It makes sense that I started to work at a school at the start of last fall, the first fall I would have continued on with my life without new class schedules and teachers, something I thought I wanted since high school when I waited for vacations and weekends like a man wandering in the desert looks for water or a drunk girl in Brooklyn looks for a cute dude with tattoos and cocaine. And I guess it makes sense that I left right at the start of summer. Working at that college was one more year of education, nothing more or less.

Leaving when I did allowed me to have one of the best summers--probably the best summer--I've ever had.

I rode my bike for work, looping around Brooklyn with sandwiches and smoothies for production assistants and retail associates, listening to Fugazi and sitting in the park in my down time reading books and drinking iced coffee.


I interned at Nerve over the summer, putting together some fun pieces and talking to some interesting people, producing work with such wit and integrity as Sex Advice from Bike Messengers. (Not that Nerve isn't great. It is. And not that it doesn't publish work of wit and integrity. It does. But with always being on call for the delivery company and the tattoo mag, I didn't have quite as much time and energy to devote to it as I would like.)

I've spent a lot of time talking about tattoos--traveling to Boston for their convention, speaking to artists from across the country about their work and their industry, having phone conversations with tattooed fine artists and lead singers from bands I've loved since I was 17. Every month, I talk about the industry's history with the legendary Bowery Stan.  

Work and life are good. I did a team race where we rode around New York with a boom box blasting dressed like apocalyptic hellions. We won.

I rode out to Fort Tilden beach every Sunday with huge groups of friends, swimming for hours, and eating strawberries and drinking 4Loko.

I rode from Philly to a lake somewhere far out in PA, went night swimming, and keg drinking. I was an extra for a movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and got paid too much to sit around with my friends in a church basement.

And if I get my check from the magazine tomorrow, I'll go to Atlanta for the weekend.
Either way, I go to California for a long bike ride and some exploring (SF to LA) on Monday.

And now it is really fall and maybe, once again, it's time to really think about what to do and why.

Leaving School One Year After Graduation   




 Graduation wasn't a celebration for me last year. Saying goodbye to my professors, my peers, my work-study position coworkers, the security guard, and the facilities workers was a sad affair. I walked twenty blocks and grabbed a concrete from the Shake Shack, but not even frozen custard could quell my dread. I wandered around New York confused and lonely, went home, got drunk.

The slump lasted for months. I applied to jobs, got no response. I got one response, was told to pay a finger printing fee for the NY Department of Education, and to come in for a series of interviews to tutor kids in Brooklyn. I was told the job was a sure thing. It wasn't. I worked as an assistant to a 72-year-old novelist and as a bike delivery person. I fell off my bicycle and smashed my face. I went back to work 2 days later with black eyes.

A full-time position back at school seemed like a godsend, but I took the job with hesitation anyway. I liked riding my bike. I liked my 72-year-old novelist friend who sometimes paid me to eat lunch with him or to go stay in the Hamptons and who, above all, was the kindest, strangest person I'd ever met.

Still, I was grateful for the benefits and the regular schedule. Things got sour along the way and when my boss questioned whether I liked the job in a half joking way, I told it to him straight. My legs were shaking when I told him I was going to put in my resignation. I was not relieved. I did not feel strong. I felt like an insolent child, forgetting what was so wrong to begin with.

But things fall into place. I got a freelance writing job at a tattoo magazine the day after I quit. I got a call back for an internship while I was interviewing at the tattoo magazine. A boy on the street liked my tattoos and asked me if I wanted a job at a high end retail shop (see, haters, instead of hindering employment, tattoos are helping me to secure it). I have two delivery shifts again.

So, leaving school isn't easy this time. But it is easier. It's time for me to move on...to something. And the work won't be easy by any means and it won't be as comfortable, but it will be more fulfilling. And, eventually, I'll figure something out.

The New York Times Loves the Obvious

I get so many letters and phone calls from so many companies about my student loan debt that I have begun to consider myself an evasion expert. Today, my school called me to discuss my repayment options. I thought about telling them that they should be paying me more for the clerical work at my liberal arts college that my liberal arts degree prepared me for.

Today, NYT's college supplement highlighted some enlightening information: students graduating from for-profit private institutions who did not receive financial help from their parents graduate with the highest amount of debt.

A clever commenter, Rudiger in Jersey, considered the plus side of what I often refer to as my soul-crushing debt. Those of us who took out loans to fund our education, tended to finish in less time than those who did not have years of monthly payments in their future. This could be a blessing or a curse. I barrelled through school at full speed because I was working 50+ hours a week towards the end and thought that the completion of my education would bring a welcome relief. Also, if I reduced my course load, I would render myself ineligible for various forms of financial aid and if I dropped out, I would be forced to begin the repayment process. This left little time to think about moving forward or to take the time to rethink what I was going to school to do.

Rudiger also noted that students graduating with debt were forced to be more realistic about work opportunities and financial situations in general. This is very true and I have found myself very fortunate in some ways since graduating. I have found work and continue to find it. I have no illusions about supporting myself as an artist or writer or going on to become an academic. But isn't it sad that I took out loans to be able to go to school and pursue my dreams and that these loans sometimes hinder me in that pursuit?

I guess I've fulfilled my own prophecy...time to get some skills


My wheel of my bike stops spinning at the midpoint of my commute and I am forced to carry the thing for fifteen minutes and shove it, and me, onto the crowded rush hour L train. I am fifteen minutes late and I don't want to be in conversation with my boss for the amount of time it will take to explain why. He glares at me. I glare at him. He throws thing at my desk. He sends passive aggressive e-mails. I send one word replies.  I am at an impasse. My hatred of my job has turned into my boss's hatred for me.


