I hate the word "adultolescent."
I first came across this word a couple years ago. I was on the selection committee for my university's theater club's annual production, and one of the prospective directors pitched a production of Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. One of the bases for his concept was a a fascinating article that I cannot now remember the title/author/publisher of (because this was two years ago and it's 2:30am right now and shut up), but anyway, the whole point of this article was discussing how our culture has become one of "adultolescents" - loosely defined: twenty-somethings who go off and graduate college with awesome degrees, only to end up moving back in with their parents while they struggle to find a job, or a usable skill set, or generally just learn how to function in the real world as grown ups. It was an amazing article. It made excellent points about how we as a society have bred a generation of incredibly book-intelligent but socially and practically inept kids, who are now faced with become the new grown-up and don't actually know how to do it.
I friggin' hate the word "adultolescent," probably because I am one.
Yes, this is one of those sarcastically disparaging posts written in the wee hours of the morning because I'm a borderline insomniac and tend to work myself into panic attacks, but hear me out, okay? I'm not trying to bid for sympathy. I don't think. We'll find out shortly.
I've been contemplating this concept a lot lately because I (finally) graduated with my BA. (Yay me, and all that jazz. Whatever.) Over the summer I took a stage management job that was basically an internship, because like most non-union SM jobs in the Bay Area it offers a small stipend, which is lovely, but would calculate out to a depressingly tiny hourly rate. I'm not complaining at all, because that's how theater works, and getting paid at all is awesome. But now that job is wrapping up, and I have to put on my big-girl pants (which I finally have, although I'm lacking in the big-girl shirt department) and find a longer-term job, preferably that will pay me something at least resembling minimum hourly wage and not make me want to gouge out my eyeballs. Unfortunately, and here's my actual point...I don't have any marketable skill sets. At least, nothing that looks marketable on paper. If I can get into an interview and explain that stage managing is basically data entry and HR for schizophrenics then I might be able to prove that I know how to do useful things. But that's the catch-22, because I do have one incredibly useful skill that I've been banking all my extraneous XP into: I call it the skill of Bullshittery. I can sell myself like a boss. I can say all the right things at all the right time to make you think I'm way better at doing things than I actually am.
And I feel like that's my generation in a nutshell. We are the "fake it 'til you make it" generation. We can talk and dress and act like grown-ups, but a lot of us are still living with our parents, asking mom to do our laundry and dad to do our taxes, and pretending like we're way more qualified for things than we are.
And maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe I'm biased because most of my social circle is artists who only work "real" jobs because they haven't hit the point where they can make living wage from their art. Or because I live in a part of the country where the cost of living is so high that my friend who is an EA for the CEO of a Fortune 250 company is looking for a second job to make ends meet. Or maybe it really truly is just me. But I feel like I can't be the only one.
Anyway, I formatted a really pretty, if sparse, resume, and wrote a bullshitastic cover letter of sorts, and applied for a job that I suspect I'm only marginally qualified for. (And by "applied" I mean "hit the submit button before I could wuss out again.") I'm gonna go apply for a bookstore next, because I have a degree in English so I might be slightly more qualified for that. Then I'm gonna ask my mom if I can borrow a sweater from her so I don't have to show up to job interviews in my Mountain Dew tee-shirt.
No pictures, because it's 3am and I don't feel like getting my Google-fu on. (Though now that I think of it, I might add that to my resume under "skills.")
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