Tag Archives: work

Shame Day: The Post-Grad’s Job Search

This is pretty short as posts can get, but its length has directly to do with the topic at hand. See, I’ve been unemployed since last year, and that’s not for lack of trying to change that status. Given certain things going well there’s a chance that, instead of sitting here on the couch that doubles as my bed, I’d actually be in sunny Las Vegas with your favourite communist Culture War Reporter Gordon. Some things just aren’t meant to be, however.

I’m well aware that this isn’t going to be anything new for many of my peers out there, but just allow me this platform to vent a little. I am a college graduate. I am the child of a generation who believed that attaining a post-secondary degree more or less equated to a good job. Honestly, I wish that the piece of paper I have in a storage bin somewhere had some significant effect on my job search. See, and again, you probably already know this, what employers are really looking for is experience.

Most places are asking for three to five years with a particular task, and here I am having graduated in 2012, worked in 2013, and presently job-hunting full-time in 2014. This poorly-designed diagram really says it all:

Really, I don’t know what more to add to that. Surely Gordon, who has a job directly related to employment and has more of a finger on the pulse of current events regarding the economy, would have more to say, but I really don’t; I’m not even quite sure who to blame. It’s tough out there, and today’s just one of those days where I’m letting it get me down.

Normally I try not to let things on this blog get too personal, but honestly I think it’s a facet of post-grad culture, holding a diploma and wondering how on earth we’re going to use it. It’s frustrating to say the very least, and I just have to throw my two cents into what’s ostensibly a very large and very heavy bucket of copper-plated steel.

Will Blogging Now Come Back to Haunt Me Later?

The short answer is yes. In many ways I don’t mind putting my thoughts out on the no man’s land we call the internet. I’m sure Foucault would have all kinds of things to say about the kind of surveillance we submit ourselves to as bloggers, but as an aspiring writer it’s unrealistic for me to remain entirely private if I want to build up my writing experience.

Using social media isn’t really all that different from being in a panopticon.

That being said, everything we put online is going to follow us for the rest of our lives. Yes, most of the time people just don’t care what my (or your) opinions are, so we can slather them all over any social media site with little to no consequences, but, then again, sometimes those opinions may come back to haunt us. This past month I started several blog posts only to put them aside for a variety of reasons. I hope to come back to them again at some point, but for this post I thought I would share a few of those reasons and why they make me think twice about what I share. Continue reading

In Defense of $15 an Hour

May 1st of this year marked not only the annual May Day parades celebrated by leftists across the globe but also one of the most major victories for Socialists in this nation as Seattle announced it would raise it’s minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour.

While the push for a higher minimum wage has existed for quite some time, the unprecedented victory in Seattle is largely thanks to the efforts of Socialist councilmember Kshama Sawant and the 15 Now campaign.

Continue reading

Shame Day: Hollywood and Older Leading Ladies

Take some time, maybe ten seconds or so, to come up with as many older actresses as you can. I’m even going to give you a head start with the picture on the right. Okay, are you done? In spite of the fact that I’ve had this intro in my head for the past few days I could still really only come up with two: Meryl Streep, obviously, and Dame Judy Dench.

Now take the same amount of time and do the same with male actors [I use the qualifier because the term is in fact gender neutral]. Off the top of my head I already have a handful: Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, and the list goes on. That, in general, should set the stage to what I’m going to be discussing here. Continue reading

Generational Time Zones

You’ll notice, readers, that this post was published exactly at 9:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. This is partly because I want to avoid Evan’s routine beatings as punishment for tardiness, and mostly because you, as an overwhelmingly Western audience, expect everything to be exactly on time.

Now if you were all mostly from Bolivia, or Syria, or Morocco, or Thailand, chances are that you wouldn’t care so much. After all, 9:00 in the morning is really more of an approximation than anything else, right?

Taken from a rather insightful infographic on the differences between Eastern and Western cultures.

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Guaranteed Minimum Income

Your name is John/Jane Smith, and you are an American citizen 18 years of age or older. On this merit alone, you will receive approximately 300 dollars per month to be deposited in a bank account of your choosing.

That right there is the gist of Guaranteed Minimum Income and the subject of today’s discussion. Continue reading