“It took me a year and a half to realize that I’m not just going to stumble into a great job,” the Brown ’07 grad told Newsweek . Did Career Services forget to tell you about the paradigm shift? Well, let me clarify—it’s like half paradigm shift and half millennial Ivy League naivete. Adrian Muniz, who is 25 years old, has spent the last three years working in “high-end retail stores” and doing internships; the article doesn’t say whether he’s managed to find a job yet. But considering he graduated when things weren’t yet terrible , and they are now, for college graduates wanting to get into traditional media, absolutely horrible , I would guess that he does not yet have a job. Usually when stories like this run, people like me who are older than 25 get to feel all smarmy, like didn’t this kid know what was happening, why did he think that just because he went to Brown that he was going to get a job right away, he’s got to learn sometime that life is hard, doesn’t he realize that it was never easy to get a paying job in media in New York, maybe he should have gone somewhere that gives out grades, etc. And it’s true, I am feeling all of those things! But I am also feeling like this paradigm shift of which I speak is real, and it means that whereas before it was difficult but not impossible to get an editorial assistant job at a fancy publication where they still have expense accounts and such, it is now difficult if not impossible, and in fact, probably increasingly undesirable. It means that this Muniz fellow should forget about the “media internships” and “high-end retail” jobs and do something else, where he will actually make some money and gain some life experience, and that does not include starting a Tumblr. Get out of New York, do something that no one else has done, and then we can talk. In fact, that is going to be my advice from now on for everyone in college who emails me about internships and jobs and advice: Don’t come to New York until you’re at least 26.
Original post:
Some Career Advice for the Millennials [Millennials]
