Notes From The Underground: An Introduction

Hello all there in the blogosphere. Here is your friendly friend The Big Bukowski with the optimistic response to your day to day problems. Of course, you got to worry about the basic things: jobs, money...most of the time both of them being mutually exclusive. You may be stuck at a dead-end job or have no job at all right now but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a fun time doing it. My column will tell you about useful things to kill all that time you have your hands right now. Kill it like a bystander in Grand Theft Auto 4.

Think of this time as an opportunity. An opportunity to catch up on all the crap you couldn't do while in college. Do you still have that 4 disc Blade Runner DVD set you got for the holidays that you haven't opened it yet? Are you chocked filled with books that you wanted to read all semester but reading from your classes prevented you? You have old school video game machines collecting dust? Everyone's talking about Lost and you haven't seen a single episode yet? You haven't been to the movie theater in years? You want to *gasp* write something that defines our generation that will be adapted into a 100 million dollar movie starring Edward Norton as your protagonist, which is actually a thinly veiled version of you?!

This is the time to escape. If you can't escape from your parents' house yet, then at least you can take in some escapist fare. Everything I recommend in this column will be either A) Cheap or B) FREE. I'll swing towards the latter option. It's time to start saving but it doesn't mean the world isn't available to you until you get some money in your pocket. The world is yours now. It may be big, blue, and filled with angry people shouting at you but, to quote from the book of Gob, it's all an illusion. Go out and conquer it future Caesars of the world. Jobs are overrated anyways.

~BB

Midnight Madness - A Personal Challenge

After taking a full 2 days to celebrate turning 22, I am back and bloggier than ever. Earlier this evening, I went to CVS and bought a packet of 25 manila envelopes. In about 20 minutes I shall go on my parents' computer (the one with the good printer), and armed with my linen resume/cover letter paper, I shall set out to write as many unique cover letters as possible. Once the cover letters are written, I hope to pair them appropriately with resumes, writing samples, etc. My goal is to send out the whole 25-pack's worth from the Post Office tomorrow. I think this self-induced kick in the ass comes from recently being conned to return to my job that I've had since I was 14 scooping ice cream. Excelsior!

Daily Round-Up of People who are Less Employed than You

• Rachael Ray's Stylist (Boston Globe)
• Lou Pearlman (Village Voice)
• The Monarchy of Nepal (Bloomberg)
• This Really Mean Kindergarten Teacher (WAVE)

Daily Round-Up of People who are More Employed than You

• Melissa Gilbert, aka Laura Ingalls (Variety)
• Barack Obama's Assistant (Houston Chronicle)
• Justices of the Peace, etc. (CNN)
• George Clooney's Little Black Book (E!)

Why "Sex and the City" Will Ultimately Disappoint Me

We don't have HBO at mi casa. Parents will only shell out enough dough for Showtime, which has only recently gotten to a level of "okay" in the past couple of years. Due to their everlasting frugality, I managed to make it through high school without ever watching an episode of Sex and the City. In fact, the show celebrated its series finale a mere 4 months before I graduated from high school. I knew it existed, but it wasn't really talked about at school in the various cliques, so I didn't really care that I couldn't access it.

And then I got accepted into college. Not just any college, but NYU. New York University. My dream school. SHIT, I was going to New York City! Oh man, I was going to live a life of utter fabulousity, and I knew just where to get my guide. I went to Target and got the Sex and The City series DVD set for a little less than $185, and I consumed it at full force. I tore through season after season, devotedly aligning myself with Carrie and everything she stood for.

Needless to say, the next 4 years were nothing like Sex and the City. College life in New York was quite different from Felicity, and I never quite got around to dancing in a fountain with my closest friends ala Friends. Over time, I came to face the hard truth:

The truth is, most people living in New York aren't in fabulous rent-controlled apartments in the village, and they aren't living lavish lifestyles on a meager publicist's salary. Many people can only make it out to the Hamptons if it's for a babysitting job, and really - honestly - if you're a 35+, hell even a 25+ single woman in New York, you are looking for at least a longterm relationship if not a husband.

