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PAUL URBANSKI
By BARBARA CORNELL
WITH LAST YEAR'S income
tax fresh in the mail, it's
time once again to turn around
and reach into the mothballs for
that pasty publicity smile and
venture out into the real world
in search of the endless bum-
mer - a summer job.
The summer jobless syndrome
has struck particularly hard this
year. Not only has the econ-
omy's poor state crushed a
large portion or formerly avail-
able jobs, but there is a new
attitude prevalent on m a j o r
campuses which will probably
sound all too familiar to most
of you. It is study up, buck up
to all the profs for glorious re-
ferences, and get the awesome
GPA so you can snare what few
jobs there are. Those precious
positions undoubtedly seem as
far away as promises of two
cars in your future garage, and
it seems clear that the nation's
inflation will mean your ego's
deflation if you're looking for a
summer job this year.
IF YOU'RE not the aggres-
sive, tooth-and-nail, dog-eat-dog
type, don't feel lonely in your
misery. Countless other softies
share the ulcerous pain which
comes with the hard sell per-
sonal p.r. act.
True you may feel like Char-
lie the Tuna, finning your way
through a sea of interviews with
a sign that reads Starving in-
stead of Starkist. And although
you've tried every trick in the
book - short of mercenary sex
or a hand stand on the top of
the Empire State Building -
you may be consoled by the fact
that the competition has zried
all those tricks just like you.
But do yourself a favor: don't
trade in the real McCoy toorh-
paste for a tube of alleged sex
appeal. Summer jobseeking is
only a case of the bland leading
the bland, and you won't gut
around that no matter how hard
you try. Look in the mirror and
face the facts: You are what
you are.
IT MAY very well be degrad-
ing to fit yourself on t h e
dotted line of an application
form. And it's hard to stare at
your verbal reflection on your
carefully spaced resume. What
can be more disheartening than
having to reduce your being to
a single typed page? You m a y
also spend countless nights ly-
ing awake figuring out bigger
and better ways to build up your
experience as a dishwasher.
Just what were the great and
meaningful things you °x'ract-
ed from that job? That you have
a greater degree of stabiliv and
warmth? Can you talk to a dish-
washing machine better than
anyone you know?
Perhaps the worst part of it
all is the feeling of dejection
when you reread it and realize
it's just as much fanrasv as
fact.
All this adds up to a very
grim picture of the summer em-
ployment scene, but there's a
brighter side.
IT IS A WELL known fact :h*at
everything that ;aes uip
must come down, so if you feel
your anger rising, start ]:ak-
ing on the lighter side of iKm-
mer job seeking.
As you sit down to complete
your 87th application, noU ce h w
your typing has improved _-
and if it hasn't, notice h o w
yor erasing has imoroved.
Pat yourself on the back for
your ingenuity in mvoidin, un-
employment. Who would have
thought that despite your ter-
minal hay fever, you c o u I d
continue your casual lawn-mow-
ing job this summer by getting
a job mowing astroturf? You
deserve to be congratulated.
Think what a character-tuild-
er your interviews are. , r o r
now on, when some wicked-look-
ing prospective employer glares
at you and hisses, "w:at's the
difference between irr tare and
aggravate?" you won't 1: a v e
to flinch because you'll t.now
the answer.
VOR THOSE who end up side-
lined this summer, there are
also brighter sides to unem-
ployment.
You can imagine that resume
you wrote wasn't a total lie.
You can actually acquire a tas:e
for filling out applicaqkns.
And lastly, you can think that
someone, somewhere, some.iay,
will finally stand up and say,
"Smile, you're employed!"
Barb Cornell is The Daily
Special Projects Editor.
Eighty-Five Years of Editorial Freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Out
but not in: Jobless grads
Saturday, March 29, 1975
News Phone: 764-0552
By DAN BORUS
FOR JOHN Broder and Alison Geist, it hasn't
been a pleasant winter. Not only has it been
cold up around Conway Michigan way, but the
odd jobs they have done this season have yielded
barely enough to keep them afloat financially.
They live in an old log cabin where the heating
bills have skyrocketed to over $80.00 a month.
Firewood is expensive and the winds coming off
the frozen lake across the road from their cabin
doesn't help at all. Food stamps do help, but
not much.
Neither John nor Alison thinks it has to be
this way. Both John, a former photographer for
the Cleveland Press who graduated from the Uni-
versity in April 1974, and Alison, a '74 graduate in
population planning, are bright, articulate, capable
and ambitious. Their previous successes indicated
that the future should have been bright.
But that was before the Nixon recession of 1974-
7S. .
