The American ideal for a 21-year-old college graduate is one of two options. Parents hover over their no-longer-youngsters and pray for grad school, pray for them to get a job. Having already decided to take a year or two away from the studystudystudy mentality of school, I'm opting for the latter. My mother was not particularly thrilled at this rather sudden decision, but after one or two months of haggling my decision into her heart, she finally agreed that yes, perhaps this plan is for the best.
Neither of my parents finished college, and when they did attend, it was night school and during the height of the Cold War. I only realize this now because my major advisor was determined to make me understand why so many parents have difficulty seeing their kids not take immediately to grad-school after college. The Cold War, apparently, had the singularly unpleasant effect of attempting to create as many scientists as the system could handle. It was a scientist
machine. There were no breaks, your country needed you to become a mad scientist, find some way to out-maneuver, out-think, out-invent the soviets. My father is an accountant, my mother is an executive at a large company. Although they never finished college, they both understand the importance of an education. They struggle to give me everything. My mother perhaps moreso. She is a helicopter parent and despite my insistent shooing and insistence that she just leave me alone to make my own mistakes, will probably always hover over me, attempting to do things for me.
Four summers ago, at the end of my internship at NOAA, I had 4 weeks or so of summer left and my mother demanded I look for a job. I updated my resume. I rewrote my coverletters. I forged out into the tiny local community, and made my lonely attempt for a job. My mother doesn't believe in giving up. She says, "Have you tried asking the church if you can paint fences?" This is the job my boyfriend had held earlier in the summer. I don't want to paint fences. I try the pottery place, the local restaurants, the flower shops. "We'll hold your resume," the owners and managers say meekly. Their eyes respond, "we already have everyone we need." Eventually mom gave up.
I drew this comic during my frustrating trial-by-interview. The same scenario occurred over and over again like a broken record...
Ideally, I would have gotten a job that summer, at the end of my internship. No luck though. I spent the remainder of my summer relaxing happily and confident that I had tried my hardest.
Now it's happening again, but on a larger scale. Now that I've managed to sell my mother on the idea that I won't be attending grad school right away, she's terrified about me finding a job. She wasn't going to mention it though. Through a school newsletter, I found a job description working for Cornell that sounded like it had been custom-tailored to my experiences. I thought, "I'll just fix up my resume and write a cover letter and see what happens." I was excited. It didn't pay particularly well, but that hardly mattered. I was just getting things up to date and seeing what was out there.
I forgot myself though. I told my mother about my seemingly good fortune. She was appalled by the pay. And it sent her into a flurry of activity, checking monster.com and other job search sites for better, more interesting jobs. This means that for the next 3 days, my inbox is flooded with emails from her and these job-search companies, with a single job-description per e-mail. Unfortunately, my mother's experience leads her to draw false conclusions. Firstly, she is excited because her preconception had been that there were no jobs available for marine scientists. When she found some on the internet, she was thrilled and enthralled. Secondly, because she holds a great job but got it without a degree from a college, she considers all prerequisite skills, degrees, or accomplishments to be suggestion only. Thirdly, she becomes so excited about finding me a job, she determines that any job that works with water will be just fine for me.
I have e-mails in my inbox. They require me to care for aquarium tanks "24 hours a day, please". Some require me to have a degree in Geology or Hydrogeology. One wants me to be both a plumber and an electrician. Another pleads for people with vet training. Her enthusiasm makes the job search much more frustrating. I appreciate her efforts, but how do you tell your mother to lay off? I want to say, "I can find a job on my own!" But it's more more complicated than that. Can I really? A real job? Not just some part-time crash for a little extra pocket change?
I can't see myself living in a lonely appartment complex in some suburb, commuting to work, hoping for some meaningful interaction with another human being. Paying bills. Shopping. Laundry. Dishes. Same day, different weather. I want this for myself, but also I do not.
I love my mother. But this is something I need to do on my own time, at my own pace. Maybe I'll go back to plotting my assassination of ice cream scoopers...
