Banjo Rigsby’s Unsolicited Advice for Recent College Graduates

If you are graduating around the time Banjo is writing this, mid-2009, you are graduating in the midst (beginning? waning days?) of a challenging economic situation that is currently being termed The Great Recession but that might receive another name in the future, depending upon how long it lasts and how bad it gets. (Banjo is rooting for The Great Banks Robbery, for several reasons that may amuse only Banjo.)

You have been told things look bad and will only get worse. This is a difficult time to find work. You have little-to-no meaningful life experience that will make you competitive in the job market. The only thing you probably have going for you is that you are desperate and may be able to win a job at half-pay at a failing company over an experienced but higher-paid schmuck who has to support a family and pay a mortgage. So even if you find something, you will have the homelessness of a family on your young, impressionable conscience.

Do not despair. Banjo is here to shine some sunlight on your newly-minted diploma.

There is something you need to realize about graduating from college. It does not matter when you graduate, whether in the midst of an economic boom or a Depression. The opportunities you face as a college graduate are ALWAYS characterized in dire terms. Every graduation speaker ever in the history of graduation speakers has focused on the challenges at the expense of the opportunities (which always are annoyingly vague). Nobody graduating during the Dot Com Boom was told, "When you walk out of this university you will have a dozen high-paying, low-responsibility jobs from which to choose." Okay, maybe electrical engineers and computer programmers were told that. Take solice in knowing that most of them today do not get paid substantially more than they did upon graduation, and their salaries and net worth have since been surpassed dramatically by their much-less-intelligent peers who majored in Poli-Sci and (shudder) English Lit and followed careers in Sales or Marketing. But for the most part, the advice was the same as it ever is: It's tough out there. You won't get what you want any time soon.

That is because it does not matter when IN TIME you graduate. It matters when in YOUR LIFE you graduate. For the vast majority of people, college graduation occurs in their early-to-mid twenties. A human being in his/her early-to-mid twenties has less life experience (literally, and typically figuratively) than older people. This may come as a surprise to you recent college graduates, as this was not covered in any coursework: People in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and seventies all were twentysomething once upon a time. (People in their eighties and nineties skipped right past their twenties, into their thirties. That is the difference between living through a Great Depression and a mere Great Recession.) Therefore, they know all the desires, tricks and weaknesses of people in their twenties. Therefore they know how to outmaneuver twentysomethings in the workplace. Leaving only the crummy jobs for new college graduates.

Banjo’s Best™ Advice: Embrace the crumminess of being in your twenties. Scientists have shown that the cerebral cortex, which does higher-order thinking and decision-making, does not finish forming until a human reaches his/her mid-to-late twenties. So all the bad decisions you have made up until now can be forgiven, considering that your brain just doesn't work right yet. So take Banjo's past-his-twenties, fully-formed-brain advice in order to make good decisions in what should be an exciting, few-worries time of your life. (Once you get into your thirties, you are on your own.)

Says Banjo: Do not worry about finding a job that enhances your resume. Anything that involves spending waking hours with people who like themselves will do. It does not matter whether the job is within your chosen "field," as long as it pays your basic expenses and does not crush your soul completely. There are very-low-wage jobs out there that are not soul-crushing. If you have to take a very-low-wage job anyway, avoid taking one that is soul-crushing.

Says You to Banjo: But I NEED to take this particular low-wage, soul-crushing job in order to break into my chosen field.

Says Banjo: No possible Life that involves doing soul-crushing work is worth living. You cannot have a crushed soul and Be Excellent. In order to Be Excellent, you must have an intact soul. Do not let anyone crush your soul. Even a so-called Very Talented Expert who promises that within a few years of doing all his work for him (because his only real talent is to get others to do excellent work and then take credit for it), you will have completed your apprenticeship and then-and-only-then do you have a hope of becoming a successful Very Talented Expert yourself. Do not worry about needing to follow a prescribed path in order to achieve success in your desired career. In three years, an eight month gap in your resume will be meaningless. In ten years, a three-year gap in your resume will be meaningless. And in twenty years, you will have no difficulty papering over half a dozen multi-year gaps and career changes in your resume. Because the continuity of your progress as an employee does not matter nearly as much as the continuity of your progress as a person. Meet people. Learn things. Visit places. Have new experiences. Imagine being older, with resonsibilities to your family, your employer, your customers and your community. Now reflect on how you are not yet encumbered with such responsibilities. Appreciate that. Go with it. A time will come when you need to get a "real" job. That time is not now. You will know it when it comes.