When I was accepted at Dartmouth, I thought I was set for life. I made it to the top. All I needed to do was graduate in four years and people would knock down my door to give me an interesting, challenging, personally fulfilling and bank-account-enriching job. Or, if I didn't feel like diving into the job market, I would have my choice of graduate programs and law schools in order to quench my academic thirst.
Then I slowly woke up. My slumber was first interrupted my freshman spring, when the Class of 1991 had a hard time getting jobs.
But no matter, I thought, "I'm only a 'shmen. By the time I'm a senior, this whole recession will have turned around and there will be plenty of opportunities." Now, senior year is staring me in the face, ready to devour me with all its fury and spit me right out along with all the other unemployed '91s, '92s and '93s.
Recently I attended an oh-so-heartening Career Services workshop, and couldn't help but laugh. The representative told us , with a straight face, that we had better pay attention to what we do this summer, because future employers are going to look at that leave-term job as being our most important experience.
I know few '94s who have their summer plans all wrapped up. For those of us interested in law, and there are many, no one's hiring. Right now I'm begging just to get my old position back with the firm that employed me in the fall.
While the D-Plan may be advantageous during the fall, winter or spring, in the summer it can actually be a disadvantage. By the time Dartmouth students are available, everyone else has been out of school for weeks. Just this past week I turned down an offer because I couldn't start May 10.
The Dartmouth name does not guarantee much. It gets your foot in the door where students from lesser schools might not even have a chance, but once you're there, the competition is that much stiffer. I was 109 out of 300 applicants, based solely on GPA for a research institute internship in Washington. This scares me, because my GPA is not that bad!
I suppose I must sound like a real wimp. Call it what you will, but more than anything, I'm frustrated. I never expected life to be easy, but I didn't expect it to be this impossible, either. I think a lot of my fellow '94s feel the same way.
Don't tell us that we have to get a really amazing and unprecedented leave-term job or we'll be nobodies come corporate recruiting. We're just trying to find jobs, period. And that's hard enough.
