Qualified Quays

I think our attempts to build our personal futures could be compared to arms race.

Although we would all love to become doctors, bankers, artists, actors, CEO’s, writers – we need people to work at Taco Bells, own convenience stores, calculate our taxes, sweep the streets, deliver pizzas, make toothpicks, guard the banks. We need the large majority of people to lead small and highly unappreciated lives in order to function as a society – but many of us (including myself) arrogantly refuse to be a part of this majority. Sure, those jobs need to be done, but we aren’t going to do it.

If we do not find a “real” and glamorous career, we are considered to have failed in our quest of happiness. In this light, the garbage truck driver who comes by every week to take away the waste is treated like a part of the meaningless backdrop in a play, an extra of life in which talented musicians and brilliant lawyers are the main characters. They are viewed as miserable orbiters of life, merely assisting those at the centre of it. Because we feel detached from this class of people – no one ever really empathizes with the shopkeepers from whom the hero buys a diet Pepsi – we often forget the fact that they too have aspirations, loves, dreams, and a need for happiness.

The scarcity of and the high demand for glamorous jobs further emphasizes the need to become better equipped in the fierce competition for them. In order to achieve this goal, we build a resume in the way we build weapons. Better, more impressive, and superior to the ones our competitors have. At first, those who finished high school could get a job they want as long as they are good at it, unless they want to become specialized doctors or lawyers – which is an extra step reserved for a few. Having a Bachelor’s degree indeed proves to be an advantage, so everyone with the money to do so attends universities. But soon even an undergraduate degree stops being enough, for more and more people has it and less and less meaningful it becomes as an adequate qualification. Because now everyone has a BA or BSc or whatever, but still less jobs than there are people, we have to do better than that to grab one of those few positions open or we will flip burgers for the rest of our lives – which is a really scary thought for some of us.

To be even better qualified for a good job, we now go for Master’s or professional degree after undergrad – and soon it will be PhD. Aside from degrees, we also strive to better our resumes by volunteering, applying to internships, working part time, partaking in global projects, and becoming officials at student unions. We work obsessively to attain higher and higher GPAs and standardized test scores. We acquaint our professors to get recommendation letters and seek important connections. We take up sports or instruments and travel around the world to show how well-rounded and worldly we are as individuals. We develop successful personality traits and people skills – we become team players. We plan. We look ahead. We strategize.

Although in fine arts (musicians, artists, actors) it is a bit different – as talent, not CV, takes all – the idea of an arms race is more or less present in the shape of past body of works and recognitions. Of course, all of this may not be the case in many places around the world and even some places in North America – but it at least is the experience I am having as a comparatively privileged girl with highly-educated parents, living in North America.

I actually have no idea what I am trying to say here. Maybe I am complaining, rather immaturely, that I am sometimes frustrated with how small my weapon is and how everything I do is aimed towards improving it. Even if I just feel like doing something, I find myself as the chief military advisor, interrogating me, demanding a reason to do it. “How does it fatten your resume?” I ask me, indulgently but with firmness, like a good authoritarian parent. “Does it make you more impressive than your competitors’? Will it lead to your happiness? Does it contribute to your future? Does it have a place in the battleplan?”