In real life, Carrie can never afford those clothes with that apartment, Samantha has AIDS(too soon?), all the male characters on Felicity are gay, and the characters on Friends are all ibankers who look and think alike.

So here we are, 4 years later after another graduation that is timed perfectly with yet another SATC milestone. Will I see this movie? Probably. Will I like it? Probably not. It's just not the same anymore, at least not for me. I'll laugh at the corny jokes, but I won't have that same kind of personal investment that I used to have. I guess that remains in middle aged women in Ohio who pregame before the movie over cosmo's with their girlfriends, as well as for teenagers who have recently devoured the series on DVD (which, incidentally, is being advertised for at least $10 more than what I paid for it years ago). As for me, I'm kind of over it.

Do I Really Want To Live Like This?

"Having one’s mother mail rotating boxes of old clothing is just one of the myriad ways that young newcomers to the city of a certain income — that is, those who are neither investment bankers nor being floated by their parents — manage to live the kind of lives they want in New York. Every year around this time, tens of thousands of postcollegiate people in their 20s flood the city despite its soaring expenses. They are high on ambition, meager of budget and endlessly creative when it comes to making ends meet.

Some tactics have long been chronicled: sharing tiny apartments with strangers. Sharing those apartments with eight strangers. Eating cheap lunches and skipping dinners — not just to save money, but so that drinks pack more of a punch and fewer need be consumed.

But there are smaller measures, no less ingenious, that round out the lifestyle. These young people sneak flasks of vodka into bars, flirt their way into clubs, sublet their walk-in closets, finagle their way into open-bar parties and put off haircuts until they visit their hometowns, even if those hometowns are thousands of miles away."

(Full NYTimes Article)

For All You Aspiring Gamers

A student presentation on why video games need to go through puberty. Enjoy!

Bad But True Similes

Two weeks now, I've been languidly unemployed, with far too much time on my hands to selfishly think about my state of joblessness. So what do I say, when well-meaners ask with scrunched faces, hands on shoulder: "How's it going?" I've found that a shrug never works as well as a good, old-fashioned miserable simile. Today's edition: tailored for the jobless when describing interactions with job-full companions.

How's it going?
Oh, not so bad. It's like being at a bridesmaid table where all the other girls have big rocks on their fingers. And you're sitting there, without even a manicure, and everyone keeps coming up and squeezing your hand and saying Any progress? and you just give a stupid face and say "well, um, last week I had a blind date." AND HAS HE CALLED? "Um, no, but he said he may make a decision by the end of this week." Oh, I'm sure he'll call. But if he hasn't, have you thought about waitressing in the meantime?

xoA

One Way to Save $$

When you can't afford to go out to eat anymore, and even the supermarket is seeming expensive, you may not have to live off of Skittles and Ramen. You could always grow your own food. What, you don't have a farm or ample space to harvest? Well, why don't you try working on a farm in exchange for free yum's?

Daily Round-Up of People Who are Less Employed Than You

• Crime-Writers (NYTimes)
• The Financial Unit of Dell, Inc. (WSJ)
• Journalists (WaPo)
• Scores of potential contestants for future seasons of Flavor Of Love (ChicagoTribune)

Daily Round-Up of People Who are More Employed Than You

• Rehabilitated Convicts (CNN)
• Tori Spelling (MSNBC)
• Some 16-year-old from Minnesota that plays too many video games (PLANETXBOX360)
• Anyone who has worked on Sex and the City (USA TODAY)

HR Block - Is It In Yet?

It's impossible for me to imagine job-hunting without the internet. I easily apply to 20+ jobs each day without breaking a sweat. I have stored on my desktop 3 versions of my resume, a cover letter template, and 2 writing samples. I get weekly (soon to be daily) emails via job agents at various companies I'm itching to get into. I am constantly in the loop.

What did people use before the internet? I'm gonna guess that newspapers were more stocked with quality jobs. Movies from the 1980s/early 90's often depict a character going through a montage of self-improvement, pouring over the Classifieds and circling their dream job that represents their new and more aware persona in a slick red pen. Yes, the good ol' days.

