Dear Unemployed Friend Presents: Back in the Saddle

When a PRK decides it’s time to buck up and get back to the workplace, conflicting emotions can arise. Thoughts may be troubled. Situations may be sticky. And I don’t even mean that nasty freight elevator that you take up the shared office space where your new Craigslist-found job is housed. As an Employed Ally of PRK, I thought it would behoove me to share some insights with you regarding those those first few weeks back as a cog in the good ole fashioned working wheel of America.

Disclaimer: I am 4 months back in action and still frequently harbor these thoughts.

1. While in bathroom (your 4th bathroom break of the day, just to avoid hyperventilating at your cubicle): Should I take some of these extra toilet paper rolls home with me?

2. In aforementioned claustrophobic/chinese food reeking cubicle: Free staples, too?!

3. While in cafeteria with your new work “friends”: FREE FORKS & KNIVES?? HOLY SHIT WORKING IS AWESOME!!!

4. After your 4th meeting of the day to discuss “brand initiatives”: so wait, trolling facebook and gmail for 45 minutes isn’t considered graphic design work? How else am I supposed to get inspired and free up brain space?

5. FREE LONG DISTANCE CALLING!?!?

6. Do you think I can get high from all of this white-out?

7. What’s up with Karl’s BO?

8. I wonder if Karl has a girlfriend?  Is he wearing a wedding ring or is that bro-riffic tribal jewelry?

8. Do unicorns really exist?

9. What does “brand initiative” mean?

You get the idea, my aspiringly industrious friends.  Work is hard work.  It’s confusing.  It’s larceny-inducing.  I wish you good luck.

Career Path #3: POST-BAC

Applying to post-bac programs: this is perfect for those who want to sound the most serious with the least amount of effort. The flighty talk about becoming an MDPhD or whatever completely overshadows the awkward truth that you are now talking about essentially going back to undergraduate so that you can, after that, spend seven years in med school. Yeah RIGHT – you’ll never make it to med school. But your parents MAY pay for another two years of college!

Career Path #3: “Writing” / “Journalism”

The thing about being a “writer” is that you do not actually have to do any writing. If you freelanced an article in the Village Voice several years ago or worked on your college newspaper or once published a Letter-to-the-Editor in the New York Times, you’re a “journalist.” If you put up a blog post within the last 24 months and at least three and a half people read it, you’re a “blogger” (that’s what we are: “bloggers”). If you got stoned last week and thought of an amazing idea for a movie, you’re a “screenwriter.” If you published a short story back in college in the campus lit-mag, you’re a “novelist.” In case of emergency, “being a writer” may include that list of errands you made three months ago in your otherwise pristine and unwritten-in Moleskine. Regardless, this is the perfect way to pretend to your family and friends that you are actually doing something while you stay at home and eat rice and beans.

Being a writer provides you with infinite time and flexibility: you don’t have to publish anything, ever, because that Great American Novel of yours requires work, hard work, and obviously it’s going to take you a long time to not write it. And when you finish not writing it, you can always go to graduate school and get an MFA so you can finally do some writing. Living in the city as a “writer” was just so distracting!

Career Path #2: Running an “Independent” Graphic Design Company

This “career path” can include anything from fiddling with your own portfolio website to taking $30 from your newly unemployed (and disastrously in denial) i-banking cousin to lay out his resume. This is great, especially if you are willing to take little-to-no money for real time-consuming work!

Career Path #1: Graduate School

In order to tell people you’re in graduate school, you do not actually have to be in in graduate school or applying to graduate school or even in the process of applying to graduate school. As long as you’re studying for a graduate school entrance exam, you are technically in graduate school. Knowing your absymally poor academic record, though, you probably haven’t bothered. But if you’ve bought the Test Prep Guide or looked through it once at Barnes and Nobles (before deciding, of course, that you’re too poor to to pay for it), you can at least say that you’re  “thinking about” graduate school. This will impress your parents and their friends – “what a level-headed young man/woman!” – and get them off your back. They might be so impressed that they decide to pay for graduate school, in which case you have succeeded beyond your wildest dreams and are no longer Poor.