Of Adolescence & Adulthood June 2004 Click to view Table of Contents Click to view photo gallery Click to view cover story

Non-Fiction

Hire me, please?  By rasee govindani

illustration by daniele young

It seems like everyone on this planet ­ friends and strangers alike ­ wants to know what I’m planning to do with my life once I escape the clutches of university. It drives me up the wall every single time someone asks me about my future, as if I should have the rest of my life mapped out, now that I am just a few weeks away from obtaining my degree. I can’t help but wonder what sort of revelation they think has happened between six weeks ago and now that makes me certain of how my life is going to turn out. I don’t know which pair of shoes I’m going to wear to class tomorrow, or what dress I’m going to wear to the prom, or even what I’m going to eat for lunch this afternoon, and they want to know what I’m planning to do with the rest of my life? Join the club.

The pressure of landing that perfect job, working out what I have to do for the next few years, guaranteeing the perfect future I want, acting like a grown up and somehow feeling prepared to face the big, bad world ­ it’s all too much. The ironic thing is the pressure isn’t being exerted by my family, but by me instead. I look around me and all my friends have full-time jobs, working regular hours in offices, rushing around to have clothes tailored and learning to apply make-up, and I wonder what is wrong with me. How is it possible that everyone else seems so certain of their lives and I am sitting here with no clue of where to go?

Job-hunting is the most depressing thing about being a grown-up. It is terrible for self-esteem, especially one that is already battered and bruised. Rejection from companies is as painful as one from a lover or a friend, as if their conclusion that you are not right for the job equates you to being a horrible human being unworthy of employment. Thus, you are a horrible human being unworthy of anything at all and should consider joining the nunnery or marrying someone extremely rich to keep from starving to death. (I know that’s not true, but this little article survives on exaggerated dramatics on my part so bear with me. Better yet, join me.)

Imagine what it must be like for a brand-new graduate with good grades.

Her professors have told her of the possibility of a bright future, but she realizes the future is bleak and rainy. After thinking about suing her professors for giving her false hope, what is she to do? All those grades, all that kind praise, all that confidence in her ability—and she’s the one person among her friends who is too frightened to peek into the future lest she find nothing there. It is not the future that I’m afraid of, but the thought that my future is so different from everyone else’s that makes my self-confidence wobble.

All my life I have wanted to be a writer. It is the only thing I have ever known, the only thing I have ever truly loved, and the only thing I want to spend the rest of my life doing. When people ask me what I do for a living and I mention that I write for a magazine, for a brief moment a look passes over their faces, one that I’ve become very familiar with. It’s the look that says, “Yeah, everyone thinks they’re a writer. Here’s one more girl that’s going to end up selling burgers.” Again, I’m being melodramatic and people are probably not thinking that, but when you are as neurotic as I am, even a “That dress looks nice” can be turned into a conspiracy that will end up with me tied up in some dark room, questioned as the real assassin of JFK.

No wonder no one wants to hire me.

For as long as I can remember I’ve always known how my life would turn out. I would teach English to keep from starving and work on the Great Novel that will be made into a Hollywood movie and make me loads of money, and somewhere in between all of that I would get married, have two children and a dog. I would watch a Formula 1 race live, go to Disneyland, spend a week drinking smoothies on the beaches of Hawaii, go to graduate school in the States, live in Carmel, go to the Olympics, figure out the secret of American Football, publish a children’s storybook, learn to cook, and confront my fear of hamsters. But today, standing here at the end of a chapter of my life and the beginning of the next, I see nothing but blank pages. What happened to the future I had written out in detail? What happened to my flying lessons and skiing lessons and hospital stays after both probably end disastrously?

Then it occurs to me that your future is supposed to a blank page. They call it possibility, and possibility is frightening because it’s yours to take advantage of, yours to shape in any way you like. The magic is yours to create and so are the mistakes. That’s the future. That’s what the rest of your life promises.

Someone once wrote, “Just because you really want something, even if you really do want it, it doesn't mean that it will just miraculously happen. You can make all the excuses in the world, to yourself and other people, but the truth is, you have the power to make things happen for yourself, and you have the power to sit on your hands and let life pass you by. The choice really is yours.”

The choice is yours. All yours. Isn’t that empowering? Frightening as well because there’s so many different ways life could turn out, but all of it—the magic, the mistakes, the laughter, the love, the hurt, the tears—is yours.

Will someone please hire me?