Well, I checked the classifieds in my local paper, the Pocono Record, and unless I want to be a telemarketer or a dry wall specialist, I'm shit outta luck. To be fair, I would most likely be shit outta luck anyway if I restricted myself to just looking locally, even if I used space-age technology in my job hunt. I digress.

So, the internet emerges as the main outlet to find a job, right? Maybe not.

I keep forgetting how tricky it is to surmount that first wall of securing a job: Human Resources. Who are they anyway? How do they know how qualified I am for a particular job? On a recent interview, in the initial HR screening, I actually had the HR representative confess that she had no idea what my prospective department did. Really? Really?

Getting past HR might just be the hardest part of landing a job somewhere, especially if you're applying to a large company where rep's go through hundreds of resumes each day. These Toby's are BUSY. Their inboxes are flooded, especially at this time of year. They probably forgot all about your carefully-worded cover letter after they had to argue with a departing intern who wouldn't return his company badge and then they had to give a tour of the facilities to a new hire.

So the question remains - how the hell do I get through this HR block?

As sad as this sounds, perhaps the only way to break through the block is to go around it, and kick things old school. I'm talking snail mail. Yes, that means you'll have to print out your resume, and a cover letter that you actually put effort into, and you'll probably have to use good paper as well. You'll need to neatly write or print their address, and make sure it's to the correct person/department, and you'll need to slip it in the mailbox and hope for the best. Don't forget postage. Don't ever forget postage.

I'm not saying you should fill the envelope with glitter and spritz it with perfume, because the fact is that if you're sending it the old fashioned way, it already stands out from the rest. In this day and age working professionals get MUCH more via email than they do through traditional mail. If you don't want to get lost in a sea of subject lines, but rather if you want to find yourself an actual place on an HR rep's desk, this is your best bet. Also, there still might be some old farts out there that think it takes more effort to send something in the mail, so that if you snailed it, it means you must really want this job. Pffft, what do they know.

HR Block is a series of posts designed to figure out the enigma that is Human Resources.

Have a liberal arts degree in saving the world for little to no money? Law school won't help your cause

When I chose to go to a prestigious big city liberal arts college I was not worried about the loans I had to take out. I knew I'd have a fancy degree from a fancy college that could get me a fancy job making fancy money. But then I chose my major...gender and sexuality studies aka women's studies with an LGBT twist. And even then knowing I was at a fancy liberal arts college working toward a degree that would land me in a non-profit job I was convinced with such a unique degree I'd be able to defy the liberal arts curse and actually earn a decent living in a non-profit job all while working toward ending discrimination against gays.

But that plan didn't work...

Time and time again I was told, seriously there is no money in helping people. And I eventually came to discover what I had known all along. A LIBERAL ARTS DEGREE WILL NOT BRING HOME THE BUCKS, no matter how fabulous you may think you are or your degree from your fancy school is.

So I was faced with $150,000 worth of loans ($300,000 after the interest kicks in and I pay $1000 a month over 30 years) and the prospects of jobs that would earn me a salary less than I was a making as a New York City nanny....

And so the natural choice was to go to law school. The title of my law school admissions essay was "What do you do with a B.A. in gender and sexuality studies" inspired by "What do you do with a B.A. in english" from the Broadway play Avenue Q. And I ended that essay by saying you still save the world like you initially planned, only better because surely a law degree will boost any degree....even one in gender and sexuality studies.

Of course I didn't put it in my essay, but my real reason for going to law school was because I was convinced people with law degrees make good money no matter what, even if you plan to use that law degree for good aka working in non-profit...or in the fancy term law school dubs it..."Public Interest"

Once again I was wrong....everyone I've met working in public interest with a law degree still makes no money. Most make no more than if they had gone right to work with their liberal arts degrees.

I could still sell my soul and work at a large firm, assuming someone would hire me with my terrible grades and entirely public interest based resume (see my blog entry 2 years from now for how that turns out) but the truth is i have absolutely no interest in law.

