Dear the Guy at the hiring event somewhere in NC,
Although, I remember your name I prefer to no use your name but rather simply refer you as the guy. And though, I was part of the hiring event I prefer to leave the city unknown.
This morning as I walk in for the hire event, as of course I volunteer to help being part of the company from your brother store an hour away, I couldn’t help but listened to you ridiculing an interviewee from the previous day. Though, you may have not been ridiculing her in my ears and eyes you were. The way you said out loud ” I don’t understand why you would want to work at a retail store especially when you have a bachelor degree in biology. I mean why would you want to work for a retail store?” Although, it sounded like any typical question, your tone and attitude were not. It sounded as if you were looking down on her, on me, my friends and family.
It wasn’t until I spoke up and you looked surprised and everyone around look at me. And then you asked me about my own education background. In fact, I had more to say to you, more to say to everyone that were present. And more to say to people like you who question young people with high degrees.
The fact that you think any young person with a high degree would want to work in a retail, fast food, or company job is wrong. In fact, we want a career related to our field of study. We graduate from college hoping to find a high paying job. While most of us end up with a high end job, plenty of us end up working in low paying jobs. Jobs that we cannot even afford to pay back student loans or any other type of bills. Jobs that make us feel smaller seeing our peers with a stable paying job that are exactly in their field of study.
Some of us have experience in other parts of field while we lack experience in the field we so desire. And thus are over shadowed by other applicants. And like how you only want to hire the best applicant for your newly open store, many of the employees that we want to work for do the same. And so, we get little to no experience at all. Instead, most of us build our experience from volunteering and doing researches. And yet sometimes we feel under appreciated. Then, we meet people like you I feel even more under appreciated.
In fact, some of us don’t even want to brag about our education because we know that we will be judge. But we cannot hide it when the application asks for it. We rather you just glance at it and ask any question, bit when you do we have to give the details. We don’t want to work in your field, but we need to. Just like many of the other applicants who need the job. Like how you need to keep your job and maybe even the need for a more higher paying job.
Do you even know that many of college graduate go through each of his/her own cycle of depression? Nagging from parents to find a job, being envious of friends and peers, listening to other parents bragging about their kids, feeling under appreciated at our current job, feeling under pay, feeling anxious each time we see our student loan interest raises, and finally the feeling that we did everything so right there is nothing left that we feel we were wrong during the whole process.
Most of us decide to go back to school to get another degree or certificate in hopes that we can find other jobs or hopefully get lucky and land one right away by building more connections. Because that is what the world is currently built on right now, connections.
I’m not upset nor am I mad. I don’t know if you have any friends, nieces, nephews, or cousins currently in college or graduated from college. But I just wanted you know that it’s just not those without a degree that cannot get a job. Even those with strong academic/education background and high degrees go through the same cycle. At the end, we are all hard working and self entitled slaves to our own lives reaching for the endless sky each day and night. We all have dreams that we want to accomplish and there are steps must be taken, whether it’s a first tiny step or a huge step we’re doing it. And we can only go forward.
Sincerely,
Girl at the hiring event in some city of NC
MaiMai 
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