Let me preface this by saying I am not one to vent my frustrations publicly. I am a simple man. I have simple goals and, more importantly, simple ways to go about these goals. In high school, I decided I wanted to go to college. So I worked hard. I registered for college prep classes and sat for standardized tests. Four years later, I got into college.

Once there, I knew the next logical step for me was finding a job after graduation. Over the course of my time at college, I set myself on a path to achieving this employment goal, the means of which were not so different from when I was in high school. Work hard. Stay focused. So anyone with any rationale or logic would undoubtedly remark that I would be on my way to achieving my goal of employment as well. I say, in the words of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, “As if.”

You see because in getting a job, I am learning that I’m entering a world where logic and reason have no place, where the thinking is the opposite of sound. There isn’t even a nice introductory ease-in to it either. Bam! You’re hit before you know it.

Now to get back to current matters, I have spent much of the last month preparing for the fall recruitment season occurring on college campuses and community centers city-wide. I have spent hours scouring company profiles and looking for job openings at many of these places in order to get a feel of the positions that I might be interested in. This is fun for me. This is the culmination of another goal. I am so close to getting a job, that I can feel it. Resume drops and cover letter formats are all I can think about. All is good and sound. Then I see it.

…full time ENTRY LEVEL position (around 2 years exp) open for someone willing to…

Entry level? Two years experience? That has got to be a mistake. Then, I see it again as I scroll down the page. Entry level (0 to 3 years experience). How can you have an entry-level job that requires experience? Is not entry-level a fancy term for NO experience? I see it a few times as I scroll. There’s no way that… That doesn’t make any sense. 

That’s when I realized that there is no sense in job market world. There are only cents and the way it’s looking for me, there will be none of those anytime soon. Getting a job is going to be trickier than I thought. Bam! I’m down. But I’m not out.

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Sneh Naik
Sneh Naik is a senior at Northwestern University majoring in Journalism and Economics. More