Can we rewind to a time when I used to count the days until summer break? When spring break felt like a real break. When fall break didn’t remind me that graduation is right around the corner.
When I think about graduation, it’s a trip to the toilet for me. How terrifying reality must be without the generous, merciful “student” label on my forehead. The label that allows me to work part-time without angering my manager. The label that gives me an excuse for why I’m not financially stable. The label that makes me feel driven and forever young.
After adding up the dropout and military time, this degree will have taken me six and a half years to complete.
This whole last chapter has lasted about 26% of my life, and now I’m sitting here wondering how I’m going to fill the next chapter.
I have friends who’ve already earned their master’s degrees, had kids, settled down and so on. Where has the time gone, and how do I get it back? Am I behind? Eh, who knows?
Without being labeled a student, given all the sympathies a student gets, I have to pretend college was a strategic move to benefit my future. Now, I must look like I have it all figured out and pretend I didn’t go to college as a formality.
I have to sit here and lie to you about my college courses preparing me to be a meaningful contributor to society. Now I’m supposed to pretend college was this necessary launchpad into adulthood, instead of an extended exercise in survival and self-doubt.
In reality, I feel unequipped for the workforce. I’m at a stage where I’m assessing the supposed skills a communications degree has given me and measuring that against what I think the workforce is looking for.
But college wasn’t about harnessing skills. It was an educationally structured routine that pushed you to your mental and creative limits. But it doesn’t explicitly direct you to an industry, skill set or specific avenues.
That leaves students hoping to find a company where their unique set of skills meshes well with its operations.
The problem is, getting into one of these companies requires you to play Russian roulette with your ego, trying to prove “you are a worthy candidate,” being judged against abstract criteria by people who carry their own sets of biases.
The roulette has already begun to turn, and I admit, the monstrosity of an interview I gave last week helps little when trying to find an optimistic way to say this.
The game is rigged. Nepotism, soft skills and connections. There you have it, folks: the ultimate factoid of the job market. That’s all you need to succeed and all you need to pass on.
Regardless, fast forward to the part where you get the interview, and, of course, it’s a pre-recorded interview.
So I take the logical approach and plant myself in my underwear with a blazer and tie on, ready to tackle the interview.
The charade required by interviews nowadays demands a sort of corporate lingo and small-talk skill set. The interview isn’t about what you did in your time at school. The skills people are hiring for aren’t taught in the classroom. It’s exhausting. As it turns out, small talk is incredibly valuable when introducing yourself and maintaining professional relationships.
Pro-tip from a struggling soon-to-be graduate: The key aspect of entry-level job hunting when making up random answers to questions like “tell me about a time you faced conflict” or “tell me about a time where you completed a project” is to explain it in ascending chronological order, which makes your efforts of teamwork, pragmatism and timeliness shine.
Anyway, I’m in the process of giving that chronological, ascending answer I flaunted, and I stutter, forget my words or speak twice as fast as I should. Unbeknownst to the interviewer, I’m just trying to beautify that procrastinated, caffeine-fueled Hail Mary I pulled trying to pass my class.
Two months later, you receive a denial email from a job you forgot you interviewed for.
That’s entry-level job hunting from the point of view of a soon-to-be post-graduate in a nutshell.
It’s a charade, and playing it sucks the energy right out of you. In the end, here I am, playing along, because what else can I do? I’m tired and I’m scared, and I think most students are too. I honestly can’t say that I feel like college prepared me at all.
Mohammad Tantawi is a 24-year-old mass communication senior from Smyrna, Tenn.
