Damn You College, you Forgot to Prepare me for the Real World!

Flashback… It's 2001; I'm a high school senior and slangin' mochas for your favorite coffee house for a whopping $7.25 an hour plus tips. Flash forward… I'm a recent college graduate slangin' mochas for your favorite coffee house for a whopping $7.50 an hour plus tips. See a pattern developing? So do I, and it's not just me. I've got one friend doing the same thing as me, 2 friends selling cell phones and 3 bartending after getting a degree from an accredited university… hell, one of them graduated from NYU. Is it partially our fault that we are stuck back singing the same old song? Probably. However, I'm great at diverting the blame and I truly feel that in my case the University should be sharing some of the blame. For my first 3 years in college, every time I needed to register I simply walked into an office, gave my name and student ID and was given a code to gain access.

Finally one day my mother called me up and said "…Baby (She doesn't actually say baby, but in my head she sounds like a kindly old black woman who start off all of her conversations with that word) you might want to think about applying for a major." I thought, "Why had nobody mentioned that earlier?" then I realized that anytime I had even made a faint attempt to talk with a counselor they weren't there or rescheduled during a class. Finally I had a major and a minor, pretty much did my own counseling and bang I'm out of there in 4 ½ years. Stop laughing asshole; you're still on the 5-year plan.

My problem now is that during that time my non-existent councilor never bothered to tell me that I should probably think about getting an internship. On top of that, I find myself looking at jobs in my field that require computer programs that I couldn't even explain, let alone navigate. I'm left with a piece of paper that says I have accomplished something and a stack of papers that say I'm not qualified. Guess which my bank account cares about more. To top it off, I keep on finding these internships that require that I still be in school to apply. All I want is a real goddamn job people. Somebody, anybody take a chance on a kid who was smart enough to navigate through college with no help outside of a conversation that started with the word "Baby." (In my head)