"How can someone be willing to be jobless for 2 years?" I asked myself as I half watched CNN at the gym this morning. The story, which at this point interviewed an unemployed 2008 graduate Public Relations major from the University of Miami, aimed to describe the difficult job market for college graduates. Perhaps it is just my upbringing, but I cannot imagine (given financial necessity) refusing to, as a last resort, apply to jobs for which I was overqualified. This wasn't the first, or second, or tenth time I'd heard such stories covered in national news. Like less skilled labor workers, college grads, tradesworkers, business owners, and professionals have all taken hits due to the economy. Unlike unskilled labor, though, these workers invested significant time or money in qualifying themselves for their trades, via education, apprenticeship, or job experience. These workers do not want to forfeit these investments to find work "anyone could do", and understandably so.
Unfortunately, one of the necessities of survival of a corporation under capitalism is fluidity (for those supplying the market). The labor market is no different: if you want to be employed, you must be willing to supply labor for which there is demand. Once labor becomes skilled labor, or educated labor, it loses much of this elasticity, to the detriment of the worker if the market fluctuates. This idea, that experience and education can make one less employable, seems at odds with my intuition, or at least with the cultural and economic values I've been marinating in since birth. This is the time during which we hope every English major's mantra ("It's not what you learn in college, Dad, it's that you learn how to learn") becomes reality. Rather than thinking of a college degree as training for a job, or training for a particular career as training for only that career, we might instead categorize these as general education and general work experience, respectively. But then, in this market, where most industries are flooded with overqualified applicants, this just might not be good enough.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
standards are sliding... are you sure that's not a Harvard A cup?
I have designed this post to be short musings on 4 of the more counterintuitive, bizarre, or disturbing items of personal or national news in the past several weeks, mostly because none of them are full-fledged enough to make their own postings.
4) My grandparents had friends from their synagogue who were amongst the first people involved in sex therapy. My grandmother's reply? "I don't know why everyone makes such a fuss about sex... it's all over in 10 minutes, anyway."
3) We've frisked you, now we need to ask if there's any chance you're pregnant.
I agree with the general consensus we need an overhaul of airport security measures. Any changes which avoid stereotypes, taking off my shoes, arbitrary decisions about what constitutes a liquid (peanut butter? I recently had it confiscated until I divulged a "medical condition" of low blood sugar), being asked to "volunteer" for a pat-down at the gate (I bit my tongue to keep from saying, "What happens if I elect not to volunteer?") will be difficult to implement, if perhaps desireable given other constraints.
If we're looking for security measures which raise our degree of certainty that any person or bag which passes through cannot blow up the airplane, we have a long way to go. For one, we still have no good way to determine which liquids are safe and which are one rag away from a malotov cocktail. Instating full-body scanners (read: a "soft" X-ray machine) in our airports brings to the table several important issues about civil liberties. Now, more often than not, I choose to advocate the position of "right to privacy/no stripsearch without a warrant" to my death in situations such as these, but this wasn't my initial reaction while musing on mass use of X-ray machines on passengers. I worried about the medical effects repeated and regular use of this imaging technology administered by someone who is not a medical expert (indeed, the policymakers are not medical experts, though they are consulted by doctors). For example, will the security personnel ask every woman if she has any chance of being pregnant? Will proper protective clothing be provided (as is necessary for women who receive x-rays in medical facilities)? Will frequent fliers have alternate choices if they are concerned about the levels of radiation they'd be subjected to if they went through the body scanners 4 times a week? ABC news quotes the director of the TSA as saying 2500 scans are needed to increase your risk of cancer by even a marginal amount, though other sources say pregnant women could be scanned 200 times without risk. I find it disturbing that these machines are being deployed without sufficient testing. You need 25-30 years to accurately estimate the medical repercussions of such devices on humans; repeated exposure regularly gives cancer decades later, not months.
2) Today's hottest game /reality tv show: Libido, Fact or Fiction?
Just a the name of the TV show sliding across the screen left me slackjawed in a Thai restaurant in Phoenix. Great ginger asparagus, though, even if one couldn't account for their taste in television.
1) Iran is still claiming their nuclear efforts are peaceful?! Are you fucking kidding me?
Ok, I guess I missed it. But I figured sometime in the last 4 or 5 years of refusing to have outside sources aid in the enrichment of uranium, kicking out UN inspectors, refusing to give accurate information (and giving insultingly false information) about their nuclear development program, Iran had given up that ghost. I mean, really... if you only care about energy, allow Russia to enrich the uranium for you. Then you won't have to spend all the money building shitty enrichment facilities, burying them underground, pretending you don't want the world to know about them, or pretending the security of these compounds is such that no one who is not authorized could gain access to them. No wonder, though... schooling is only compulsory through 6th grade (see the Iranian Embassy site) and only those who pass an exam are elligble for middle school. If we had a bunch of middle schoolers running our defense program, I suppose it might look something like that, too.
