As the president and everyone else has been telling us, 2009 is going to get worse before it gets better. I know there are worse things right now than waiting to see if your boss calls to tell you you should come in today -- after all, you could have no job at all -- but either way, sitting out on the porch, even on a nice day, means not getting paid.
There are a lot of people to blame for my predicament. All the geniuses on Wall Street who sliced and diced bad deals into ever-more-complicated and dangerous securities, all the people who bought bigger houses than they needed with mortgages they couldn't afford to pay, all the government watchdogs who were asleep on the watch while all of that was going on -- but also, let's face it. Me.
Me, the bright kid who thought an English degree would somehow open doors. "Oh, just get any degree," they said at the university. "All employers want to know is that you can be responsible and finish the work."
Turns out, they want more than that. In the end, a degree in English, history, philosophy, womens' studies, etc. is barely worth the paper it's printed on. And the worst of it is, they tell us that we're better than the people who went to trade school and community college, but it's the mechanics, plumbers and nurses who are making the money and contributing to society while the liberal artists are serving up coffee at Starbucks or secretly judging customers' book choices at Barnes and Noble.
Of course, now, everyone's out of a job, degree or not. So I can just get in the breadline with everyone else and blend in. But even when the economy eventually rebounds, there just won't be that much demand for English majors, and the nation's universities are churning out thousands more each semester.
Why they let 18-year-olds make these kinds of life-changing decisions is beyond me. Of course I made a bad choice with English. I was a moron, like any other teenager. I shouldn't have been allowed to make that choice, or at least I should have been given all the facts.
It isn't as if we don't need liberal arts majors, per se. We need to advance the culture, expand our understanding of the world, and add to the world of ideas -- but we don't need the tens of thousands of liberal arts majors who graduate each year. A few hundred, maybe a few thousand a year -- tops. There just isn't that much demand for essays about the psychosexual trauma inherent in Pat the Bunny, or how Battlestar Galactica is a metaphor for modern life.
Nobody needs your intricate knowledge of late twelfth century Romanian culture. There is nothing useful about your interpretations of Southern literature -- yes, even at parties. And no, you're not going to write the Great American Novel.
You'd might as well go get in line for a job building Joe Biden's High-Speed Rail Network. But don't be surpised if all the blue-collar workers you claim to love, yet secretly despise, don't get hired first.
