It takes a lot to get one of us to write these days.  Alpha Man promised me a simple explanation of the crux of the Occupy Movement’s issues and he has yet to deliver.  Me, I am content for the time being just to be part of something.  Looking for an answer beats looking for a job. Probably because unlike a job, I know the truth exists.

However I had to tell you guys about this: M.I.T. is providing free, online education that now comes with a certified credential that exhibits mastery of the material. I am including the link below

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/12/21/m-i-t-game-changer-free-online-education-for-all/

These aren’t taped lectures people! This is a real, interactive experience that captures a great deal of the amazing value of an M.I.T. education.  And it is available to any and everyone for free and it’s learn at your own pace. You could do this at 19 or 59, the latter number being significant given that the fastest growing demographic for taking on student debt is now middle-aged people.

This is the future.  This is how the revolution ends.  This is meritocracy at its purest form, this is what will change everything…and if our generation being regulated to debt slavery forever is the cost of the vicious cycle becoming a permanent thing of the past, I just might be ok with that. I’m not saying we’re going to be sitting at a Thanksgiving table 50 years from now telling stories about taking to the streets like the Civil Rights generation, but that’s ok too.

Hopefully we’ll still have each other.

So, a whole lot has happened.  So much in fact that it’s hard to decide exactly what to write about.  First there is this

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/business/law-school-economics-job-market-weakens-tuition-rises.html?_r=1

And if you’re here on this site you are aware of everything in the story linked to above.  What makes it newsworthy is that it’s in the New York Times.  I suppose I should be happy that one of the most widely read newspapers in the world has taken note of my specific plight.  But instead all I did was crack a beer.  Then I cracked another, and another and then I got REAL mad.  Is this how people who see parents murder their children all the time felt when the media found Casey Anthony? And now thanks to the NYT article…well, my life’s still over.  I’ve got this blog, I do my part to help the next generation.  All I am left with his emptiness.

But there’s more.  How about this

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/07/suing-law-schools-potpourri-tidings-from-law-schools-named-after-a-thomas/thomas-cooley-lawsuit-cl/

That’s right.  Kids like me are rising up and suing their law schools.  Read on to hear what I think about that.

Sure.  If you went to a third rate law school nobody has heard of with few if any successful alumni and you can find a job doing something else or whatever the hell else you did before you went to law school than sure, more power to you.  It’s not like you can’t find a lawyer these days to take virtually any case on contingency.

Me, I went to an Ivy League school.  Sure, they hiked up tuition.  Sure, they lied about employment statistics (though not nearly as brashly) but they have A LOT of powerful alumni who in theory could stand to lose a lot if the name of their dear old alma mater was besmirched.  You see, my law school COULD use its own to defend a lawsuit I would bring against it with some freshly minted Cooley graduate.  Plus I did technically (however very briefly) have a job upon graduation so according to all of this I should be dancing in the street.  Because apparently I didn’t go to law school for a career in law I went to have to have a six-figure job for a couple of months.

So I really don’t know what to write about.  I mean none of this effects me.  None of this effects the people who have been derailed for YEARS.  I don’t this is progress either.  These are just the things that happen as a scam matures.  Everyone knows the pitfalls of playing the lottery or selling knives door-to-door.  Everyone knows that Taco Bell doesn’t have real meat in their tacos.  Everyone knows that Disney World is just paying a ton of money to spend your only free week of the year waiting in lines in 100+ degree heat.  BUT PEOPLE STILL DO IT.  And they probably always will.

Ugh.  Nothing changes.

I am just beginning to come out of the acute depression of getting my interview cancelled for my dream job.  The sad thing was it wasn’t even so much the prospect of finally getting a job that enticed me, it was the opportunity for the dignity of putting on a suit and speaking with another professional in a competent matter about an area of law I happen to specialize in. I was talking to Triforce about it and he likened it to enjoying a date regardless of whether was going to be sex. He then laughed in my face.

The worst thing wasn’t missing the interview or the job that went along with it. It was the timing. When you’re unemployed and seasons are generally meaningless all calendar events sneak up on you. But it has recently come to my attention that Memorial Day is next weekend. The working world slows down and a glut of interns hit the market…permanent hiring is put on hold until after Labor Day. It currently is the 5th month of the year. Labor Day occurs in the 9th. So sad.

Summer used to be my favorite time of year.  Now the things I used to love I hate. Women wearing next to nothing serves as a reminder that it’s been years since Ive touched a woman and will probably be years more. Seeing people on vacation reminds me that I have nothing to vacation from. Every week I see someone from my former life as a human being and I have to tell another variation of a lie that can’t even conceal the fact that I spent 7 years in the Ivy League to barely work 7 months and now live at home sleeping in a room still decorated for a tween.

