<p>As in: my kid, who has worked between school years will not end up unemployed…right? RIGHT? RIGHT? :eek:</p>
<p>Look, the situation for new grads is really tough right now. Nobody needs to go poking around in anybody else’s family rooms looking for reasons a new grad doesn’t have a job just to make themselves feel “better.” Or smarter or anything else.</p>
<p>These kids will eventually get up off the couch, get over their depression, or whatever else they are facing, which you categorically know NOTHING about, and get a job and, eventually, a career.</p>
<p>In the meantime, if you are afraid your own kid might end up in this situation, they might. I don’t know the exact stats, but Roger has posted plenty of articles about the percentage of kids moving home, and it is not a small percentage. </p>
<p>Thank you for defending me. I can see why some people think that I’m being judgmental. As you said, I simply want to solicit opinions about this unusual situation.</p>
<p>Actually, there is a different angle one could decide to criticize, namely the crazy expectations that are increasingly placed on teenagers. </p>
<p>While the Harvard admission dean --joined by his infamous MIT counterpart-- decried the loss of summers of high school students, they also never stopped rewarding the obscene resume padding practices! Now we are dealing with the expectation of plenty of internships as basic requirement for … entry jobs, as well as an explosion in quasi-legal unpaid extended internships. </p>
<p>What is next? Expecting students to hold full-time unpaid jobs through HS and college? The beginning of HS TAs to level the “extraordinary load” carried by the faculty? </p>
<p>I agree!! We are on our way to raising a generation that will be burned out before they hit 40 … or maybe 30, given that technology no longer seems to allow folks to even get away for a true vacation once they get a job.</p>
<p>Even before one gets to the stage of being a med school/Grad school applicant…STEM majors had to first survive a series of weedout courses. </p>
<p>A former post-college roommate who was a bio major at Tufts in the early '90s recalled that over 60% of his year-long bio intro weedout class FAILED(Talking Fs…not “pre-med fail”) and had to switch to other majors. </p>
<p>If they survived this hurdle, they now have to survive the hurdles of maintaining not only a 3.67 or better overall cumulative GPA…but do so without any grades below -A in pre-med core courses or the pre-med advisor will “strongly encourage” them to drop the idea of being pre-med. </p>
<p>By the time a given pre-med cohort reaches senior year…they’d be lucky if 1/3 of those who survived the first weedout round makes it to this stage to even think about applying to med school.</p>
<p>But the individuals described in the OP aren’t teenagers - they are young adults, coming out of school with a degree. And the problem isn’t merely that they are currently unemployed… the problem is that they have no employment and/or internship history at all. </p>
<p>Though I would note that I find that hard to believe with the young woman with the DVM – I thought students pretty much had to demonstrate a high level of experience working with animals to even have a chance of being accepted to vet school. So I’d have to wonder if the “never worked” part simply means never worked for pay … or whether the OP has been creative in the choice of degree to further obscure the identity.</p>
<p>I agree with Xiggi. Many kids do not have internships every summer for a variety of reasons. Some are taking classes, some are unable to find them. Every person has to have a FIRST job and the idea that this has to be in high school or even in college in order to get a first job in their field of study as a college graduate and expertise is becoming ridiculous. </p>
<p>I don’t advocate “sitting on the couch”…but we really don’t KNOW what these young women are doing. We are getting a second hand report that is coming from a mom who this OP says has “high expectations”. </p>
<p>I personally would not give my kids an ultimatum to move out IF they were making a good faith effort to get a job AND were helpful as members of our household. I would start to charge them rent after a period of time…that we would determine together.</p>
<p>D1 is getting ready to complete a year of Americorps service, and while the value of the position itself varies from day to day, I think that the part it played in her recent job search was huge, particularly since her only previous work was 3 yrs of WS.</p>
<p>She started her search in March with trepidation given all of the dire employment stats and reports. I was surprised and cautiously optimistic when most of her cover letters resulted in first and second interviews. She got a couple of “thanks but we found someone more suited for the job”, then about a week ago she got her first job offer, and then a few days later, a second.</p>
<p>I think that Americorps provided crucial post-UG employment within her area of interest that helped in landing that first entry level job. While this wasn’t her objective in joining Americorps, it seems that living in NYC on 12K + food stamps has paid much larger dividends in the end.</p>
<p>Americorps jobs are not easy to get. I have heard stories recently from parents who just figured their kids would get Americorps jobs … there sure is a lot of competition for those low-paying, difficult (and necessary to our society) jobs. I know that I would look seriously at candidates like your D.</p>
<p>I strongly disagree. I graduated from high school at age 16, so I had never had a paying job, though I had volunteered & also spent a summer as a camp counselor-in-training. But my lack of work experience was clearly a major barrier for me all through school. I got jobs over the summers, but not very good ones - and I would see my friends and roommates building up more experience. I went straight from college to law school… and the problem continued – so down the line I felt I was at a huge disadvantage in terms of employment compared to my more work-savvy graduating classmates. Like the current generation, I graduated into a recessions so that didn’t help either.</p>
