I won’t bother with the platitudes and assurances, they’ve been covered.
And all of the good and great advice as well.
Just add me to the list of people wishing you luck and thinking good thoughts.
Is this yours?
Have you considered full time nannying? I sometimes regret not taking a year off and earning a little extra money as a nanny.
Ok, since I am currently on an asshole duty, someone has to say it:
Waaah.
There are plenty of people out there with double your schooling and triple your loan debt and half your job prospects. “I’m (not even) a recent college grad in the worst economy in decades and I don’t have my dream job at Google/ING/Donna Karan/Harvard” is kind of fucking weak sauce. You’re barely not a teenager anymore.
Seriously?
Dudez, my life sux so much, I hav 2 ask momndad for rents!!!
Go get a fuicking job at McDonalds or a shit job moving furniture to pay the bills and get a goddamn hardship deferment for your tiny-ass loans like everyone else. Don’t post (in the pit, no less) asking for some fucking sympathy. It’s almost as egregious as bitching about how you deserve your AIG bonus.
And just to save you the effort of typing it, yes, I’m an asshole (probably compensating for penis size or something just as unoriginal). But it needs to be said.
I hope I didn’t miss someone else suggesting this, but have you considered AmeriCorps? It’s like Peace Corps, but domestic. You can choose where you live and what type of work you’d like to do. Do art with troubled youth? Read to kids? Write grants? Take refugees shopping? It’s all there.
It’s about a year’s commitment. You get a small stipend - just enough to live on - and $4750 to repay student loans when you complete your assignment. Your student loans are in forbearance during this time. You come out with a year’s worth of actual job experience, plus you’re doing real work to help your community. Plus you’re in a perfect place in your life to do this type of work, and you’ll be able to hide out from the economy in the meantime.
I’m not a recruiter; I’ve been volunteer-teaching job skills classes and we’re referring people in this direction for all the good reasons listed above.
I’m waiting to hear back from them - I’ve had one interview for an Americorps State position which looks fairly promising. My application for the NCCC program, which actually would be my first choice, has been apparently waiting to be reviewed for like two months, and every time I call they just tell me to wait on it. But yeah, it’s a possibility.
Risking climbing on the asshole wagon, but, really, this is the best time of your life to be unemployed for a while and living with your parents. Do what you need to move yourself toward your goal of gainful employment. But don’t waste your time or your brain with self-indulgent thoughts like “I know how screwed I am.” You’re not in the least screwed. There are people out there who really are screwed, with children and mortgages and health problems. Assess the advantages you have that some people don’t, including parents who are willing to take you and economic hardship forbeareance for your educational loans.
My wife taught at a nanny school, and we had students stay with us and practice on our kids. However, this isn’t a great time for nannies, since lots of people who used to have enough money for one no longer do.
My daughter, when she was about your age, graduated without a job. While applying to grad school she taught LSATs - if you do well on standardized tests, you might be able to do something like that. Then she eventually got into grad school, and left after one term because that major was not for her. Though we were positive, I wondered if she’d ever get moving on her life. Then she got into another school, got a fellowship, and is not zooming along. So I’ve experience the depths of despair, at one remove, and I can tell you it only takes one positive response to turn everything around and make things fine again.
There is nothing wrong with majoring in Liberal Arts. Graduating in one of the worst economic climates in the past 70 years is not your fault. Don’t have the attitude that you have been sponging off your parents for 22 years - if they care about you, and it seems they do, they are eager to do things for you. You’ll understand this when you’re a parent. Take your parents’ concern for you with good humor. When my mother in law was 85 and my wife 50 she was still telling my wife how to do things.
What you are doing is trying everything you can think of - what you are not doing is sitting on your ass waiting for someone to make it right. That is going to pay off. That is going to come through to some employer some day. Trust me, some day soon everything is going to click and things will be better.
Yep, screwed is a relative state. You really aren’t bad off at all, and a little perspective might give you a kick in the pants.
You remind me a little of even sven when she finished her degree. As I recall, she had the bad luck to get a useless liberal arts degree right around 9/11. Her perspective came from joining the Peace Corp. That may be a little drastic for you, but call your local chapter of the United Way and find out where you can volunteer your time - a women’s shelter, a crisis nursery, a hospital, a halfway house. (I’m very affectionate about her useless degree, I got the same useless degree fifteen years before she did.)
If living with your parents is an issue, nanny for a year. Find someone willing to rent a cheap room for housekeeping and yardwork - sometimes people are hoping to keep Mom or Dad in their house another year or two, but just need someone there to make sure they eat, groceries get bought, and they don’t fall.
In ten years, you will barely remember what this spazm was all about.
In twenty years you will be posting to some internet forum to someone who is going through something very similar and you can tell your tale.
In fifty years will may possibly be dead and it won’t matter what your debt that you accrued in college is because you will be dead.