Oh, the opportunities for Business Majors. Every
stand wanted Business Majors, wanted them to stop and talk and look at their
forms, pick up their cups and highlighters and pieces of candies. And the
Science majors made out pretty well. Lots of hospitals and high tech businesses
looking for your expertize and know-how. People talked to you and wanted your
resume and gave you a business card so you would have contacts.
For English and Writing Majors, there were stands
for Graduate Schools. Oh, Graduate School. Stay out of the real world for four
more years and rack up enough debt that you have to become a teacher.
None of the stands had any jobs for English or
Writing Majors. If I stopped long enough at a stand people would talk to me,
see the flimsily attached adhesive badge on my chest proclaiming my name and
major, and then give me a sheet about how to look up their information online.
Maybe online we have a job that will suit your skills. Come into our stores and
do some research online and maybe there will be something for you. Five Times.
I can be a complete social idiot, but I know when I
am simply being got rid of.
So that was the job fair for me.
I walked about a not-meant-to-be-so-symbolically-succinct
circle, looking at stands and being given sheets of paper and told to move on.
Move on so we can talk to that person behind you, the one who didn’t bother to
change out of jeans.
Because yes, I was dumb enough to dress up for said
event.
Business formal. I had black pants, black jacket, and
bright blue button up shirt. I watched myself put on the jacket, the pants, the
shirt, the panty hose, and the high heeled shoes like I was having an out of
body experience. I knew that person in the mirror was me but I didn’t even feel
the clothing go on. It sat numbly on my skin. I was wearing it I suppose, but I
couldn’t connect the image in the mirror to myself.
This wasn’t me. I might as well have been one of
these people.
And I should have known that it wouldn’t go well.
English teaches foreshadowing, and looking back of course it was there (or I
could force it there). Walking to my car my heels sunk into every step of the
relenting ground, like the earth itself was trying to hold me back. I got my
heel stuck in a crack and literately had to take my foot out of the shoe to
remove it by hand, all the while two guys (not men, guys) in business suits
causally passed me. As I opened the door to John Q. Hammons Auditorium to enter
the Job Fair, all of my resumes spilled out across the cement ground. I had
been holding my folder upside down the whole time.
And I know I should have tried harder. I definitely
should have prepared more. I bought the suit the night before and cut off the
tags 10 minutes before I was out the door. And yes, through scrappy hard work
and the American dream and the continual practice of these things one day I
and blah, blah, blah.
This isn’t a practically encouraging message, but I
wasn’t practically encouraged. I know things will work out because things
always sort themselves out. That wound will heal and I won’t be able to tell
where it was a month from now. But it’s still raw now, and even if I’m just
complaining to complain I need to say something about it. Wrap it in a bandage
of words so my brain will concentrate on something else. Wrap it too tight so
no blood reaches and it simply falls asleep. Let my own words convince me that
this Job Fair was at worst depressingly pointless, and at best a training
ground and mounted opportunity.
But really, the brain can only focus on one injury
at a time, so this was the first scrape that will make all the other cuts hurt
less.
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