And I have a solid 13 weeks to think about the perfect perfect job that slipped away with EVEN LESS than the usual chance of finding another job. I still have my interview clothes hanging outside my closet. I still have my interview itinerary inside a portfolio I’ve never used in a briefcase I got for Christmas two years ago, one of those “buck up champ” presents from a relative who has since died.

So I landed an interview.  One cover letter out of the literally tens (yes) tens of thousands I have sent out over the past couple of years hit a bulls eye.  And I mean it hit a bulls eye.  I am talking about the exact department of my exact specialty. I received a call right away.  The HR woman was in contact with me everyday.  I had an itinerary and directions to the office.  I had a list of real people I could research on the company website.  I booked a hotel for the interview at their branch office.  I was all set to go.

It fell through.  Big surprise.  But its not so much that it fell through but how it fell through.  I’ve had a ton of interviews not work out and I had a laundry list of reasons in the back of my head – not enough experience, hasn’t worked in over two years, he’s too old, he’s too young, he has too many degrees, etc.  I had prepared myself for that disappointment.  But none of those reasons are the reason my interview fell through.

Turns out that upon reviewing my resume, the company concluded there was a conflict of interest because during my unemployment I did some temp work with a company they have a non-compete clause with, and rather than make waves with this country that I did three weeks worth of work for 18 months ago they decided not to interview me for the position.  And I was perfect for it.

It was only after receiving this news did I realize how, even after everything I’ve been through, I was so SURE I would get this job.  The dream job.  The job that was going to make all of this worthwhile.  Like any of “this” has a point.  Even as I write this I am still literally in shock that this happened.  It’s like if you ate a rare steak a few hours after going to the dentist, and the cow happened to have been raped by an HIV-positive slaughterhouse worker and through some one in a million genetic defect of the cow, the animal was able to incubate the disease before it’s death and due to the freshness of the beef and lack of cooking the disease survived and since your gums were bleeding just ever so slightly…now you’ve got AIDS.  Even though you’re a drug-free virgin.

The worst of it are the internal voices that laugh at you.  The way you survive debtor’s prison is by telling yourself that you’re tougher than these hipsters living off daddy’s money or these assholes who like to think they are self-made success because they went to school, maybe even paid for it themselves, and were lucky enough to find jobs and get started in careers.  You tell yourself you’re better than them because if they were in your position they would have killed themselves, a whole lot of other people, or both.  They would have been driven mad.  You’re tough.  I mean you’ve had to deal with thousands (yes…1…2…3…4…5…996…997…998…999…1000…1001…1002)thousands of rejections.  You certainly wouldn’t be driven almost to your breaking point by just one more.  But lo and behold you have.  And in this rejection, because of it’s peculiar nature, you are forced to relive all the others.  You’re not tough.  You can go in your closet and cry but you know you’re there.

So now you hear a fresh new voice in your head.  It’s like a brand new brain tumor.  Now there is nothing to do but wait for it to fade into the background of the white noise that is a multitude of internal conversations about the absentee parent that sired each of them: hope.

I don’t want to hear voices anymore.  I take solace in the fact that they will never go away.  Even if I were to get a job.  Employment and Unemployment are like Life and Death.  Once you’re dead, you’re dead and there’s a very, very slim chance you’re coming back.  If you’re alive though but have been around death, seen enough death you’re so acutely aware that even at the peak of health and happiness death could quickly and easily make an appearance you can’t really enjoy life.

That final point is important.  We often wonder why it is nobody can sympathize with us, why nobody understands our predicament.  The reason is by simply acknowledging that what we talk about on this blog is true, the simple knowledge of that would be enough to lead a regular person down the path of madness.  How else is the guy with the amazing job whose nowhere near as qualified or as deserving as you going to enjoy his ridiculous house, model wife, and boatload of kids if he’s aware of the fact that his situation is the result of providence and chance and not the fictional meritocracy in which he feels he’s earned all of this?

This is one of those moments where you really have to dig deep down and take stock of who you are.  If you don’t have a religion, or a code, or a philosophy or something like that you better take a deep breath – spend two weeks doing whatever it is you do for fun (I recommend heavy drinking and video games) and then, having distanced yourself from your own breakdown, go and try and find one.  Because if you decide to apply logic to your predicament now you’re going to end up in a very dark place.

Sigh.  So Mike Triforce went over how to network/ask for a job.  Now let’s deal with the opposite.  How to blow someone off.  First the story, then we’ll go over what was wrong with it.

