Expectations

"Take the freakin' job. I've done jobs [she didn't want] when I was out of university. I was a waitress, I worked in crappy administration jobs.
"Job experience is job experience. You can learn a lot by doing even the job you don't want to do. It
is very dangerous [not to have a job]. You can get lazy and despondent and you lose confidence if you are not out there earning a living."
Laurie Campbell, executive director, Credit Canada

Those who attend university and obtain that precious paper accrediting them as having accomplished the attainment of a degree have high expectations of their future. On one end of their balance sheet is their debt, acquired through paying their way through academia, and the knowledge that it is incumbent upon them to pay it off, through the auspices of employment reflecting their status as university graduates.

Loan payments are expected to begin six months following graduation. And their lending rate is higher than prime. "We have such a need globally, but let's stick to Canada, for skilled trades. I always wonder whether there needs to be a real mindset shift where people who are going through university should take a skilled trade and not get caught up in the stigma a skilled trade has. It's something to fall back on and it pays", states Byrne Luft, vice-president of operations at human resources company Manpower.

But when young people have armed themselves through exposure to university courses aimed at a profession they aren't thinking of the manual trades; those options are for those whose academic standing is not as rarefied as theirs. Their thoughts are more Ivory Tower in nature than steel-girder-bridges. They aspire to be beckoned by eager employers to be enlisted into high-paid positions leading to the fulfilment of their expectations.

"When I was  going through college I took a job in the hospitality industry and it gave me skills I use in the job I do today", says Mr. Luft. "You end up taking the job that's available, not the job that actually suits your skills. You could end up taking a position and that could keep you down ... You build your skills and the hope is when you did enter the labour market, it will be better", claims Craig Alexander, chief economist, Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Socrates, one of the historical founders of Greek philosophy worked as a stonemason while teaching his Socratic method of enquiry, and there was a period when he was engaged with a military campaign.  A fine mind and a store of knowledge does not necessarily rule out physical labour. American longshoreman Eric Hoffer, born of humble immigrant roots, was a noted social and moral philosopher, authored ten books, and was awarded the President Medal of Freedom in recognition of his fine mind.


It most certainly can be demoralizing when young people who have achieved university degrees find themselves unemployed or working at pedestrian jobs, or types of employment that require physical rather than mental gymnastics, a situation they hardly envisioned when they set out to become high achievers.  In the great modern hunt for employment among the young and the educated, sights can sometimes be set lower than anticipated to great effect.

The modest job can sometimes lead to more useful and compensatory employment, but whatever type of employment is possible, it qualifies as experience.