Liberal Shmarts

By Cat Mooney

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You're clutching your diploma, and the thirty seconds of happiness between you, your family and the throngs of random people wearing gowns is over. It's time to find a job. You happened to major in 18th-century Lithuanian poetry, an intellectual but totally unmarketable major. It's difficult to sell yourself to potential employers, and you don't even know how to sell yourself to, well ... yourself. You studied what you loved, you know you're good at it, but you aren't sure how it translates into the professional realm.

Congratulations, you've majored with a liberal arts background. And you're completely screwed.

Well, maybe not. Starbucks is hiring baristas, public schools are constantly recruiting new teachers, and you can always work for "the man" doing the nine to five, looking forward to the occasional free bagel and casual Friday. If you graduated with a liberal arts background, you hopefully know that there probably won't be big bucks in your future (maybe you should have majored in engineering or finance, pal).

Chances are an entry-level opening in your field will be hard to find. Blame the prestigious schools in Boston for the fierce job competition. Sure, Boston has numerous opportunities in the private and nonprofit sectors, but according to U.S. News & World Report, Massachusetts is home to three of the country's top five top liberal arts colleges of 2008, so you probably aren't as distinguished as you thought. But graduating and facing the working world is like losing your virginity: You have dreams of how it will be, and in reality it's nothing like that. But you might just have a good time anyway.

Your first "real" jobs make for the best stories. You could be the filing bitch who sits alone in a cube as your boss divulges that his favorite rappers are "Kee-yane West" and "50 Cents." Or you could become the customer service representative whose immediate neighbor wears a muumuu and emits gas that could peel paint.

Don't be insulted when these coworkers learn what you studied and ask why you're in an irrelevant position. In between making copies, getting coffee, answering phones and trying to explain your obscure thesis to the few that ask about it, you're gaining random, yet valuable skills. You're learning things you didn't study, things you couldn't study in college.

You may have a longer path to get your dream job and it could take a while to translate your talent at analyzing Kristijonas Donelaitis's symbolism to the working world. The US Department of Labor estimates that our generation will have 10 jobs between the ages of 18 and 38, and three career changes, so you may discover you want to do something entirely different than what you set out to do. But it's the ripe and awkward beginnings that give us hope that things will be different.