I went to church with my mom and saw a woman I emailed four months ago about a job.  Yeah I know, I didn’t ask right but whatever.  The woman accidentally makes eye contact with me and says loudly in front of the whole congregation “I’m SO sorry for not getting back to you.” Now at this point I try to escape but I am boxed in by old people.  “I talked to the General Counsel” at this point I stop her and remind her that I was not applying for a legal position.  She continues “so I talked to General Counsel” I stop her and explain to her that to get a job in a GC office you need 10-15 yrs plus experience practicing.  She continues “so I talked to General Counsel and he referred me to our website.  Did you know we have job postings online? Maybe you should apply online.  I’ll keep asking around.  Hang in there champ.”

Now, let us begin with the critique.

First, if someone has contacted you for a job don’t bring it up when other people are around.  Certain places are particularly humiliating like church, a formal event or a party.  Second, if you didn’t actually read the email, either don’t bring it up or speak of it in very general terms.

Now let’s dig deeper.  Why is it bad to talk about a job (like a GC) that you don’t know a damn thing about? Well, by now other people are listening to the conversation.  Other people in the same industry as the person you are talking to.  They will think the person you are talking to is an IDIOT because, according to you, he just applied for a job he is grossly underqualified for with employment creeping around 10%.

Finally, telling someone to submit their resume via the job website is like telling them to direct their questions to a brick wall.  I mean it’s insulting.  Yes, I am aware that every single employer in the world that employs more than three and a half people has a way to submit a resume online and I am aware that exactly 0% of people are hired through this avenue.

Or how about this, just overt your eyes and avoid the person.  Yeah, it’s a dick move, but anything else you do will probably just make things worse.

So Benito has been trying to recruit an underemployed blogger to join our motley crew, but is failing because obviously none of the candidates want to lose their job. But one of them did pass on a mandatory assignment a senior manager gave to his underlyings before the monthly meeting when they were to pay homage to his greatness. Read “A Letter to Garcia.” Here is the damn link

http://www.birdsnest.com/garcia.htm

I talked to the guy and he said he was hurt that his manager thought so little of them collectively that he would make them read what amounted a treatise on how they were so worthless as to be morally bankrupt human beings. Or at least that’s what he got out of it. You are probably wondering what this has to with Scalia. Getting to that.

My first reaction was this kid is a major loser if his managers have any ability to affect him emotionally. So I read the article…turns out it’s a turn of the (previous) century essay, penned on a lark, a 100 yr-old blog entry that could have been written by Rush Limbaugh. Then I got angry.

It’s hard to accurately summarize this piece of “work” and still capture the condescending arrogance that epitomizes the ruling class of every culture, country and time. Essentially it’s “the white man’s burden” but it’s employer v. Worker. To take this article literally a worker should be an omnipotent, mute slave. Essays could be written about each sentence and books about the handful of parables. I did not think it was possible to degrade a person in so many ways in such few words. I have always prided myself on keeping an emotional distance from employers even when I used to work for corporate America. But if a manager ever told me to read this I’d have spat in his face.

So enraged was I that I googled critiques of the article and guess what? It’s not a rallying cry to conservatism, it’s a commonly accepted piece of Americana adored by all! The idiot manager who assigned this may have just pulled a cliche out of the “Managing for Dummies” handbook!

How? How could the awful sentiment embodied in this hellspawn text be loved AND loved by most? At first I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was messed up. Then I thought of Antonin Scalia.

Here you have an ugly small-minded creature who routinely accepts gifts from interested parties in the cases he hears, asks bullying and unsophisticated questions, writes at a fourth grade level and whose decisions are to the detriment of 94% of Americans. Yet ask a law student who their favorite Justice is? Scalia is by far the most popular. I hate people.

Part of it is somewhat understandable. Scalia’s misleading oversimplified questions and interruption are sometimes funny. The essay is kind of funny in a Mr. Burns sort of way. Also people don’t read. Case in point: Less than 1% of people who use the term “Uncle Tom” have read Uncle Tom’s cabin. The term and it’s meaning makes no sense to anyone who has actually read the book.

But the real reason most people find this abominable essay and the unsufferable Antonin Scalia is a perverted sort of hero worship and inflated sense of self worth.  It’s how Republicans win elections.  People don’t identify with their own situations, they identify with the situations they feel they will be in soon or someday.  The rich are given tax cuts by the wannabe rich.  Students worship asshole professors because they want to be perceived as part of the in crowd who managed to earn A’s.  Workers who are insulted by this essay love it because they are self-hating, because they want to be no not “Rowan” (the idiot who takes the damn message) but because they want to be the commander and chief who sends him.  All little kids want to be President.  The sidekick action figure never sells as well as the leader.  In this world a hero is just a martyr who survives or gets noticed dying.

