Paralegal
THE SCENE: A midtown high-rise. Two months in. A partner and I just finished a call with a Fortune 500 CEO about an international banking dispute.
"Get me a chainsaw."
When you're a paralegal, you make things happen. You buy chainsaws. You work 60 hours straight with no sleep. You fly to Frankfurt to rendezvous with Russians named Tatiana. And then you return to cubicle No. 7057.
When you leave, you participate in a "Running of the Paralegal." There is a "Chariots of Fire" soundtrack. All attorneys stand in their doorways with their arms raised for a high five. One lap followed by champagne and unemployment.
THE PAY: With overtime, the pay is pretty good for a first job. As there's no free time to spend any money, so you end up saving quite a bit.
THE PERKS: You may become a marksman. The firm has its holiday party at a gun club. Getting paid to fly first class is a sweet deal, especially when you score Lufthansa First Class pajamas. Free food abounds.
THE PEOPLE: Bright. Socially awkward. Not much different than Columbia.
Computer Programmer
You are the best computer programmer you know. You can reverse a linked list with your eyes closed. You're the king of your computer science class, and you think you're ready to join the tech industry, maybe ready to start the next Google.
But then you start hunting for jobs. Looking at your range of opportunities, it quickly becomes clear that you can either apply for a position at Google (where nobody will hire you), Microsoft (where nobody will like you), or a financial services company doing IT (where nobody will respect you). Of course, there's always Apple, where Steve Jobs will spit on you every day as he passes your cubicle.
But maybe, if you're lucky, you manage to remember the finer points of all the concepts you were taught during your freshman year when a prospective boss asks them in your interview. And maybe, during your lunch interview, you remember not to put salt on your fries before tasting them, thus impressing your interviewer and convincing him (and in computer science, it is always a "him") to extend you an offer.
Now that you're in the real world, all the theory you've learned isn't good for a thing. Your focus—your only goal—is to please "the client," a faceless taskmaster that demands that everything "just work." Never-ending meetings filled with long discussions of "where the button should go" generally yield the conclusion, "anywhere but where you put it." It doesn't matter where you put it.
Journalist
To be disillusioned is to have been once, well, illusioned. So let's examine the illusions I held before my current period of gainful employment began, and then compare them to their "dises"—a prefix I can only assume comes from the word that, as we all know, Dante used for "Hell."
Illusion #1: I will start taking advantage of happy hours. First, a rule: much as you should divide the number of girls a guy has said he's slept with by three, to be realistic you should multiply by three the number of drinks to which you preemptively limit yourself whenever beers are $3 a pop. Still, happy hours ultimately kill your night: tipsiness precedes nausea precedes headache, and it's still only like 9:30 p.m.. Better to walk around, cook dinner, read a book, and catch up on email until it's bedtime anyway. And then start drinking.
Illusion #2: I will make extra money on the side. Freelance fees are a joke, and that's when you get them; selling drugs is probably lucrative, but much too dangerous for my taste. I secretly wish I could manufacture devices related to cultivating drugs, thereby tapping into that market while technically staying inside the law. But I don't have time, because I go to work for a living. Also, I was an English major.
Illusion #3: Dilbert will become not just understandable but actually funny. In fact, I do now totally get Dilbert. However, it remains unfunny. I guess that's actually depressing-er?
Illusion #4: I will become a morning person. Not only that, but I will meet my fellow rat-racers for pre-work breakfasts, wean myself off caffeine, and read the paper leisurely. Instead, I time my commute so that I arrive somewhere between five and ten minutes late, request $.95 add-shots at Starbucks, and read most of the paper over coffee and the rest somewhere between five and fifteen minutes after I finish my coffee.
Illusion #5: I'll finally be a professional writer! B&W editors: please make checks payable to Aladdin's Lamp: Fine Products For Home-Growing Tobacco, Inc.
Blogger
I am not disillusioned with my job — I don't want to be, God damn it, nor does it make me bitter.
Heck, I love America. Strike that: I mean I love my desk in Northern Virginia.
My work in the field of applied humanities—or, as they now call it, covering the Democratic primary—roils forward, an endless bull session on race, class, and gender. All moderated by the kindly professors at Fox News.
Is Barack Obama a shade of grey? Do working class Americans "cling" to their guns, or can a lint brush separate them? Did Hillary—a Brazilian soccer star, the last name is silent—find her voice among New Hampshire women?
Race, class, and gender. Smack an American flag pin on my lapel and you can add "nationalism" to the syllabus.
History is being made this cycle, and I see it in my inbox every morning. The dregs of press releases, links, counter-claims, research dumps, and one-line emails asking if you've posted yet mean that you've got 100 messages to read by noon. Then there's the RSS feeds, the cable televisions, the 5,000 fancy magazine words asking what-does-it-all-mean and —hey!—what's John McCain up to today? Superdelegates! Exit polls! Demographic warfare!
Then there are the "issues." Everyone cares about the "issues," and then you'll see that they don't get page views. This is considered an issue.
Melting ice, insurgents, China, subprime, the rise of corporate power and the collapse of the American worker, birth control, healthcare prices, collapsing pension system, and I'm sure I missed something here which someone will kindly point out IN ALL CAPS in the comments section and then I'll note it so you don't email my editor, then try some reporting, and then pick up my phone because I've got a conference call coming up where the campaign spokesmen mute and unmute the nagging scribes one by one so we can try to wrench out answers.
More death, more taxes, and a new poll mashing your weirdo opinions into a digestible series of binary boxes.
Six months to go. Four until the convention.
Sent from my Blackberry wireless
