Funemployment

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Sitting in my parents’ car on the way home from graduation, still in my cap and gown, still hungover from the night before, I got my first call for a job interview. I had been applying to positions sparingly over the last week of classes, so I was thrilled to get a response. Even better, the job seemed like a custom-made opportunity for me in the creative department of a Soho advertising agency. I picked out the perfect outfit, gave my resume a good shakedown, and lay awake all night practicing turning my flaws into assets. The interview went swimmingly.
Yet here I sit, a full six months later, interning 30 hours a week and folding t-shirts nights and weekends.

Over these six months, I’ve had perhaps a dozen more interviews, and although I’ve certainly gained more experience and expanded my skill set, lucrative calls remain sporadic at best.  I know that I’m lucky to hold any paying gig in this economy. I also know that, having held three internships and years of credible part-time work, not to mention a GPA that reveals my proclivity towards hard work over hard liquor (trust me, that tendency has changed), I’m a desirable candidate. But the jobs I actually want remain totally out of reach.
At this point, I’ll have to make a change if I ever want to see the outside of a cubicle. And although I’m certainly ready for a change, as of right now, I’m surviving on the bottom rung of the corporate America ladder.
The real problem? While I do spend a lot of time longing for a more creative career where I can do something I’m actually good at, I spend more time wishing I were back in school, gaining more experience in a fun internship and developing the contacts I didn’t know I would desperately need. Maybe it’s the fact that most of my friends are in grad school, or maybe it’s just summer. I’m just not ready for the daily grind. No idle Tuesday when I can just sit outside all day with a book and my iPod? No waking up at noon only to declare the rest of the day “Wear sweatpants and watch ‘Scrubs’ in bed” day?
I mean, really. How do fully employed people live?
I know that, were I ever to find myself truly unemployed, I’d go stir-crazy almost instantaneously. But, before I actually enter the real world, I’d like one last week of broke college kid funemployment. I just have this feeling that eating Life cereal in bed till dusk while still living in my parents’ house might not fly in five years.

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