Recently I came across this article from cracked basically stating that shit is harder than you think and the reason the world is messed up is that we have unrealistic expectations because movies like the Karate Kid make us think that becoming good at something takes five minutes because that’s how long it takes in real time in fictional stories. Ummm, ok.

I am not going to point out the irony of a man who gets paid to comment on pop-culture writing an article about how difficult life is when he is part of the creative class, who essentially won the lottery of getting to do something mildly enjoyable for pay, regardless of how meager that pay actually is.  I mean hell, I am writing this for free and I have to be at work in an hour.  Instead, I want to point to the real lesson here: hard work is not as correlated with success as we’re taught to believe.

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We were warned about this when we were children, it’s in Aesop’s Fables. Fortunately due to our crippling debt we’ll never have families.  There is always the chance of a contraception mishap but now that I’m on the other side of 30 I don’t really see that happening. But I digress.  The Tortoise and the Hare.  The way I read this story now is that we are Hares, the Tortoises are our idiot peers who coasted through high school and their state University of choice, only to end up managing us after we went into debt earning useless degrees that don’t land us jobs in this economy. I mean when you think about it, these ignoramuses who can drink a keg and not fall over are the epitome of “slow and steady.”

But seriously, let’s look at the Economics of this. In addition to reading children’s picture books I also have read the Wall Street Journal as of late. The article pointed out that the number 1 indicator of future success is the state of the economy your first 2-3 years of working. Kids who enter the job market in a recession NEVER recover to the point of other classes no matter how good they are or how fast they run.

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In my last post I talked about how it is impossible for heavily indebted students with fancy degrees to hold normal jobs because the rest of the world hates and resents us. Well it’s true, and there is really nothing you can do about it after you’ve taken on the debt, gotten the degree, and fallen off the narrow path of career advancement necessary to be at the top of your field. However you CAN avoid a common trap that I’ve fallen into: regular debt.

There is a tendency once you’ve accepted the fact that you’re not going to be special to feel entitled to being normal. You stop showing up to work early and working on the weekends. You go out on Wednesday nights.  You buy stuff you see your friends buying. And what’s $500 balance on a credit card? You owe 250 times that amount in student debt AND credit card debt is dischargeable.

At first things are fine. Nobody notices that you’re hung over Thursday mornings. People start calling you a “team player.” You stop dreaming of an X5 and get that Nissan Murano. You begin to confuse colleagues and friends.
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My name is Erin Samus and I am a graduate of a top 10 private university.  I compounded that mistake by attending law school briefly, but I turned my life around. I dropped out of law school even though I made Law Review and got a job as a paralegal. Four years later I was in the top 70% of earners from my graduating year. One year ago I took a job as a business analyst for a mid-major consulting firm. I still had debt but I figured I would gradually pay it off as my salary increased and I got promoted.

But I didn’t get promoted. If anything I am lower on the totem pole thanks to several reshufflings of the firm’s official hierarchy. I learned salary “adjustments” were essentially pay cuts. I worked harder and this only made it worse. I watched as youthful misfits were promoted over me.

One day as I was fetching donuts and being casually sexually harassed I noticed the degree on the wall of my boss’s boss. State.
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Ok, I’m sorry but I am too good for this. It felt good being “normal” after turning my back on the law (education wise then quitting my job as a paralegal) and doing normal shit like leaving a bar at 11 pm and having co-worker friends I neither love nor hate. But I just can’t work for Olla, my bitch manager with an Associate’s degree who is a year younger than me and has three kids (which we fucking talks about all the time like I give a damn the goofy looking titty parasite rolled over at three months).

I realized I hated her when I caught myself fantasizing about killing her during a presentation I was giving and my remarks deviated from reality to fantasy. Of course nobody noticed because nobody was fucking listening but that is neither here nor there.

Now there are many reasons I could hate her (did I mention the kid thing?) the lack of education, the amazing luck she’s had during her career, the condescending way she talks to subordinates (kind of like we are her children) the way she bitches when she’s at the office past 6 because she runs the risk of missing her kid’s bedtime and the way she owns a sporty little convertible that costs three times the amount of a mini-van yet complains that not all her kids fit in it. Oh and of course I could do her job much better than she can.
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So I’ve been at my new job for just under a year and am at that crucial point where the mere fact that my job is not something I remember hating is no longer enough to sustain me through each day.  This development has coincided with a mental paradigm shift: I no longer compare myself to the broken, debt-ridden, one foot in the grave at 30 law school classmates of yesteryear. I now compare myself to the young professionals who are getting married, starting families and doing this peculiar activity called “living.” This is significant because whereas I am doing much better than my colleagues left to rot in the dead legal profession I am doing much worse than my colleagues who went the “business analyst” route (think liberal arts majors with soft computer skills).

