I was one of the lucky few and managed to land a job right after graduation. It pays well (ridiculously well for a first job), has benefits and gives me a desk to perform some of the skills my liberal arts degree prepared me for.
Starting a week after graduation, this job launched me into the rough transition of waking up before 8 a.m., eating three meals a day and going to bed before 11 p.m. - and liking it. After waiting the HR-mandated period before my first pay check, I got the most money I've ever gotten from a job, money that lets me buy concert tickets, clothes, food and drink. Another lucky thing: I'm living at home with my parents, so no rent and home-food every night again.
The nine-to-five structure of the job doesn't let me stay up binge-watching Orange is the New Black or True Blood because, if I don't get the recommended eight hours of sleep, I can't manage to stay awake at work without making several trips to the communal coffee pot. In other words, my life now has structure because of this job.
So, with all these good things, why am I so unhappy? Sure, I do some things my English degree prepared me for, which is more than most liberal arts majors get, but this isn't what I wanted. Blame it on the sense of entitlement said liberal arts degree got me, but I don't feel right selling out to the nine-to-five life, getting a hefty pay check, when I'm not even happy. First-world problem indeed.
Being Latino-American and the second person in my family to graduate college, getting a job with a degree my parents never understood was a blessing, and I broke down in tears when I got the call from the company. To my parents, state employees, a stable job with a salary higher than their individual ones should be no reason to complain. Every time they saw me down with the blues because work bullied me, they gave me the "that's how it is; you just have to get used to it; welcome to the real world" talk, a talk that got more condescending every time I heard it. They only made me feel guilty for not liking the job, ungrateful for looking a gift job in the teeth.
This weekend, I went to a graduation party for one of my friends. Most of her friends were interviewing for jobs and were waitressing, valeting or doing nothing in the meantime. Because of the location of my friend's hometown, her friends would have to move or commute half of their lives away to work in the city and still live at home. They would have to move away from home, to either D.C., Baltimore or Silver Spring, to be even remotely close to places that may offer jobs related to where they want to be. Listening to their woes made feel even more guilty for complaining about my stable, well-paying job, since living in Silver Spring puts me in a central location to every major city in Maryland. And somehow they still managed to smile, laugh and go out as if they were still in college.
After almost two months of soul-searching, for as long as I've had the job, I think what makes me unhappy is that fact that no matter how stable, well-paying or relatively easy the job is, it may not get me to my end goal, what I envisioned my happiness to be. And if I'm not happy, at least I'll be well-off, won't I? Is being well-off equivalent to being happy? What was the point of going to school, if I won't be happy?
Share This Article
