Is it me...or is it the economy?

As the name suggests, I recently graduated.

I went to a small, private university in central Florida for my BA. The last month of school was both pleasant and painful. Pleasant because sweet, sweet freedom was within my grasp. Painful because my senior thesis was gradually morphing more and more into what my professors wanted and less and less into something I cared to research at all. All I could think about was how wonderful life was going to be once graduation day arrived.

And now...well, I absolutely cannot wait to go back for graduate school.

In the meantime, however, I'm bumping and stumbling along through this thing called "real life". That line from the "Friends" theme song comes to mind....

so no one told you life was gonna be this way / your job's a joke, you're broke

...I work at a PF Changs as a server, getting by on $8 tips. I consider giving the manager my notice every day and then I remember that even though I've applied for 7,000 "real" jobs, nobody else wants to hire me. I moved all the way from Port Orange, FL to Washington, DC so that I'd have a better chance at starting a career that really made a difference. And so far...well...I'm not sure I've made any kind of positive impact.

So this has me wondering...is it me or is it this terrible economy that we hear about every night on the news? To be honest, it's probably both. Not that I was a bad student, or that I don't have a good work ethic. It's just that well, with the economy, companies are probably hiring people who are more qualified than someone who just graduated two months ago. Throughout college I had an internship every semester from my junior year until graduation. Everyone went on and on about how it was going to be great experience that I could build my resume with and become a highly desirable job candidate.

Well, they were wrong. And what makes it worse, is that now, I'm not even qualified to work in retail because I don't have retail experience. And why don't I have retail experience? Well that's because I was spending my time at my very valuable internships. So this leaves me stuck with a job that makes me smelly, achy and irritable.

What a warm welcome to the real world....