I don’t think my experience is unique. When you get out of s really bad situation, below average seems fantastic. In relationships it’s called being on the rebound. Then one day you wake up next to a married assistant manager of your local deli and realize just because he doesn’t hit you or sell your stuff online doesn’t mean he’s Mr. Right. Well, I just realized my job is that assistant manager.
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I was furious when I read the headline about the woman who was dismissed from her job at a law firm days after suffering a miscarriage.

http://abovethelaw.com/2008/05/breaking-a-dramatic-farewell-emailand-proof-of-paul-hastings-layoffs-/

Needing to vent I turned to the first woman I saw in the office despite somewhere in the back of my mind knowing she was one of those bible thumping conservatives. No joke, the conversation went something like:

“Can you BELIEVE what happened to this poor woman?!”

“She should have stayed in the damn kitchen.”

“Pardon?”

“She should have been at home. If there weren’t so many women in the workplace, particularly lawyers, then perhaps my nephew could find a job or get into law school.”

“What if she had just decided to get an abortion huh? I bet you’d support more work life balance then.”

“Then she would have burned in hell. She probably will anyway. Her act of working was an abortive act in the eyes of the Lord. Better the child suffer in purgatory than be raised in a damned household.”

The woman crossed herself and went into the ladies room. I considered following her, grabbing her by the hair, and slamming her head into the latrine until I felt better. Instead I called Alpha Man and asked him why there were so many more turncoat women than turncoat blacks. Do we have to be constantly arrested and fucked up by the cops to remind us where we still stand in society?
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As the person with the lowest loan balance and second-highest current income I feel it’s my responsibility to say “wake up guys.” Now I am not saying it can’t be done but what I am saying is that if Benito or Triforce had enough going for them that they could come up with 200k apiece after taxes, they probably wouldn’t have student loans in the first place.  Additionally, the amount of money they would have to make and the time they would have to do it in negates most if not all legitimate enterprises given that they have no access to capital.

So let’s start with the most financially successful of the two: Mike Triforce.  Given his womanizing ways and association with failed actors my gut tells me his best shot is setting up a porn site starring himself.  Please, I am not being glib and I am disgusted by the idea but porn is legal and I would not be surprised if his girlfriend has supplemented her income with occasional work in the industry. Ok, that was catty, I (should) take that back.
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Christmas parties are different outside of law.  Sort of like debt. On the outside it’s credit card debt as opposed to educational. The thing about credit card debt is that you can get out of it just most…don’t. Same thing with the Christmas party…there are just too many people to make sure you go and yet most do.

At a law holiday party people just let their ass hang out.  I’ve been groped, sexually harassed and forced to continually drink to the point that I had to regularly pour out fresh drinks in the ladies room.  The party doesn’t end until 12 am and the mandatory after party doesn’t stop until 2. Partners openly consort with mistresses.  It’s like student debt. Here it comes. Hard and fast. There’s a lot and you’re staying until the end.
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Now I know how Alpha Man feels about Clarence Thomas thanks to Sarah Palin. I don’t just mean a political figure the same sex and race as I am who is in favor of systematically destroying the infrastructure set-up to combat the discrimination against people like me that’s reinforced by hundreds of years of injustice. I was always of the opinion that anyone possessing normal human empathy could understand that. I am talking about something more specific.

When one discovers their education is either useless or to some degree a hindrance you try and find other reasons it was worth it. Alpha Man has been known to remark “at least I made alot of white people mad.” Touche Alpha Man. Similarly I got satisfaction out of proving guys who thought a woman’s place was the kitchen wrong.  In fact the hardest part of my law school hiatus was taking a paralegal job working for predominantly men who would assume I couldn’t hack law school which ironically made me more attractive to them. Some of my single friends who stuck it out actually envied me. But screw that. I only need to meet one acceptable guy whose not intimidated by me to have a relationship. The rest can cower in fear and I take satisfaction in that. It’s almost worth the 28 cents less per dollar I will make in my lifetime.

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