Yale grad can't get job?

In My Humble Opinion
1

How sorry should we feel for this person? I can’t work up a lot of sympathy for someone crying about lack of appropriate jobs with Yale English degree. It seems (to me) that some serious shoe leather and networking would normally yield pretty good job opportunities for a Yale grad. Maybe not highly paid initally, but it should be an excellent entre into HR, journalism, editorial or technical writing jobs all over the US. It’s so damned unfair… I mean she rode horses and played tennis after all!

Or do English degrees from “name” schools not mean much anymore?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 3/19/02

etc etc

2

Maybe she’d do better if she stopped talking about Yale so much.

Especially in Atlanta.

3

Tone of the times unfortunately. That English major could easily get a job at a research firm, I know a few in fact, but somehow methinks that it is the ego that is fueling the unemployment and not the job market.

4

The person should teach while working on an advanced degree. Doesn’t seem to be a goal-oriented person. FWIW

5

sniff

“I went to Yale, so it is BENEATH ME to work retail, or wait on tables??”

F- you, you C!!!

I will tell you this . . show me a 22/23 year old female college graduate, and many of those times I will show you a little snotty twit, some little priss that just assumes now that she graduated from college, the entire world should bow down to her and roll out the red carpet so she can have some “meaningful” high paying job.

She looks down on hard working, blue-collar workers, thinking she is better than they are because she has an education. You know, those scruffy guys making 20 dollars an hour (and trust me, that is how many college girls think, I have heard it with my own ears) T

Then, after sending out let’s say 10 resumes, they break down in tears because no one thinks she is worth anything, or worse yet, realize it will be YEARS before she can make what that “guy who is cute, but I’d never marry a construction worker” is making!

BOO-HOO!!!

Sorry, HONEY, but you’ve got to pay your dues first, prove yourself in the marketplace, THEN yeah, that Yale degree might start to impress me. See, in ten years, when you are measured up against someone WITHOUT a degree, THEN you might have an edge. But not now, so stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Let’s see, let’s stake a look at all the jobs Virginslayer had when he graduated with a college degree, WITH a 3.4 GPA MAY I ADD before I got to there I was today:

-CAR SALESMAN
-SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
-ASSISTANT TO A GUY WHO WENT TO MALLS IN A TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE COSTUME
-DINNER THEATER STAGE ACTOR
-CAR SALESMAN AGAIN
-MAGAZINE ADVERTISING SALESMAN
-REAL ESTATE SALESMAN
-FURNITURE SALESMAN
-CAR SALESMAN AGAIN
-FRAMING CARPENTER
-LUMBER SALESMAN AT HOME IMPROVEMENT CENTER
-MANAGER AT A RIVAL HOME IMPROVEMENT CENTER
-MANUFACTURERS REP
-REGIONAL SALES MANAGER FOR THAT COMPANY
-BUSINESS OWNER

Did a lot of these jobs SUCK? Yes! Did I SUCK at a lot of these jobs? Well, the three stints as a plaidcoat should tell you, yeah, I pretty much sucked at some of these companies.

But guess what: I WAS HAPPY TO BE WORKING THOSE JOBS. I learned a lot, it toughened me up, and if some bunch of suits just handed me a cushy $50,000 job right out of college, I certainly am not sure that I would be the person I am today.

So, Sweetie, my suggestion for you is one of two things: PAY YOUR DUES . . or . .
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SPREAD YOUR LEGS for some rich Yale graduate: WHO HAS MADE A NAME FOR HIMSELF IN HIS CAREER!

Look, maybe I am being a BIT harsh. This woman SHOULD be congratulated on earning a degree from Yale. But it is the combination of workplace ACCOMPLISHEMENTS AND THE DEGREE that will get you hired, not just a piece of paper alone.

6

I’m really impressed with her snooty attitude. I wouldn’t hire her to clean a doghouse.

A Yale degree isn’t everything. Or anything, if you are the kind of person that people don’t want to work with. It also doesn’t mean you’re qualified for every job you apply for right now. You can have plenty of book smarts but still be clueless. Or have no people skills.

More importantly, what she is doing in five years or ten years has little to do with the job she lands now. Just because she hasn’t earned an entree into a prestigious field right after graduation doesn’t mean her college years were worth crap.

I did not go to an Ivy League school, admittedly, but it was good enough. A LOT of my classmates went off and did some funky things for a year or two (like take service jobs at ski resort towns) or things that paid awfully (like work in admissions, or intern at Sotheby’s). They were lean years at first but all of them, 12 years later, are doing interesting, valuable, career-worthy, well-paying things that capitalize on their educations.

7

Um, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you about this one.

#1 What did you do as the assistant?
#2 Why was did he go to malls in a TMNT costume?
#3 How old were you when you did this?

8

She got into Yale, and she decided to major in English? Yeesh. Somehow I don’t think the English from Yale is all that much better than the English coming from Florida Coastal Institute of Literature and Accupuncture, and apparently the job market agrees with me. She shoulda picked a better major or saved her money and gone elsewhere.

9

a) Well, then you’d be wrong.

b) What d’ya think she SHOULD have chosen? Electrical engineering?

