I've been mulling over this whole state of affairs for a while. Not in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown sense of the world as I have in the past. But in the how the heck am I going to get a job!? ("call the recruiters" Yes Dad, thank you.), where am I going to live? What will my life be like post-graduation????
It used to be that you'd get an internship, if you did a good job and they liked you, they'd hire you when you graduate. You'd advance, save up for a down payment on a house, get a nicer car, etc., But now no one is in a position to hire, irregardless of how much they like you and we are stalled in terms of advancing up the prosperity ladder at a steady clip.
While this makes me rather upset, I'm more upset about all of the squandered potential that is occurring. I was at a birthday party for a fellow planner last week and another planner friend was talking about how he was applying for a job at Chase. The bank.
In the meantime, time continues on and we all get a little older and have to make our own concessions.
To cite one of my all-time favorite poems, the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
| And indeed there will be time | |
| To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” | |
| Time to turn back and descend the stair, | |
| With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— |
I am ever-curious about the lifestyle habits of my peers and what does it say about our values?
As Scott Doyon noted in his post, "Settle Down Now, Is Community the New Frontier for Generation X?" March 4, 2011 "the youngest members [of Generation X] are now turning 30"
Ten years ago, "settling down" would mean getting married, having kids, and often moving out to the burbs where the schools are "better." But recent studies have shown that people are getting married later than (some of) their parents. And the more education you pursue the longer it takes you to walk down the aisle. Not that they make the actual aisle longer, statistically those who pursue advanced degrees tend to marry later than their peers. Add that to the fact that having kids is an expensive undertaking and frankly rather "conventional" and an act that can be put off without too much repercussions in this age of fertility drugs, surrogates, and adoption.
But in non familial ways I have batting around the concept of Doyon calls, "the desire to sidestep authority in pursuit of a more appealing alternate system of their own creation. . . our instinct still tell us to sidestep power, to make things work on our own terms instead, . . ."
Doyon goes off on a different path of thought than the one that I am thinking. I am considering the potential for collectively pooling our resources, living with less, freecycling, and admitting our dependence on one another.
The last part of the above quote ends in "and nowhere is this [sidestepping the current system] more evident than in the rise of localism"
I'd talked earlier about the rise in "collaborative consumption" on my post "Sharing is Caring" on February 22nd, 2011. But I've been thinking about how would it work to live in a post-millennial commune, if you will. There is a ton of cheap real estate in underserved areas, such as Oakland, California, Detroit, or Hartford, Connecticut. How awesome would it be to hang out with my friends from planning school and form a loosely bound consulting agency while striving to fix the world's problems?
This would work, if it were say, 1970, and we weren't bound by our student loans (thanks inflation!) Ruth Reichel is one of my favorite authors/memoirists. And in her first memoir, Tender at the Bone she recounted her life in late 1960s/early 1970s Berkeley, CA where she lived in a huge house with a bunch of people in her early adulthood. It'd also be nice to be guaranteed a little private/personal time from my housemates so that if one wanted to bring a beau over, have family spend the night, just have a little peace and quiet one could get it and also give to others.
It's a lovely dream, but I'm not entirely sure that it can take root in reality.
As I try to make sense of an ever-changing world I leave you with a link to the recording of King George VI's , which was featured in the Oscar-winning (!) the King's Speech. Even though the quality is a little scratchy, the message still has the power to reverberate in the soul. Especially when you know the context in which this man spoke out against the darkness that threatened to engulf his nation (ie Hitler's march across Europe)
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