I’ve embraced my inner capitalist a long time ago and accepted that while it looks noble and sexy to be a starving artist (or entrepreneur, haha), I need to sustain my stupid gas guzzling, credit card swiping lifestyle. It’s pretty insensitive to talk about employment, which is a pretty touchy subject considering that come graduation, a lot of people find themselves unemployed. So in a sense I have the easy way out by finding myself practically employed without the graduation part.
I’ve got a job offer with some 21st floor Makati CBD schtick. I know it’s going to be deathly boring and there will come a time when I feel shortchanged considering the compromise I’ve made on what I really want to do with my life (which is still pretty vague because I really like money–admit it, so do you) and the kind of compensation they’re offering. But the difference is it’s actually there. It’s not something I’m pinning my hopes on, it’s an actual offer. And I have ’til Wednesday to give word and the Monday after I get back from Singapore to start. They’ll hopefully give me a day off to defend my thesis, but otherwise, that’s it.
So I’ve been weighing the odds, and it all boils down to there being no harm in it. After all, it’s a start, which is what I direly need when the requirements of the industry that’s supposed to absorb us have inflated to ridiculous proportions. Where they once expected graduates, they now expect graduates with honors or MAs or at least 3-5 years of experience. I have none of those, so a shot at being the youngest pick and the only fresh grad at a fairly stable 200 year old company is…okay. It’s just the nature of the work itself that puts me off.
And speaking of compromise, I don’t know what I want to do with my life anyway besides just keep trying stuff. My first course in college (Theater Arts) was chosen based on this crazed obsession with trying stuff. I’ve coursed through ballet, tap dance, a stab at pole dance, an electric instrument, a classical instrument, acting, behind the scenes, weird-ass interpretive dance workshops, writing, and random seamstress jobs. While it was all fun, it all makes for a very disjointed resume. Now I’m having fun just sitting back and being in the audience, but we have to feed ourselves somehow (and I really like buying shoes, it’s a crazy-eyed disease). Consultancy and analysis, which are pretty much euphemisms for paper pushing, aren’t on the list yet, but they’d look good on paper.
Is being good on paper the only reason why we take our first jobs? Heck people choose to spend their whole lives married to someone because they look good on paper, this will be 500 hours of my life spent looking good on paper before moving on to the next thing. And the next, and the next.
Alice Sarmiento 