10

PS: I think this chick is a snivelling little whiner, too. I’m just not fond of the reverse-elitism of smirking at institutions of higher learning. Or at Humanities majors.

– Ukulele “Phi Beta Kappa, eh? Then you’ll know which end of this MOP to hold” Ike

11

astra, you wouldn’t happen to be from Atlanta, would ya? I posted this same article in another message board. Not too suprisingly, I got the same responses.

Boo. Freaking. Hoo. The girl needs to either grow up or blow up.

Shawna, you obviously think you’re entitled to something just cuz someone told you you are smart and special. Poor you. Well, welcome to the real world. Now to get to bustin’ them suds, Yalie!

12

Sorry, astro. Did mean to call you the wrong name!

13

There is a part I don’t understand what is she trying to say. She says with the English degree she now reads above a “Hooked on Phonics” level. I would think that to enter a university(specially Yale!!) and apply for an English major, one would already need to be reading above a “Hooked on Phonics” level. The level she reads now does not tell me what she learned in college. What exactly she got out of that degree? Either she learned nothing, or is mocking(belittling?) others.

14

Not that we Atlantans have anything against Yale. My brother went there. But he was a waiter after he graduated, and finally, after many interviews, he did get out of that job. But it took a while.

I went to a very small liberal arts college, highly selective, though not Ivy League. That didn’t guarantee me anything, and it still doesn’t. I’m applying to grad school now, because I want to change careers.

She needs to grow up and accept that job that doesn’t pay $30k+ a year, because she’s not going to get one right out of school with a degree in English.

15

I dunno, I read the article before I saw this thread, and I have a fair bit of sympathy for her, even if she is a snot.

There is a very long-standing myth that a “broad, general education,” which is what English majors tend to get, is worth having, and if the education comes from a prestigious school, so much the better.

I won’t dispute that it’s good to be broadly educated, but anyone can educate him/herself at the library. English majors pay colleges big bux to read for 4 years; reading can be done for free.

My degree, from a midwestern “Ivy,” is just about worthless to me. I got my broad general education, and I’m better for it, but it would have been FAR better to major in a discipline that is in demand in the job world. It’s one of my biggest regrets in life.

If I had it to do over again, I would EITHER major in something that has some bearing in the real world - like computers, engineering, etc. - or skip college altogether, read at the library, and save the money. And to those thinking “An English degree is valuable in the real world,” note that some of the best journalists and writers are entirely self-educated.

Feh. College is overrated. That girl is lucky to find that out while she’s still young.

16

Dude!!! More info Pu-leeze!!
And that girl, what a snob! You want to know where you went wrong? Thinking the world owes you something cuz you went to Yale, please! The world don’t owe you crap, and you better thank God for your job at Chile’s, otherwise you’d be living in a box yelling “i went to Yale!!” as the police haul you away…

17

Based on the article, the author definitely seems to have a holier-than-thou attitude.

If this attitude has carried over into other aspects of the girl’s life, and it most likely has, then it is highly possible that the poor attitude is what’s keeping her from being hired, not the Yale degree.

I mean who really wants to work with some snotty @#$% who will forever belittle everyone around her?

Just my 2 cents…

18

Somebody must be joking. I’m pretty sure this is the original series treatment for Cheers!

Shawna is Diane Chambers, a few weeks before stumbling across Sam and the gang.

19

Can’t say I feel too sorry for her.

  1. She really does sound like a snob.

  2. She CHOSE to major in English. I majored in English at a pretty darn good school (UVa). When I chose that particular major I understood that it was going to limit my future career prospects. Why should she have expected something different?

I do, however, disagree with both masonite and Max Torque about the value of getting a degree in English in general and from an elite institution in particular. Sure, you can read the same texts (and even read the same literary criticism of that text) at your local library, but you don’t get the chance to discuss those texts with leaders in the study of literature nor with a peer group that is as excited and energized by those texts as you are. The “academic village” (corny as it sounds, that’s what they called it at UVa) is to me the single most important part of studying the humanties at an istitution – and that is almost certain to be magnified at an elite university.

20

a) So prove it. Just how much more do you get out of King Lear at Yale than at Ohio State? I’m not saying, as igloorex seems to think, that you get the same education checking the books out of a library that you get in a classroom; I’m saying that, among the higher education classrooms, I can’t imagine there’s a whole lot of difference.

b) Let’s see, she’s applying to marketing firms, publishing companies, and advertising agencies, so I’m guessing those are places she’d want to work. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that she should have majored/minored/taken classes in communications, marketing, and journalism. Practical experience, like a journalism internship or even writing a column for the freakin’ newspaper (which I did as an undergrad) would be easier to sell to a prospective employer than just an English degree. Before she even started college, she should have thought about what she ultimately wanted to do for a living and then taken classes that would get her closer to that goal.

For the record, my undergraduate degree is in philosophy, with an English minor. I’m not smirking at humanities majors, because I was one of them. But she should have had a clearer idea of where she was going before she stepped into the Halls of Learning.

And I’ll sneer at the ivy league all I want, because they started sneering at us “commoners” first. No one is better than me because their dad (and they, as a “legacy”) went to an ivy league school. A hearty “fuck you” to all who bear that attitude.