Commencement: The Beginning of the End

Exactly two months ago I was a very successful college student. I went to an elite liberal arts college where I was the editor of the school's paper. I had prestigious-sounding internships. I was an honors student.

Today, after two months of job searching, I am unparalleled at scanning Craigslist for jobs I will not get. For employers that will not even acknowledge my painstakingly-wrought cover letters enough to tell me I will not get the jobs for which I applied. Today, I am dutifully unemployed.

This is not a story of procrastination, or lack of ambition or skill. It is a story of someone who is highly qualified, capable and hardworking. Maybe it is the story of a failure to launch, but I don't like to think that. It is probably a story that should be told so that is what I will do. I will chronicle as best I can the ups and downs (mostly the latter of late) of my life with a bachelor's degree.

In line with the way my liberal arts education scarred my formative years, I drove west right after the mortarboard I did not wear did not hit the ground. Free spirited, fresh and hopeful, I decided that I was not to be shackled by jobs or up-and-coming cities in my search for a new, warmer home. In my free-wheeling, willy-nilly thought process, I arrived in Santa Fe, " the city different," or my addition to the myriad of other plays on this mountain town's epithets, "the city annoying." I could go on about the city but that should suffice for now.

What is important is that I have not yet been able to get any jobs that require my degree. What's worse is that I can't even get jobs that don't require my degree, or any degrees for that matter. My scourings of Craigslist and the local papers have become more and more modest. Searches for "writer" and "journalist" yielded to "data entry" and "office assistant." Now my queries are sequestered to the fields of "food service" and "labor." Prerequisites are no longer certain majors or internships, but instead how much I can carry and that I be "over 18. " Life, however, is not so bad.

In my unemployment, I have managed to do lots of things. I read more now than I ever did at school, though I can't say much about the quality. I possess a local's vocabulary of the nearby mountains and trails. I know the fastest way to anywhere on a bike. I know where to eat and drink for cheap and my repertoire of price comparisons of the local supermarkets is superb. Happy hour times and dinner discount days are recorded in me like an inflected language. I now can run five miles at an elevation 7,000 ft. higher than I'm used to. I can also do a push-up hand-stand. So it hasn't been all that bad. I've heard not working is always much better than working but for the sake of my self-esteem I'd rather be working.

For now, I'll sit back and wait for whatever little money I saved to run out. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get a job. Any job.