4) My grandparents had friends from their synagogue who were amongst the first people involved in sex therapy. My grandmother's reply? "I don't know why everyone makes such a fuss about sex... it's all over in 10 minutes, anyway."
3) We've frisked you, now we need to ask if there's any chance you're pregnant.
I agree with the general consensus we need an overhaul of airport security measures. Any changes which avoid stereotypes, taking off my shoes, arbitrary decisions about what constitutes a liquid (peanut butter? I recently had it confiscated until I divulged a "medical condition" of low blood sugar), being asked to "volunteer" for a pat-down at the gate (I bit my tongue to keep from saying, "What happens if I elect not to volunteer?") will be difficult to implement, if perhaps desireable given other constraints.
If we're looking for security measures which raise our degree of certainty that any person or bag which passes through cannot blow up the airplane, we have a long way to go. For one, we still have no good way to determine which liquids are safe and which are one rag away from a malotov cocktail. Instating full-body scanners (read: a "soft" X-ray machine) in our airports brings to the table several important issues about civil liberties. Now, more often than not, I choose to advocate the position of "right to privacy/no stripsearch without a warrant" to my death in situations such as these, but this wasn't my initial reaction while musing on mass use of X-ray machines on passengers. I worried about the medical effects repeated and regular use of this imaging technology administered by someone who is not a medical expert (indeed, the policymakers are not medical experts, though they are consulted by doctors). For example, will the security personnel ask every woman if she has any chance of being pregnant? Will proper protective clothing be provided (as is necessary for women who receive x-rays in medical facilities)? Will frequent fliers have alternate choices if they are concerned about the levels of radiation they'd be subjected to if they went through the body scanners 4 times a week? ABC news quotes the director of the TSA as saying 2500 scans are needed to increase your risk of cancer by even a marginal amount, though other sources say pregnant women could be scanned 200 times without risk. I find it disturbing that these machines are being deployed without sufficient testing. You need 25-30 years to accurately estimate the medical repercussions of such devices on humans; repeated exposure regularly gives cancer decades later, not months.
2) Today's hottest game /reality tv show: Libido, Fact or Fiction?
Just a the name of the TV show sliding across the screen left me slackjawed in a Thai restaurant in Phoenix. Great ginger asparagus, though, even if one couldn't account for their taste in television.
1) Iran is still claiming their nuclear efforts are peaceful?! Are you fucking kidding me?
Ok, I guess I missed it. But I figured sometime in the last 4 or 5 years of refusing to have outside sources aid in the enrichment of uranium, kicking out UN inspectors, refusing to give accurate information (and giving insultingly false information) about their nuclear development program, Iran had given up that ghost. I mean, really... if you only care about energy, allow Russia to enrich the uranium for you. Then you won't have to spend all the money building shitty enrichment facilities, burying them underground, pretending you don't want the world to know about them, or pretending the security of these compounds is such that no one who is not authorized could gain access to them. No wonder, though... schooling is only compulsory through 6th grade (see the Iranian Embassy site) and only those who pass an exam are elligble for middle school. If we had a bunch of middle schoolers running our defense program, I suppose it might look something like that, too.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Holiday vacation? I think not.
After several weeks of jettisoning around the country (visiting family, family of boyfriend, etc) I returned to what I suppose I would call a regular routine today. By this, I mean I had meetings and appointments, wrote a bit of code, and responded to a backlog of emails. Unfortunately, as I have found to be the case in recent years, I returned from vacation more bedraggled than I was at its onset. Between flying, loving and bickering with my family, schmoozing with various friends of my grandmother who I'd not met in my memorable past, finalizing my architecture project, and falling ill the last few days of break, I'd done quite the opposite of what I would call relaxing. This gave me incentive to do some calculations: what percentage of my "vacation time" since the beginning of high school have I spent doing things which were relaxing and resting?
Let's just say the results weren't too good. I full time worked through breaks in high school, did the same for summers as an undergrad, with about a week when I would be traveling or visiting family (both of which I enjoy very much; neither of which I would call relaxing). Winter and spring breaks I've spent either traveling(Israel), studying for exams(GRE), preparing for other ridiculous endeavors (spring training for Crew), or visiting relatives. The single exception was my first winter home from college. I'd spent approximately 40% of that time in bed, recovering from mono and strep which had affixed themselves to my under-rested, overstressed body in its new environment. Morever, I have noticed a marked rise in the regularity with which I fall ill since high school, particularly towards the end of vacations.
Much to my dismay, external observations suggest to me that my unwillingness to use vacation to recharge and relax I cannot attribute entirely to my type A personality ("What?! Aren't you DOING anything for your break?!"). According to the Birmingham Business Journal , 2/3 of Americans didn't even take all of their allotted vacation time this year, up from a bit over 1/3 just last year. What's more, a 2006 study suggested 65% of employees had difficulty coping with the stress of being on vacation. More than a quarter choose to check email and voicemail while away.