SINCE LAST AUGUST when they first went
North after some discouraging job hunting in
Cleveland, Detroit, and Washington, John has set
type, taken shorthand, and now runs the audio-
visual department of the Harbon Springs High
School; Alison has signed people up for ski lessons
at Boyne Mountain. In between times, they've
collected food stamps and unemployment compen-
sation.
John and Alison are not alone. The Class of '74
had less success in getting employment and lives
they wanted than their predecessors in 1973. The
Class of 1975 should find it even harder. Parti-
cularly hard hit in 1974 were those in the liberal
arts - English, history and journalism. Cutbacks
in newspaper and education hiring, as well as the
tight crush on graduate schools has sent many
recent grads into a quiet, gnawing desperation.
THIS desperation is born on the contradiction
of the times. The current generation has lived all
its life in prosperity. Few of its members have
had to struggle for success, only for moral direc-
tion. We are the generation which has been told
over and over again that if you worked hard, you
would be able to achieve and receive rewards for
that achievement.
But now achievement isn't enough. You need luck
and luck is fickle and elusive.
In a sense this is a generation that feels lied to.
Not that John and Alison and those like them felt
STUDENTS HAVE found a way to fight chance
as the governor of American life - studying long-
er and drinking harder. It comes as no surprise
that the two most popular Ann Arbor buildings are
the library and the bar.
It's not fun that fills the bars nor respect for
learning that crowds the library. It is the fear
of failure. The library is crowded because stu-
dents believe that Dame Chance will smile on them
only after they've put in enough time in all the
trenches. The bars are doing landmark business be-
cause students have a desperate yearning for fun
- a care-laden "this is what I am supposed to do
to have fun" despite the actual return on the
investment.
POLITICAL DISCUSSION is met only with bored
yawns or easy dismissals. Since life is only chance,
why get involved? It is interesting to note that
in the student districts last year the marijuana
fine proposal passed while rent control failed to
muster the same majority. The former measure is
designed for the personal life styles and is fit for
easing despair and depression. The latter is nei-
ther self-centered nor non-active.
It isn't clear whether or not students admit their
despair to themselves and others. But it is there.
Five years ago when John, Alison, and I started
school, we remarked to each other that unlike
high school, students here smiled at each other;
they walked with their heads held up. Check for
that today.
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104
the world
John and
that once
possibility
John and
of finding
extending
possibility
owed them a living on silver platter.
Alison certainly didn't. They did feel
they finished school, there would be a
on the horizon. The possibility that
Alison talk about is not the possibility
tax olopholes to make a million or even
the oil depletion allowance. It is the
to achieve on one's own terms, to work
PAUL URBANSKI
at challenges, to create.
FROM THE viewpoint in that old cabin up
north, in an Ann Arbor subsistence apartment or in
one's parents home that possibility is now impro-
bability. In it's place is uncertainty and emptiness.
How else can you fight luck?
You can't fight it when your stomach's knotted
and empty. You can't fight it when you're fight-
ing helplessness as well. You can't fight it when
society and all its work suggest your worthless-
ness. You can't fight chance when you have nag-
ging doubts.
Dan Borus
Magazine.
is Co-editor
of The Daily Sunday
Student guide
to
the
brighter side
By MARNIE HEYN
REATHES THERE a student with soul
so dead that he or she has never said,
'What am I doing with my life?"
I doubt it. Certainly since the Berkeley
ree Speech Movement, student alienation
as been well enough recognized as a
ocial phenomenon to be a standard faculty
ea conversational gambit, the bread and
utter of umpteen thousand school-employ-
d shrinks, and the fodder for every third
r fourth mental health research grant.
Actually, student alienation as a modern
merican habit is older than the radical six-
ies or the Free Speech Movement. Even
uring the good ole rock-and-roll Eisenhow-
r Fifties, under the evolutionary pres-
ures of the GI Bill and the myth of up-
ard mobility, disgusted undergraduates
ropped out, got shaggy, lived in coldwater
lats, and wrote weird poetry. We can learn
rom them.
But we can learn a lot more from their
eers who acted "normal" and stuck it out
n those industrial management/civil serv-
:e playpens labeled Higher Education: a
A, marriage to someone of the opposite
ex with a compatible background, a desk
ob where you don't get sweaty (even
hough you get ulcerated), 1.8 children, a
tation wagon, and a mortgaged house in
'estchester ain't no nirvana, no how.