Everyone said don't go to a fancy liberal arts college that'll cost you a fortune, don't choose a major that will earn you no money, don't go to law school if you're not interested in law, don't become a lawyer working in public interest because you'll still earn no money....and each time I've ignored the valuable advice from everyone I've come in contact with ever.

The one bit of advice I am finally taking and I encourage all of you to take is, do what you love. For me its gay people....well gay rights...read in to that what you will. And I still plan to finish law school and work in public interest and take a billion years to pay off my loans and while the loans suck, at least I'll be doing what I love.

But this could have all been avoided. So if you're yet to enter college don't make the same mistake as me. Go where you get a scholarship, or in state or to community college for two years. And if you're already in that fancy liberal arts college racking up loans change your major quickly to something useful, I presume business or science would be a better choice than mine. And if you've already graduated with your liberal arts major and can't get a job that will earn you any money and you really do love your major then suck it up and start working. Do not waste your time with graduate school unless you're ready to admit your mistake and forget you ever had a liberal arts degree and do something fancy like earn a business law degree instead.

If after all this you still want to save the world like me, then quit your bitching and go do it.

Top Entry-Level Employers for 2008

1. Enterprise Rent-A-Car
2. Americorps
3. Walgreen Company
4. Internal Revenue Service
5. Progressive Insurance
6. Teach for America
7. Deloitte & Touche USA LLP
8. Target
9. Peace Corps
10. Ernst & Young
(Full list here)

It's kind of depressing looking at this list. You have to assume that companies 1, 3, 4, 5, and 8 aren't exactly hiring for jobs with a lot of upward mobility. Have fun working for commission and doing more customer service than anyone should ever have to in their life. Positions in places like 7 and 10, while at very prosperous companies, are typically recruited waaaaay before graduation. As for 2, 6, and 9, they'll typically just give you enough to live on (sometimes barely), and come on...we're not all cut out for that kind of humanitarian work.

Happy Hunting!..meh.

bored?

In between ferociously checking my queue of job search engines, I've managed to eat up a chunk of my time by indulging myself in various activities that I normally don't have time to do. One of those activities is watching reruns of Arrested Development on Hulu.com. It's completely free, completely legal, and completely amazing. Apparently there is an Arrested Development movie in the works, and I fully intend to keep my eyes peeled for it.

And, just for kicks, here's a clip:

Initiation

Congratulations! Welcome to the Real World.

And now, I don't mean a pimped-out house sponsored by MTV crawling with sexy attention-whores. I'm talking about the real Real World - that thing that our parents and teachers have been talking about ever since we entered pre-school.

Look at us, with our Facebook albums appropriately titled with sentiments like, "The End of an Era", "SENIOR WEEK OH SNAP", or a memory-inducing 80's bar song, we're ready to take on life. Ready, set...

SHIT. I'm unemployed.

And chances are, so are you. Or maybe you're in a job you hate, and it certainly doesn't help that they're treating the interns better than you. Perhaps you've settled for putting your dreams on the back-burner, just so you don't have to live with your parents. Maybe you're living with your parents. You could be gearing up for grad school - only happy about the fact that you have put off paying your loans for another couple of years.

Whatever the case may be, you're mad. No, you're not maniac mcgee-ing with a shotgun at your hip, but you're mad enough that it's really putting a damper on things.

Remember when life was fun? How about when people told you that you were going to go far and you actually believed it? It's all changed now, thanks to the Real World.

Now you can't go on Myspace without finding another ex who's gotten engaged, or another former nemesis that seems to be happier and more successful than you. Suddenly you're back home, and you start thinking, "hey, maybe the people that went to community college and worked retail these past 4 years got it right. At least they don't have student loans and actually have a steady income." Or maybe that's just me.

I'm not sure where this blog is going yet, for now it's just a place to be mad. So when you have nothing in your inbox and you've caught up on all the celebrity gossip for the day, know that you can come here. Comment if you want to be added as an author, so you can publish your own posts here. Also comment for the sake of commenting. Congratulations. Felicidades. Mazel Tov.