The perils of Returning to college/my college experience

Well, another degree another whole set of lessons. i got my first degree and it did not improve my chances of getting a job. Several family crises later, including the death of my mom, and a gaping hole of three years of unemployment due to family issues and also endless rejections, found me working an 80-hour week with no overtime at a Greek restaurant at which I was verbally abused and working alongside people (and I am not kidding, I saw the payrolls) with the social security number reading M-E-X-I-C-O-W-O-R-K-R. After leaving that nightmare job I worked outbound telemarketing for three months before realizing that fall semester was starting up, and I had been out of gainful employment and out of college for long enough that I was now classified as unskilled.

This revelation was met with no little amount of depression. I spent five years of my life working very hard. I had been going for K-12 music education, but when in the midst of burnout, health problems, a bad student teaching placement, and less-than-supportive authority and mentor figures, I was told that I would have to either graduate with a Music Performance degree, or wait another year of school while fighting the state board of education to allow me to try again. meanwhile, I was out the entire sum of tuition for the semester. By the way, I was turned out the day before the drop date, so my GPA was spared but not my pocketbook but did you know that student teaching is 16 credit hours with a razor thin margin of error, and a pass/fail system? That's right, there is no 4-3-2-1-0. it's just you pass, or you are wrecked.

A music degree is not easy. there are 128 credit hours of single credit hour classes, which will each require 3 credit hours or more of class time and an additional 3 hours of practice and homework per day. We have to compete and work alongside people to be the best we can be. Exams often require solo stage performances as well as ensemble performances, on top of volunteer ensembles, extracurricular activities, education classes, general ed classes, social time, eating, sleeping, and being human. You've seen Fame, right? It's like that, except without the song and dance numbers in the cafeteria. it's like an American Idol tryout that lasts five years, and you have to check up on your progress with Simon every four months. At the end, you have a certified degree, equal to a BS or a BA. In fact, you've taken classes right along with the people who are graduating with business degrees and pre-med degrees.

But, the letters say BFA. That's a Bachelor's of Fine Arts. At this point people scratch their heads. Employers wont touch you with a ten foot pole. If you were a person like me, and never quite got the money to purchase the instrument of specialization needed to continue work in the music industry, because after all, as a music educator I would not be playing, I would be conducting, and then had that dream fall through to the only other degree I was qualified to graduate with, you're pretty much left with a college career spent in waste.

Never was this more starkly shoved in my face than the day that my mother, who had not had a job since college, told me to get over myself and get "some job, any job," because I really didn't have any marketable skills after all, or we could waste the family's money dealing with my depression that was in her mind really a ploy for attention. I dissolved into tears of unrequited rage and hopelessness, At which point, moment of irony lost upon her, she threw her bottle of prozac at me and stormed out of the room. Did I mention that my authority figures and or mentors were slightly less than supportive?

But here I was college educated and working as a waitress for $2.30/hr plus tip and then $8.00/hr vs. commission trying to sell AOL's DSL. The fact that I actually made commission at it should tell you how many suckers are out there, but I could not stand the moral pit that was outbound telemarketing. Plus, it was part time, unskilled, and completely a job beneath my intelligence and education.

So I went back to school. At that time, I had to make the choice to either return for a master's in music, or to go for something else. Seeing as how the music industry is a dying industry and my treatment at the hands of the education department left me loathe to enter that job sector, I knew that I would have to go back for a second bachelor's .

I started in for drafting and design, but due to my skills in writing, drawing, and music, was quickly enamored with and then whisked over to Game design. game design was mercifully divided into an associates in IT-multmedia, which includes all sorts of web-based graphic design flash design and some web development, but it also included 3d-modelling and animating as well as broadcast graphics. The second part includes 3d-modelling, game theory, minor programming, and team-based training. Theoretically, i am qualified to work in graphic design, game design, web design, brand management, animation, and broadcast graphics. Actually, this is secretly one of my dream job fields. Even if it means that at wordst I will make $35,000 to make 3-d boxes for a 3rd party game developer's rail shooter. My real dream is to be on the design team.

Again, I am left without a job, but this time there is no excuse. I am trained to be able to enter a lot of different fields, but once again the name of my degree is holding me back. "Associeates of Applied Science in Information technology" Great! We'll hire you--"Multimedia option" oh. you got one of THOSE degrees, sorry. we want a tech nerd. Go back to art school and get a real degree to whine about. Now lets look at the full degree: "Bachelor of Applied Science" is great! "in Digital Entertainment and Game Design" so you. . . want to work with games huh. (snicker, snicker) oh. well if it has game in it, i don't want it as part of my workforce. And then they want to know everything that I can do, asking with a snide tone of voice as if expecting to hear the 100 yard stretch.

But first, let's get back to the things I learned that had nothing. First, Obama talks about getting retrained and educated, but he does not talk about the problems with that. First, if you have completed a previous degree, you cannot get a pell grant. Second, if you go back to college, nobody will give you a scholarship, no matter how well you did the first time, and no matter how desperate your need. Third, unless you are a single parent, an orphan, a minority, a disabled person, or a traditional student, you qualify for nothing, neither grants or scholarships no matter how desperately you need assistance. Fourth, if you go to a for-profit private university (vatterot, Itt-tech, University of Phoenix, Bellevue University, Hamilton College) you will not only get nothing, you will not get anything even if you maintain a 4.0, and you will be charged double AND employers will run away from you like forest creatures from a brush fire.

In hindsight, I should have stuck with drafting. My skills and talents may be geared for game design, but I might as well have coated myself in honey and walked through an Apiary full of africanized bees and then walked in for a job interview at the closest office. I could have wasted that money coating myself in tattoos and then panning for coins downtown with nothing but my pen and paper and awesome sketching skills, or my mediocre guitar or piano playing, or slightly better conga playing, or my decent bass guitar playing and singing (my specialization is in Low brass). I could have joined a polka band or mariachi band and toured the country. I could have freeloaded my way to Europe and bummed my way across the continent spouting poetry in a sleep deprived stupor.

What I learned is that five year plans are the stuff of a bygone generation that every employer will still ask about. You know what? in 1997, when i first entered college, I expected that I would be a music teacher in my first year at my first job, paying back my loans with a car, a house, and a good single life. What I got was a performance degree and three years of unemployment before returning to college.

When I graduated in 2002, with a different degree from what I wanted, but still an accredited college degree, my five year plan was to get "some job any job" settle into that, and maybe work as a musician in my spare time, pay off my loans, find a mate, buy a house and live happily . What I got was my mom dead of cancer, my needing to aid my family, delaying my entry into the workforce, a gaping hole in my resume, and a job in the service industry alongside illegal workers and high-school dropouts.

When I started back to college in 2005, in five years i planned to have a job in graphic design, game design, or web design, making a decent amount of money. I planned to be married, and maybe thinking about kids. Instead five years later, I did manage to get married, but kids are not an option, The cars are an unattainable necessity, the house is a bygone pipe dream, and I am saddled with debt upon my very flesh. Add to this, my degree will be obsolete in two years without a job to sustain it, I have no option to move in with my parents, and I am without health insurance.

In five years from now? I just don't know anymore. I have given up on the five year plan. there is no reason to dream like that, and it is destructive to try. I dream about affording fresh vegetables and a wardrobe that does not come from goodwill. I dream of an apartment full of furnishings that were not given me by various friends or relatives. I dream of owning a car that has less than 50,000 miles. I dream of a second bedroom.