Wow. I cannot get past the hyperbole here. One or two years does not a generation make. I understand it’s an unexpected setback when some people thought they would be beginning their careers. However, if lessons about how to rebound from setbacks aren’t ever learned, that will definitely derail someone’s future.
Maybe the effort to get additional assistance from government and businesses will work. If it doesn’t, maybe the author could research what worked for graduates after 2008 or women reentering the workforce who dealt with similar challenges. Here are a few ideas. Reset expectations (because preexisting inequalities are getting worse), have an alternative work plan for events that set career paths and/or earnings back significantly when compared to the average or mediocre male, and find ways to stay financially flexible during changing times.
Wow. I cannot get past the hyperbole here. One or two years does not a generation make.
I always remind myself: the Baby Boomers were in the way when I graduated, but a lot of them went to Viet Nam or at least had military service, as did the prior group (Korea), then there was that whole WW2 thing before that, and the Great Depression before that, and WW1 before that…
As I told a buddy of mine lately, even with a Ph.d. the job market has sucked since about 1972 when the Apollo program ended… and then the military figured out the next Einstein wasn’t going to give them anti-gravity (for real, that was an expectation). It probably sucked before then too.
After a few hours spent voting and running errands, it seems like “getting back to normal” won’t be easy. First, the sunshine caused me to react like Gizmo in Gremlins:
There were groups of people at PA polling places, a mix of masked and unmasked. Some folks are still pushing back against any restrictions, as if acting like there’s no pandemic is the best course of action. A part of me understands their desire for all of this to be over.
However, I’m still not over my post-traumatic Trump and his supporters syndrome. What’s changed for me is a greatly diminished sense of security and trust. The stories of inhumanity, selfishness, and greed highlighted in the news during the pandemic are just the underlying illness in society getting more focus in a time of crisis. So, it seems less OK to go outside again - not because of the virus, but because of the behavior and beliefs of other people.
Likewise. My default setting used to be to generally assume everyone was cool until they proved me wrong. It didn’t always work out for me, but was usually a pleasant way to be in the world.
Now I’ve lost that. It sucks and it makes me jumpy and I worry that these feelings will never go away.
It’s almost like we need some “re-entry” plan to slowly work up to feeling more normal and safe again…I’m thinking (for me, at least) a brief media diet might help.
Last week, for the first time in over a year, I sat down in my office desk. After a month and a half of a steadily declining new-case trend line, I’m trying to get back into things, but when it’s time to go into a store, nothing has changed for me - I still put a mask on, and the vast majority of people I see still mask up. Overall, I’m still mostly in pandemic mode, in spite of taking my first few steps away from it, but I didn’t catch COVID after sitting in a waiting room all day while my car got some badly-needed fixes, so that’s good at least.
I don’t think things will ever be “normal” again, though, not with this, nor the coup attempt, nor the internet I knew and loved being turned into the Disinformation Superhighway.
Totally, about the personally witnessing the behavior. I have wanted to pay attention to this thing the whole way through, but I do wonder how much better I would feel (mentally) if I had ignored it like some of my colleagues. Not the health directives, but the videos of people being assholes. Even the local shitty stories, I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t kept up on the news…but it just felt irresponsible and privileged to ignore it and leave it up to low-wage workers to be the only ones calling out such behavior.
Ugh. Reminds me of that old quote about democracy. Having a conscience is the worst way to be, except for all the others.
