned upon, but can be looked by if it is “only a phase”. But then you pretty much have two choices - either get a job and then it’s pretty much expected that you “settle down” (oh how I loathe that phrase!) and start a family, or you go to university and further your education, thereby putting off the “settling down” thing a few years (but not too many!). And then you really need to think about what you are going to be when you grow up (because even if you have moved away from home, travelled alone in Turkmenistan, held 10 different jobs and live with your long time partner, you still haven’t “grown up”).

(Here, I diverge from the story a little to dwell on the fact that today in society, we lack rites of passage of becoming an adult. Before, you we’re an adult when you had gone through confirmation in church. At a certain age, you we’re expected to lay off your children’s clothes and were given the superficial attributes of adulthood - a woman’s coat and gloves, a man’s costume and hat. Nowadays, we have nothing like that, and transferring into adulthood is a process which takes years. I’m 28, married, have two university degrees, have worked a number of jobs, have all kinds of life experiences, but according to some people I’m still not really an adult, since I have no children or a permanent job - the ultimate signs of having “settled down” and thus being a true, productive member of society - an adult.)

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(This post is going to be a lot more personal than I intended for this blog. But I feel it needs to be written, at least for the sake of my own sanity. I might take it down later. It is written in burning anger and through burning tears. /disclaimer)

I’m a failure.

You see, I am unemployed. There it is. Alright, I do some occasional freelance writing, but not as much as I like to pretend. I am a lazy parasite. A no-good spoiled rotten whiny double degree university grad.

And I am so fucking sick of it. I am so fucking sick of being the subject of other peoples misguided beliefs (”anybody can get a job. people are just lazy”), of their nose-in-the-air holier-than-thou letters to the editor, of their opinions page analysis (”people are just not employable enough”), of their debates and their “advice” (in the words of our minister of finance, to unemployed people within the field of natural science, you know, like cell biologists and quantum physicists: 1. apply for jobs 2. continue your education).

Have you updated your CV? Are you sure there are no typos? Are you sure there are no typos (and did you know that to be sure you can read it upside down!)? Did you let someone else read through it? Do you have any unexplained “gaps” in your CV? Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes - those gaps are called “life”, but in a world where everything, from choice of high school program to your Facebook profile, seems to be about being “employable”, I guess “life” isn’t a good enough explanation.

People tell me that I should just get any job (as if McDonald’s would hire a 28 year old with a degree in political science who knows her rights and will call bullshit when she sees it). They say that life shouldn’t just be about work, that I should say that nah, six years of university didn’t get me anywhere, but you know that you can have a fulfilling life outside for work, right?!
And did you know that by working at McDonald’s you can gain valuable experience that will be very useful when you apply for that job in public information or as an administrative official at some governmental body!
(As I said, I call bullshit when I see it.)

I am fucking sick of my friends telling me that it will work out. Sorry. I am sick of seeing people’s faces when we haven’t met in a while, and I tell them that, nope still no job. I am sick of hearing “Really!? But you are so talented! I don’t understand it!” I am sick of hearing that most people get a job after 3-4 months. Especially people like me. People with an education, people who have access to the language, the social skills, the capacity. Well I haven’t, apparently.

So I must be a failure.
But whining and ranting like this won’t get me anywhere! No, I must start calling employers (or stop calling employers, depending on whose advice you listen to), and purge my CV of all things irrelevant for the job in question (but then there will be gaps! and there can be no gaps!), and work at a telemarketing job to show future employers that I am willing to work (but they really only look at relevant experience) and I must immediately delete this post cause who would want to hire such a person, she will only complain and will probably leave after a while cause you know, she’s 28 and married so she’ll have kids soon anyway.

Fuck off.
(To hypothetical future employers out there: that was not directed at you.)