THERE ARE a couple of standard reme-
ies for the malaise of feeling useless and
nreal while training to be well-to-do and
,hite collar. Red, white and blue ortho-
oxy says buckle down, keep a clean nose,
nd truck along in the academic major
f your choice, because, after all, the re-
,ards are real neat and it's the American
,ay. If you buy this, you got a divorce
om your humanity a long time ago and no
econciliation is possible: farewell and
ax vobiscum.
Eat spinach souffle; walk to class down a
different street; part your hair in a new
place; talk to someone in a different con-
centration about your respective lives and
dreams; make a public (or private) display;
listen to a record because it has, a nifty
cover, or read a book because it has a
funny title; organize a strange activity for
Saturday night; cook bizarre food for
Sunday supper; make equal-opportunity
friends; buy a spice that has a pretty
name:
ASK RUDE questions: How can you ex-
pect us to eat dried-out turkey tetrazzini
eleven meals in a row? Why do you look
nauseated whenever I make an intellectual
observation? What do you mean, I can't
(blank) (fill in) because of my age/sex/
religion/political affiliation/national origin/
color/hair length/student status/dress style
/bank account (circle one)?; So what?
. TREAT YOURSELF like a sensory or-
ganism: Make a home that comforts and
cheers you, even in a 3-D xerox dorm
room; finger-paint; hum in public; pick
up litter, and chew out people who make
smog; design a community mural on an
ugly wall; talk to birds; discover hydro-
therapy; turn a cartwheel; make a mud
pie; dance without music.
TREAT YOURSELF like a thinking or-
ganism: Ask obvious questions; challenge
easy answers; talk back to the TV or the
book, or the lecturer; do the suggested
reading; vote; stop avoiding serious dis-
cussions; argue with experts: I
LEARN AND do things that don't earn
credit: Write a haiku; sign a petition;
take mandolin lessons; learn how to wiggle
your ears or make cat's cradle; try out for
a musical; adopt a strange critter; read
to a blind student; fast when you feel
jaded; give away a toy you like.
Warning: The Surgeon General has de-
Grades:
a race
for the
numbers
By JEFF SORENSEN
A PERENNIAL feature of University
life that remains as intense as ever
is the competition for the sacred "grade
point average" (GPA). Hordes of fanatic,
hard-working types now clutter up the
undergraduate and grad libraries' near
the end of terms, all seeking the one
path of true enlightenment and security
-the suitable two-digit summation of
their work at the University.
A few years ago, a student c o u I d
avoid the rat race by saying he or she
was involved in campus politics or
"stopping the war" or some other noble
cause. But today, almost no one can
stay away from concern over their GPA
- which has become something akin
to death and taxes for most students.
AS A RESULT, the GPA has been
placed on a pedestal - you can't get a
job without it, but having it is cer-
tainly no greattdistinction. Furthermore,
a high grade average is not even a guar-
antee of any sort of acceptance at the
school and/or of your dreams. In fact,
most of the acceptance process is more
dependent on plain luck than any other
factor.
Worst of all, not only is most of the
effort required to obtain a high GPA
of little or no value, most of the busy
work is actually counter-productive. The
kind of work that demands careful me-
morization 6f details for later regurgi-
tation, certainly does little to foster a
sense of independent thinking or learn-
ing in the truest sense.
And if students aren't learning any-
thing of value, it leads nany of us to
question whether -we're here for any,
purpose other than to hand over several
thousands dollars in exchange for the
"prestigious" University of Michigan
degree.
FURTHERMORE, the heavy emphasis
on grades subverts the supposed pur-
pose of education that the University
claims to serve. In point of fact, the
University has, time and time again,
reaffirmed its committments to t h e
high-pressturegrad-seeking atmosphere
of the present.
Innovative academic programs t h a t
don't stress grades are always the first
to face fund cutbacks, witness the Uni-
versity's near-elimination of the Pilot
Program this year. Recently, our fa-
culty has approved a measure that would
allow professors to give plus and minus
grades in addition to the letter system-
a proposal that would intensify the tough,
competitive atmosphere.
It may be asking too much to believe
the University capable of providing more
alternatives to the present system -
but this sore of hope almost always
seems to fly directly in the face of the
stark realities at the end of every term,
particularly when graduation looms in
the near future.
SO THOSE of us who don't particularly
care to end up washing dishes or putting
together electric can openers on an as-
sembly line, are faced with a dilemma:
whether to stick by our convictions and
learn what we think is important or
swallow our pride, conform and learn
what we're told to learn. Obviously, most
students choose the former alternative;
even though this selection may not be
all for the best, the University admit-
tedly has the only game in town.
Jeff Sorensen is Managing Editor of
The Daily.
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