Life is not fair. Nobody has pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. You against the world = your mom was forced to abort you. If you’re alive, competent and yet don’t have your 3500 sq ft wife and Lexus then you are proof of these obvious axioms.  I look down on you (literally, not necessarily figuratively) from my office window and I want to help you.  Is it really so hard to believe? Why do you think I have written for this blog for close to a year now? It sure as hell doesn’t get me any ass.

Ok, let’s start at the beginning.  You’re young, smart, well educated but unemployed and in debt.  What to do? Obviously your biggest problem is the debt.  Why? Because the debt makes you desperate, and like a virgin on spring break debt makes what should be a very natural process of hitting that money suddenly a very awkward, self-conscious process.  I apologize to everyone, particularly the bros who read this and think my advice is akin to a manual for how to walk.  I promise my next entry will be about hitting a slam piece.

First, you never ask a friend directly for a job.  You ask your friends to ask THEIR friends for a job.  If you’ve stumbled upon this blog you obviously spend alot of time online so let me put it in terms you can understand.  Your first degree connections on Linkedin =/= job.  Your second degree connections = job.  This is good news! You have a lot more second degree connections than first degree connections and there are few living hells like working for or with a friend you did not meet in the context of the workplace.

Now let’s think about this.  Why not just ask friends/family friends if anyone where they are is hiring? Well first, this puts them in a very awkward position.  People ask me for jobs all the time, and no matter how casual they are about it or how jaded they are from endless rejection, its awkward for me and slightly humiliating for them.  It’s even WORSE if the person you are asking actually cares about you or cares about how you view them.  Say you have a buddy who is very proud of his job, has the good life etc, and then you ask him for a job.  Almost without even realizing it, you’ve challenged him.  You’ve basically said “Hey, if you’re so much the shit why don’t you toss your pal a bone? You selfish bastard.” That’s not a good look.

Now try this.  “Hey man, you know anyone who works at [fill-in the blank]? I was checking them out online and I think I’d be a great fit for y department because of x. Say, don’t you know so and so? Doesn’t she work for [fill-in the blank]?” See? Now instead of asking for something straight out, its more like you’re having a conversation.  Your friend feels like they can say no.  More importantly, when your friend asks THEIR friend about hiring that person feels almost no pressure whatsoever.  It’s also easier for this person once removed to vouch for you because all they know about you is the complimentary stuff your actual friend told them.  They’ve never actually seen you in all of the compromised positions any friend worth his salt would have seen you in, all this poor smuck is thinking about is how much of a recruitment bonus he is going to make off you.

The other thing you need is an angle.  You should never be unemployed for resume reasons.  Volunteer for some cause.  Start your own business – all it takes is a website.

Please kids.  Help me help you.  I tried to help one person after I told him my firm wasn’t hiring any IT folks but if I recalled correctly a friend at a peer firm mentioned something about an opening along those lines, but my comment was met with a blank stare.  I’d lost him as soon as he heard “wasn’t hiring.”  He then stared shame-faced at our four dollar tab (or receipt rather) at Dunkin Donuts.  I waited.  Eventually, as the line increased behind us, he fished out some change at which point I made a big show of rolling my eyes and taking out my platinum card.  I then snatched the change from his hand and put it in the tip jar.  And because in retrospect I kind of feel bad about that, I decided to write this post and explain why I did what I did.

Look, I get it.  When you’re 12 it’s no big deal to ask Uncle so-and-so for a job raking leaves or being a gofer or page in his office.  But those days are long gone.

I don’t care to feel things because usually when I do they are bad things. Disappointing things. Painful painful things. But every now and then something happens that causes the awful rays of hope to penetrate the familiar darkness that is the existence we have become so familiar with…and I hate it.

Usually it is an email. E-mails lack eyes. Eyes convey pity, dishonesty, annoyance, and a dull flint that discourages the false hope.

So you get the email. Suddenly you can taste your food again. You return messages you haven’t answered in weeks. You buy a beer for a stranger. You start to feel human. You begin to plan how you’re going to live your new life. Slooooow down there champ.

Sigh. Ok, I can’t convince you that it won’t happen. I can’t even convince you that the job that seems like the path to salvation probably only seems that way due to woefully lowered expectations. Buuuut maybe I can convince you that what you’re going through, regardless of outcome, is not unique.

The worst part in my humble opinion is the knowledge that it WILL happen again. After the period when you are straining, STRAINING not to contact your precious precious lead so as not to seem desperate you email (or worse call) with increasing frequency until they let you down or the silence becomes so deafening that you give up. Then you cry, get drunk, cut yourself, whatever and start to feel a bit better after seeing those starving kids in Africa commercials and then it hits you. Like a seizure this will happen again at the worst possible time. You will have to go through this again and again.