Well, I brought it upon myself. A job I disliked because it was boring and inside and sometimes a little demeaning has become a job I hate because I am uncomfortable every moment that  I am at my desk. So now what? Get the union involved? Too messy. I'm not 35 and trying to support a child. I pay $400/month for rent and live pretty cheaply. I don't need to ensure my place in a hostile work environment to support myself.


But, as much as I have told myself that I am above this job, I am not above it at all. I have a Liberal Arts degree. McSweeney's, in their normal mocking tone, published a good humor piece today about what that boils down to: nothing. Though this is not exactly news to anyone, McSweeney's tends to remind me of  my plight in new and interesting ways on a daily basis.


Now that it dawns on me that I pretty much must quit my job, I am beginning to think of how nice and easy it has been to have a steady paycheck and health insurance and how struggling again will be so much less comfortable. I've applied everywhere and for everything, gotten a few freelance writing gigs that will throw me some peanuts and have been getting delivery shifts. I can make it work--but I can't do it forever.


So, it's time to acquire some skills. I don't think I could even get a job as a barista. A CUNY school for some computer science classes seems like a good call. Here's hoping...

American Idiot: When You're Not Quite Sure Who the Enemy Is

My scenic artist friend who helped punk up the St. James theater for the Green Day musical gave me a ticket to go see American Idiot last night. Among mostly people of my age (mid-to-late twenties to early thirties), many of whom were pretty heavily tattooed with gauged ears, or large ear holes indicating that their ears were once gauged, I couldn't help but wonder who the show was actually for. Is Green Day's new material relevant to any one at all? Their music hasn't matured with their fan base and it seems, to me at least, that they're probably a bit too old to attract the teeny bopper crowd.

Anyway, I grew up on Green Day and I'm assuming that most of the crowd did too. I didn't expect much and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.  The actors were good, their voices well-trained and well-suited for the pop punk they belted. The set was smart, and was probably the real star of the production. Televisions dotted the walls from floor to ceiling, broadcasting snippets of Family Guy, dream sequences, and news reports from the ground in Iraq. The wall projected a bus ride from the mundane suburban hell most of our protagonists were fleeing in favor of the big city.

Atlantic Media took the NY Times Internship piece to heart and is not only paying their current batch of interns, but is also offering retroactive pay to those who worked last year, reports Jeff Bercovici at the DailyFinance. Too bad most of the work is located in DC.

In NYC, Buzzfeed is offering some cash for what looks like it might be a pretty cool viral media internship.

Scallywag and Vagabond is looking for unpaid interns who are willing to devote 20 hours a week to the publication.

One prospective intern decided to take those Scallywags to task, posting a response:

RE:Widely Read Cultural Mag seeks Intern(s) (NYC)

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Date: 2010-04-06, 5:38PM EDT
Reply to: see below

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When trying to impress us young, starry-eyed college students with your media prowess in order for us to willingly give our time away to you unpaid, it would do well to have someone check your grammar.

Who needs training from a "professional" who doesn't know how to use commas?
----------------------

Maybe there will be an intern uprising, a revolution of the inexperienced.  Until then,  I'm racking up the delivery shifts and thinking about heading to work over at the Cupcake Truck for some care-free summertime fun.

An upcoming event about re-imagining higher education, brought to you by those wonderful feminist radicals at Bluestockings NYC:

172 Allen Street
New York, NY 10002
Wednesday, April 21st @ 7PM - Free
Reading: Anya Kamenetz "DIY U"
Over 90% of U.S. high school graduates aspire to college, but tuition is too costly for many - making higher education particularly inaccessible to those who will soon predominate: the first-generation, the low-income, and students of color. Join Anya Kamenetz for a reading from "DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education," a resource guide and much-needed call to rethink higher education. Kamenetz is a staff writer for Fast Company magazine and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her contributions to "Generation Debt."

Will Work For...Work?

Being a scourer of media job postings and a recent graduate, I am well aware that no real "entry level" jobs are to be had. There are internships and there are jobs requiring experience. Interns often go without pay or receive meager stipends. As a lower middle class college student who needed to pay for food and rent, I never could justify the time expenditure. As a lower middle class graduate with a job that I hate, I wish that I had found a way to make it work. Steven Greenhouse wrote in the NY Times this week, that not only do internships reinforce class stratification, they may be illegal in many instances.


Some internships make sense. Writing at an esteemed publication helps an intern gain experience and clips. This is true in many other industries but, more and more often, I see "administrative" or "data-entry" internships at small businesses. All that is is free labor.

Happiness v Health Insurance

A year ago, I was a month away from graduating from college. I was finishing my "senior work" or undergraduate thesis, churning out articles for the student newspaper, and wondering what I was going to do with my life. My health insurance was about to go. My work study award was over and my only work prospect seemed to be riding my bike in circles, delivering food for money.

And I was happier. I was progressing, reaching towards some goal. I was bound to go somewhere. Six months or so later, that somewhere was right back to the school I graduated from at a desk job. Benefits, a relaxed work atmosphere, some good coworkers, a chilled-out 10-6. And another six months later, I began to think about quitting everyday.

Everyone I know who has a job, be it bike messenger or chair warmer, hates it.

Money can't bring happiness. Winning awards doesn't necessarily do the trick, either. Apparently, according to David Brooks' Op-ed column this week, happiness has to do with personal relationships. And while the connection between happiness and income is tenuous after a point, this does not hold true when it comes to marriage, which he claims increases happiness as much as $100,000 a year would.