Where’s my stapler?

Oh well, I’m just gonna hate my job for two years,” one of my friends said a few days ago.

For many graduating seniors, this Fling weekend won’t be entirely festive–it will be bittersweet (and no, I’m not talking about that gin and tonic you’re sipping as you read this). Sure, many alumni return for the weekend’s celebrations, but it’s just not the same.

“This transition may be even more radical than senior in high school to freshman in college,” said Peggy Curchack, senior associate director of career services.

These are the future consultants, paralegals, editorial assistants and research assistants of America — the students who are uncertain what they ultimately want to do with their lives. They take on temporary positions and enter the work force with the glum realization that their day-to-day routine will be nothing but dreary and tedious.

One moment, “you’re at the top of your game,” but following graduation, “you’re treated as if none of that mattered,” Curchack said. “They don’t know you — you are newcomers in that environment.”

Students have invested so much time and energy in their educations, everything learned at shouldn’t Penn go to waste upon graduation. Penn students want to cultivate their hard-earned skills — not squander them.

So many entry-level positions entail only mindless duties, with yearly salaries of little more than $30K, a barely livable sum in any decent-sized city. For the next year or two, my friend’s duties will likely include a pretty intimate relationship with a copy machine. I don’t think you need a degree from the University of Pennsylvania to collate pages and load toner. In fact, looking at the ultra-reliability of these machines, the average auto-mechanic would probably be better-suited for such a job than a Penn History major.

Yet do not despair. “The dues-paying isn’t equal across all industries and some make efforts to use young talent productively and others may be somewhat less generous in offering exciting opportunities at the beginning,” Curchack said.

Peggy’s advice for moving past the copy machine — take the “same kind of initiative you took at Penn,” and “go out of your way to be part of the organization.”

“Do your homework before accepting a job so you find an opportunity that’s the most interesting,” Curchack said. “Be as active as you can to make yourself valuable.”

So everyone who’s worrying about the new year to come, take a moment to breathe. And for now, let’s have a fun senior Fling weekend and enjoy our chances to ignore the real world just one last time.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 12:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.