Here’s the crazy paradox. The only way to protect yourself from the pain is to stop looking leads and actively resist the people trying to help you. Yet, ultimately to get out this hole we have dug for ourselves…we need an opportunity, and opportunities start with leads.

How do I deal? I try and play the statistics game. It takes 300 leads in this economy to get a job if you’ve been unemployed for more than six months and have a high level degree. I still cry every time though.

When your life is in shambles and the road from ruin is uphill and rocky there is a tendency for our brethren to convince themselves that the flatter road with smoother terrain also (might) lead to a safe place.  In other words, once we discover the real villain, we often decide this person is too powerful so we instead decide to pick on the gimpy blind kid who was just minding his own business.  It happens. We’re not perfect. However, sometimes we see two knights in battle, one for us and one against us, and we side with the one against us…not because we are frustrated with our own knight’s performance (which is what we claim) but because we can hurt our own knight more and we yearn to matter, or at least feel like we do. Now THIS is dangerous.

It is becoming somewhat chic for debtors, hipsters and young people to criticize Obama, essentially for not being the biblical messiah.  They use this criticism to justify their lack of participation in the political process and when criticized are quick to tell you how many doors they knocked on in 2008 and what Obama owes them, etc, etc.

Well that was 2008.  Where were you during the route of 2010? Where were you in 2009 when the public option was on the line? How many doors did you knock on then? Did you knock on doors before or after Obama won the primary? Were you there for Kerry during the swift boat smearing? Did you protest the invasion of Iraq? Bush v. Gore?

No, you didn’t. You just wanted a story to tell your grandkids. Well here’s news for you, regardless of what you did THEN your grandkids will be more impressed if you can have an intelligent dialogue about what’s going on NOW (the future now) and have made a positive contribution towards it.

As lifelong academics we are conditioned to achieve through short bursts of effort like those required to ace tests or write papers. We don’t do the multiple round fights. We don’t even like to be hit. Well we are going to have to change that. There’s no glory in knocking out the gimpy blind kid and there is shame in betraying a guardian protector when he is crossing swords on your behalf.

This isn’t exactly the season for embracing reality, especially for people of all ages who have but to ask in order to receive. So it’s particularly unremarkable that so many kids are in denial about 1) the size of their debt 2) the ability to earn a paycheck with the skills and degrees acquired with said debt and 3) the ability to earn a large enough paycheck over a large enough period of time to justify said debt taking into account opportunity costs, work/life balance considerations and other life goals. Obviously if our readers fell into this category they wouldn’t be reading our blog. The question is how does this ignorance effect you?

There are several categories to consider when evaluating what a pampered, over-educated and underskilled workforce -what it means for your own job prospects, the country, and your relationships.

What you probably care about most is your own ability to find gainful employment generally and in the field you studied. The net effect is poor. First the glut of these individuals allows employers to be choosy. If there is a younger version of you, you’re out of luck, if there is an unexplained gap in your resume you’re out of luck and regardless of your actual circumstances (injuries, sick or dying family, victim of crime) the assumption will be you were laid off for being the least valuable person in an organization. And this is AFTER you stop looking in vain for a job worthy of your degrees. This is Starbucks/Subway territory.

As a country this is bad. Educational debt has exceeded credit card debt. It will be the basis for a new cast system, and the chief cause for our national economic power being eroded by Europe and Asia.

Most surprisingly, this continued ignorance will wreak havoc on any relationship you have for the next 20 years. Now most of you are broke, single and childless. You have more pressing problems than relationships, the biggest two of which (marriage and children) seem forever out of grasp. But hear me out.

Our situation is like that of an unmarried gay couple who breaks up or has a death after 20 years. People aren’t sympathetic and there is a lack of vocabulary for what we’ve been through. I regularly have successful people with no debt remark that they wish they could live on their parent’s couch and blog all day.

Think about it. You can’t date someone who just went to school, got the job of their dreams and spends most of their free time trying to figure out how to link the surround sound from their home theater complete with blu-ray to the satellite HD MP3 radio in their leased Audi. Suppose you have a kid? Statistically speaking they too will want to remain ignorant of what you know and say the child’s other parent had a different experience? Who are they going to believe? Smiling success or doom and gloom?

Finally, the crippling burden of debt permanently warps your relationship with your parents. Regardless of future success they will always worry about you more and you will always be more touchy around them. Just as it is tragic to outlive a child so to is the knowledge or even fear that your child will have a much less secure, less financially stable, less fulfilling life.