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Job Life
With 2011 coming to a close, those of us who will be graduating have been, or are starting to look for jobs. The end game for the majority of us seniors is fairly simple for life after college. Get a job offering a reasonable salary that will allow me to not move back into my parents’ house after four years of freedom from oppression, as some would call it. However, there are so many more factors I have come to realize in my job search that are just as important as the next. One of those factors is work environment. Is my workplace going to be representative of “The Office” where I have a boss with zero self-image and coworkers who have been working the same position for more than 20 years? Or maybe I will be stuck in a cubicle working for a boss that I only see when I drop off his dry cleaning or golf clubs after a nice warm day out at the driving range. Either way, there isn’t really any way to determine how the workplace environment is going to pan out unless you do some serious recon. The only thing you can do is go after your dream job and hope for the best by working hard and ultimately succeeding. Next on the list is size. Are you going to be working for a huge corporation that views its employees as expendable minions who work only for corporate interests? Or are you going to be spending your days inside a small office with the same group of people for however long your employment lasts? There are upsides and downsides on both ends of the spectrum. Being college graduates we don’t have much say in the matter. In the end, it is going to be about how hard you work and how much you contribute. When you start at the bottom, there is only one way to travel… up. For me, however, the most important factor when it comes to choosing my place of employment is location, location, location. While a great deal of students here at IU are from the Chicago-land area, it comes as no surprise that they would like to see themselves working downtown on Michigan Ave., living in an upscale apartment somewhere in the city. In general, many students wouldn’t mind working somewhere near home after college. There are those, however, that would like nothing more than to move somewhere unfamiliar. I happen to fall into that category. It worked for college moving from Ft. Lauderdale to Bloomington, and I am sure it will work again in the future. If you are anything like me, then you know that after college, the one thing that is an absolute necessity is an absence of cold weather. After spending the last four years in Bloomington, I am now 100 percent certain that cold weather and I will never get along. That pretty much limits my available areas of interest for work, but at least it narrows down my choices just a little bit. Whether it is a city atmosphere or sunshine that you seek, do not forget to take into account all of the factors that make a first job worthwhile and tolerable. Working for the weekend may be a cliché, but wherever you end up, it is going to be true for all of us. Travis is a senior studying political science and international studies. You may contact him at tschachn@gmail.com..
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