<p>I don’t think the idea of the “first job” starting as a teenager is new at all – almost all of my college friends had work experience, and I started college in 1970. </p>
<p>Both my kids had part-time jobs in high school. My son worked the local franchise of a pizza chain, my daughter had retail jobs & a job doing database entry in an office. </p>
<p>It’s not just about getting experience in the particular field of interest – it’s getting the hang of work/employment culture, understanding how internal workplace politics works, getting a sense of the why & how of things. But it also does lay a foundation for better employment later in – employers aren’t simply looking for a degree, they are also looking for various job skills. I mean… my daughter certainly never took a course in how to set up a database in Excel --but it something that her employers expected her to be able to do. </p>
<p>I don’t feel that my kids were ever under too much pressure in high school. They traveled, they socialized. When my son wasn’t working he was spending an obscene amount of time playing videogames. Part-time work was just part of the balance that was added into equation of their lives as they approached adulthood.</p>
My son had a half-time Americorps position during college, and I am 100% sure he got that position because of previous work experience. I agree that the Americorps job was tremendously valuable for him career-wise and has been helpful on the resume – I think employers like it because it really demonstrates the ability to make and follow through on a commitment.</p>
<p>I have one who is tireless. She flat out despises “sitting around,” and finds what people term “downtime” to be wildly tedious. Now, contrary to the common myth that it is the “creatives” who prefer and require downtime, she is a very successful creative.</p>
<p>I have another who dropped out of the CV arms race about five minutes after she saw what was required. She is quite successful at the things which interest her and does NOT need to work hard to do well in school, but she is not “maximizing out” on her potential…when she was being recruited for sports by the Ivies she actually laughed at them. She wouldn’t go to an Ivy if they brought in someone to do her papers for her. ;)</p>
<p>Both will be successful in life, but I will say that we allowed them to make their own choices about time. </p>
<p>I suspect, Calmom, that your kids did not feel burned out because you were too busy at your own work, as was I, to make those choices FOR them. Kids who make thier own choices I think work to their own tolerance. For others, though, I do believe the system is producing burnout.</p>
<p>I think of how “back in the day” right before we began to be terror stricken about the Japanese taking over the world, we had reasonable amounts of homework, and the only students in AP’s were us strange kids who had been testing that way our whole lives. NOBODY’s parents put them in these things. None of us lost sleep and all of us did that work easily, back then. But we belonged in that class. The burn out is happening because of the pushing, imho.</p>
<p>This. The OP is extremely judgmental and “holier than thou,” I think due to wanting to think that their kid who worked in college is nothing like those slackers and thus will easily be employed.</p>
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<p>As another half-time Americorps alum, I agree. I strongly considered applying for FT Americorps positions but happened to get into a PhD program with excellent funding and so didn’t go that route.</p>
<p>Ok, just read teenagers and twenty-something instead of teenagers. Does this change anything to my point about expectations? It all starts in high school with the need to participate in extraordinary ECs and spend summers finding a cure for cancer or preparing for a Fields medal. Then college should be peppered with assistant duties, jobs, and internships. </p>
<p>Although the original intent is noble, there are plenty of students who cannot play that game. Students who have to help in the family business? Athletes who accumulate practices and tournaments? Students who need to earn their standard contributions?</p>
<p>The burden placed on many students and their parents is simply not realistic.</p>
<p>I ran recruiting for a company which used the concept of the runway (as in airport runway) as a metaphor for how we looked at candidates. A 22 year old doesn’t have a lot of runway so whatever is there needed to be stellar. If no work experience, then top grades, scores on standardized tests (yes, we asked for SAT’s), interesting internship or academic research, leadership opportunities at a fraternity or volunteer work, prizes or awards in their department, etc. Short runway- there needed to be something substantive to evaluate. A 35 year old has a lot of runway- relevant work experience, leadership, managerial skill, fast track promotions, etc- so the early stuff is less important, and frankly, by 35 years old you expect to see some failures as well as successes (don’t hire a 35 year old who has never failed- he or she is either lying on their resume or is a sociopath. Just kidding- sort of.)</p>
<p>So while Xiggi and others make an interesting point, you’re all splitting hairs. Having SOMETHING to talk about during a job interview besides what you did in a classroom makes all the difference between getting a job and being unemployed. Whether you ran a successful effort to rehab a 5 unit apartment building for Habitat for Humanity (non paid employment) or was promoted to assistant manager at Pizza Hut after two successful summers as shift supervisor, or edited and fact checked a professors monograph for publication, or ran a voter registration drive, or whatever-- you need to demonstrate initiative, the ability to get other people to do stuff for you, or organizational skills, or even just the ability to get out of bed at 6 am sometimes.</p>
<p>Don’t parse too finely whether it’s work, internship, whatnot. Employers need to see SOMETHING on that very short runway of a new college grad. And playing beer pong and updating your facebook page is not what they want to see.</p>
<p>Heck, that employer LOVED Eagle Scouts. We hired tons of them. I used to laugh- imagine having an SVP sit down with a 40 year old and ask, “Were you in scouting as a kid?”</p>