Since when did we become a society in which taking a break was so looked down upon? So difficult for us to do? The state of current economic affairs is burdened with the sudden increase in these numbers, but research suggests we've been this way for much longer than the last several years. Our 14 days of vacation annually are less than 2/3 of Britain's 25, and embarrassingly low when compared to France's 36. It isn't just our European friends who've gotten the right idea of things: Korea and Japan have us beat by significant margins, too.
You might argue that I, having not held a "proper job" (read: one with health insurance, annual contract, or paid vacation), have little room to complain. On the contrary, I would say any of those of us working the hourly wage jobs understand all too well the grievances of the
white collar worker. When they choose to skip on their vacation, or to treat it as something other than vacation, we are expected to, too. The societal expectation is, if one wishes to be happy, one must be successful, and to do so one must be productive and not take time off. We must feel guilty about any time we do take off so as to create a disincentive to counterbalance the innate desire to relax. If we have not worked hard enough to even attain a job where paid vacation is available, we have no right to complain. Meritocracies are the best when you're on top, aren't they?
But, I would argue, viewing vacation as a crutch isn't even the best for those on top. What good is paid vacation if you never take it? When you leave your job, you might get additional compensation, but you only net positive pay if you can work the same duration at the same job with less vacation. A financial incentive for forgoing vacation only exists if your productivity does not decline by much more than 5% (2 weeks out of 52) due to lack of rest. Our GDP coincides with us wee hourly wage workers in pleading for you to take your vacation and run with it.
I make this point somewhat tangentially: my original goal was to investigate the reasoning behind my inability to take vacation for face value: a time to repose, to catch up on some reading, and to more generally refresh my body and mind. However, what with all the pressure to never take vacation in the first place, having any time at all makes me feel far too guilty about the freedom, making me fill up my schedule as though I weren't on break at all.
And, with that, I realize this post has taken me far too much time. Best get back to work.
Let's just say the results weren't too good. I full time worked through breaks in high school, did the same for summers as an undergrad, with about a week when I would be traveling or visiting family (both of which I enjoy very much; neither of which I would call relaxing). Winter and spring breaks I've spent either traveling(Israel), studying for exams(GRE), preparing for other ridiculous endeavors (spring training for Crew), or visiting relatives. The single exception was my first winter home from college. I'd spent approximately 40% of that time in bed, recovering from mono and strep which had affixed themselves to my under-rested, overstressed body in its new environment. Morever, I have noticed a marked rise in the regularity with which I fall ill since high school, particularly towards the end of vacations.
Much to my dismay, external observations suggest to me that my unwillingness to use vacation to recharge and relax I cannot attribute entirely to my type A personality ("What?! Aren't you DOING anything for your break?!"). According to the Birmingham Business Journal , 2/3 of Americans didn't even take all of their allotted vacation time this year, up from a bit over 1/3 just last year. What's more, a 2006 study suggested 65% of employees had difficulty coping with the stress of being on vacation. More than a quarter choose to check email and voicemail while away.
Since when did we become a society in which taking a break was so looked down upon? So difficult for us to do? The state of current economic affairs is burdened with the sudden increase in these numbers, but research suggests we've been this way for much longer than the last several years. Our 14 days of vacation annually are less than 2/3 of Britain's 25, and embarrassingly low when compared to France's 36. It isn't just our European friends who've gotten the right idea of things: Korea and Japan have us beat by significant margins, too.
You might argue that I, having not held a "proper job" (read: one with health insurance, annual contract, or paid vacation), have little room to complain. On the contrary, I would say any of those of us working the hourly wage jobs understand all too well the grievances of the
white collar worker. When they choose to skip on their vacation, or to treat it as something other than vacation, we are expected to, too. The societal expectation is, if one wishes to be happy, one must be successful, and to do so one must be productive and not take time off. We must feel guilty about any time we do take off so as to create a disincentive to counterbalance the innate desire to relax. If we have not worked hard enough to even attain a job where paid vacation is available, we have no right to complain. Meritocracies are the best when you're on top, aren't they?
But, I would argue, viewing vacation as a crutch isn't even the best for those on top. What good is paid vacation if you never take it? When you leave your job, you might get additional compensation, but you only net positive pay if you can work the same duration at the same job with less vacation. A financial incentive for forgoing vacation only exists if your productivity does not decline by much more than 5% (2 weeks out of 52) due to lack of rest. Our GDP coincides with us wee hourly wage workers in pleading for you to take your vacation and run with it.
I make this point somewhat tangentially: my original goal was to investigate the reasoning behind my inability to take vacation for face value: a time to repose, to catch up on some reading, and to more generally refresh my body and mind. However, what with all the pressure to never take vacation in the first place, having any time at all makes me feel far too guilty about the freedom, making me fill up my schedule as though I weren't on break at all.
And, with that, I realize this post has taken me far too much time. Best get back to work.
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