Another Year, Another degree - Adventures of the Unemployed

I'm back! ...And I think I'm getting a reputation. I turned 27 a few weeks ago and suddenly my grad school hopping is looking less like intellectual curiosity on steroids and more like a bone-deep fear of the working world. 

I  moved to D.C. a week ago after spending a whopping six months in the small Pennsylvania town of Womelsdorf. My epic move to Pennsylvania came on the heels of finishing a ten year stint in academia.  It was all rather anticlimactic; I was just handed another degree and booted out of my scatter-brained adviser's office with no goddamn clue how to find work, apart from some vague advice on networking. I knew it would take some time to find a job and that I needed to be patient as hell. But seriously folks, the months of scanning job-listings, numbly driving to interviews that seem to go downhill after five minutes, and trying to repackage a lifetime of short-term jobs into a selling point, would wear down even the most hardened employment hound.

Telling my father I couldn’t find a job was pretty humbling. When you’re talking to a man who has literally walked a Kansas freeway, barefoot, hunting for jobs as a new immigrant, suddenly all your complaints about the economy and the stone-hearted human resources department seem lame. “What do you mean? Have you tried hanging from a bungee cord outside the hiring manager’s office? Have you tried waiting outside their car? Have you tried calling them pretending to be their long lost cousin? Prostitution?” After the sixth “have you tried?” you start to feel like the laziest and least motivated human being alive. I don’t need those reminders. I’m sure if my dad knew I was getting up at 3pm most days, he’d have a stroke.

I might have gotten used to waking up in the middle of the day, but I really wasn’t prepared for how the  rest of routine life in Pennsylvania would start to drive me insane. There's a depressing car culture here: seemingly every ten  miles is a giant billboard cheerfully inviting people to drop twenty grand for the privilege of owning some hideous truck they can adorn with inane vanity plates and crass bumper stickers (half of which are inexplicably related to deer). Confederate-flag waving neighbors, old people, and cat-and-kitschy home-decor-enthusiasts round out the rest of the population (there may be a large degree of overlap in the aforementioned categories). After the novelty wears off, you start experiencing night terrors where you're 70 years old, wearing a faded terry cloth robe, and STILL living in Womelsdorf.

Of course it wasn't all bad. Who can say no to free rent, three healthy meals a day, and unfettered access to all the delicious baked goods that is bursting out of Amish country?  Unfortunately, I was foiled in my plot to eat my weight in shoo-fly pie because of some mysterious health condition (okay, not that mysterious, it's a dairy allergy! Somebody call House!). Please don't ask me what I did in those six months, because none of it is compelling. I didn't write the great American novel, find a part-time job, or pay any attention to my poor old blog (because seriously who wants to read about a routine that involves waking up at 4pm, dutifully shuffling into the kitchen at scheduled mealtimes like a fucking invalid, and sneaking midnight treats to an obese, diabetic cat named Sugar? Exactly, no one.)

I may have just given up altogether and picked out a headstone in the local cemetery, if we (the yoke mate and I) hadn't gotten a loan to get the hell out of dodge. We even lucked out on a nice studio apartment in a neighborhood that wasn't bombed out like...well, like the apartment I had circa 2005-6 that I will forever use as the barometer for how I'm doing as an adult. If I ever have to live in a place where random jerks smoke weed in my hallway/roof and I need to use a disposable plastic knife to open my own front door because the slumlord couldn't be bothered to put in a working lock, all the while hiding from one or more passive aggressive roommates, THEN I need rescuing, okay? But for now, I'm doing great.

My priorities being what they are, before I got a bed or air-conditioning to offset the volcanic intensity of the D.C. summer, I secured internet for my new apartment. Don't judge me. The only thing that alleviates unemployment blues is being able to Youtube Melissa and Joey episodes at 3am. Anyway, I'm trying to justify the purchase by pledging to spend even more time scouring Idealist.org for the tiniest shred of hope that my public health degree might be put to good use...or really, any use at all. I'm not picky. In the spirit of brutal honesty, I've gotten four interviews out of the bazillion jobs I've applied to since January. I might have let this draw me into a demoralizing existential tail-spin but luckily, I was already living in Womelsdorf where there were people drifting around with less purpose than me (I'm looking at you, old-man-sitting-in-front-of-abandoned-building-in-lawn-chair-12 hours a day), so I couldn't feel too bad.

Anyway, time to be a freaking adult and come up with rent money...


--- 
 Harry: I can't believe we drove around all day, and there's not a single job in this town. There is nothing, nada, zip!
Lloyd: Yeah! Unless you wanna work forty hours a week.
 

Lloyd: We got no food, no jobs... our PETS' HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!
              --- Dumb and Dumber