Dear CCI,
Thank you very much for your recent emails encouraging me that the job hunt is “not meant to be stressful.” However, after receiving almost an email per day from you over the past month, I think it’s high time we changed the dynamic of our relationship. Your encouragement has started to have the opposite effect from which it is intended—every email has begun pushing steam out my ears as I rage against the incessant pestering to sell my soul to Goldman or McKinsey or whatever other firm where I’ll make a bunch of money that I can later donate back to Middlebury.
Dear CCI, please stop. Take me off your email list. I’m tired of receiving this endless flow of irrelevant and stressful emails. I decided to hit reply all because you don’t seem to be getting the hint. I haven’t responded and haven’t attended your sessions. I’ve tried to uncheck whatever boxes I foolishly checked on MOJO freshman year, but I probably missed a few. Or, maybe, you just indiscriminately send three emails a day to the all students list or the all seniors list. Either way, our current situation is unhealthy and I need it to stop.
Yes, we did have a brief fling this summer, CCI. You had an event for rising seniors, and I set up a meeting afterwards. However, despite your best efforts, you were incredibly unhelpful. I followed your advice, going to a website that I had already found on Google and contacted alumni through MiddNet. Unfortunately, those alums told me that my chances of getting hired with a B.A. were slim to none, and I should probably look into another field. But hey, at least you gave me a list of organizations that won’t even consider hiring me? Unfortunately, like most summer flings, now that the school year has begun again, one of us needs to end this. Based on the emails I received from you this morning, I guess that burden falls on me.
Dear CCI, your suggestion to start looking early definitely resonated with me. On the one hand, I know how to make a latte, so I think I can probably snag a barista gig if I don’t find anything. That said, I started searching for other jobs because Middlebury has qualified me to do so much more than fix coffee drinks. I’m contacting alumni for advice and ins. I’m identifying potential employers and scribbling down dates when applications open. I’m applying for a Fellowship. So far, so good. I’m qualified and I know I’ll find something. Then why am I feeling stressed?
Dear CCI, recently I realized that it’s not me—it’s you. Every year it seems, we as a community have a conversation about stress on campus. We blame the long winters and our collective inability to nordic ski or to find stylish parkas or that phone we dropped on Battell Beach before winter break. We blame the professors who give too much reading or assign too many papers or grade too harshly or just smell funny. We blame our boyfriends and girlfriends and the emotional Gravitrons on which they send us, spinning us around until we puke.
Not me though. I blame you, CCI. Why is it that each summer must “count”? What happens if I worked as dish washer for much of the summer? Am I still a worthy human? What if I’m here at Middlebury for *gasp* an education, not just a job upon graduation?
Now, I understand that finance and consulting recruiting cycles are earlier in the year than other industries. But it’s time to acknowledge that your overbearing pressure to find a job is taking away from something important: my college education. I spend my time worrying about the future instead of minding the present. I crawl job listings instead of the pages of the Iliad or The Economist. When again in my life will I have the opportunity to simply learn? Why must you attempt to shorten this experience as much as possible?
Last year, my friend Jen penned an op-ed insisting our education should be leisure, not work. She concluded: “You came to Middlebury for a reason. There was something inside of you that gravitated toward the idea of the College as an interval in one’s life, apart from the outside world. You have a desire to search for wisdom, to find the answers, to define your truth or seek out a Truth, if there is one.”
Dear CCI, I only have one chance at college. I came to Middlebury for a reason, and it wasn’t to find a job for when I leave. I’m here to learn, so please let me.
Dear CCI, I get it. Seriously. I know you’re there, and I am intentionally choosing not to seek help from you right now. More emails won’t help. I’m glad you’ll be there when I need you, but you’re constant pestering is just driving me further away. Right now though, if I could file for a restraining order in order to preserve my mental health and sanity, I would. But I can’t. So CCI, this is my unofficial order for you to cease-and-desist. Thanks for the offers to help, but I’m tired of receiving the same stress-inducing email each and every single day.
Dear CCI, my education is too important and too costly for me to waste time deleting your emails. I hope that I won’t have to send this to you every day until you get the message.
With love,
Josh Berlowitz
