Microstory 292: Perspective Sixty-Seven

This is an experimental Perspectives microstory. The introduction can be found in Microstory 225. More to follow.

I feel comfortable saying that I’m more excited about the prospect of my father’s retirement than he is. He works harder than anyone should have to. We’re supposed to be heading towards a world with fewer work hours, but it seems as if every company is just trying to eke as much out of their employees as they can. Me, I dread having to move all the way into the workforce. I spent a year after graduating from college looking for a job, but no one was hiring. They all wanted a number of years of experience. I don’t know what world they’re living in, or how they think physics works, but I can’t get experience until someone hires me and gives me some. You see how that works? Time? You know time? So I gave up. I mean, I was applying for at least five jobs a day, including weekends. That’s almost 2,000 jobs, and I didn’t get a bite. So I just went back to school. I wasn’t the first to do that, and I read an article later that it was becoming a trend; putting off work to go to graduate school. I moved away from my family and spent a few more years learning everything I could about communications and marketing. Once I was nearing the end of that, though, I realized that I still wasn’t ready to be done with school, so I started going after a PhD. I don’t particularly like school, but I’ve become quite accustomed to it. It’s really the only thing that makes sense to me right now. Go to class, take notes, finish homework, write papers, and take tests. Rinse and repeat. Education carries a sort of simplistic beauty unmatched by anything in the world. Make no mistake, I am working, but only part time, and I can leave whenever I want to. What I don’t have is the pressure to find and build a career around a single thing. I rather enjoy moving around, learning a bunch of different random things, and quickly forgetting about them upon moving on to something else. I don’t know that I ever want to leave school at all. The mother of my child suggests that I just stay in school forever, and do research for the university. I’m gonna look into that, because that actually sounds great. Always being beholden to deadlines, but never expected to make any significant breakthroughs in the field? Sign me up.