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First job blues: Everyone starts somewhere |
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Written by Knight Ridder
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Wednesday, 10 May 2006 |
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Congratulations!: You graduated magna cum laude and now you’re a paper pusher. Not long ago you were pulling all-nighters to ace exams and assisting world-class professors with their groundbreaking research. Now you’re doing data entry — filing, faxing and photocopying your way to a bitter workplace attitude a la “The Office.”
Quit whining, says author Michael Ball, an authority on entry-level jobs. Everybody’s got to start at the bottom. And guess what? College didn’t prepare you for the real world.
“A good undergraduate degree is largely a hoop that you need to jump through,” says Ball, the author of the recently released book “You’re Too Smart for This: Beating the 100 Big Lies About Your First Job.”
“So essentially, ‘Give us 100k. We will stamp you; you have our approval; you have our seal. And you’re going to get recruited by a solid Fortune 500.’ ... And then you can really start learning.”
More of this and other of Ball’s perhaps unpopular opinions below:
How does college damage your perspective on reality?
Ball: It has its own set of rules, expectations, the back doors, the ins and outs — essentially how the whole system functions and works runs almost completely counter to how reality works.
Is that a fault of college or just how it is?
Ball: It’s absolutely a fault of college. My big beef with academia is it’s a lot of academics for academics’ sake. And not that we don’t need Plato and Shakespeare and all that — a good liberal arts background is a good liberal arts background. That said, universities are notoriously light on actual usable, practical, life information.
So should people not go to college?
Ball: I’m a huge fan of college. Those are some great four years. (Ball went to UCLA.) I feel that college has great function in terms of socializing you. It teaches you about independence and responsibility.
What are some of the biggest temptations as a new worker that you should avoid?
Ball: The biggest one is to think that you are above the grunt work. When companies come to campus, it’s like going to the horse track. You bet the kids with the internships because they give you the best odds, and then it’s, “Go, baby, go.” And some do, some don’t, which means everyone starts off at the bottom and then you individually earn your way up from there.
What if you are clearly much smarter than your boss?
Ball: It happens so often. Your No. 1 job is to make this person look good. Even if you’re the only reason they continue to be employed, it is your job to make them look good, to cover up their errors, to support them, because at that level, they are the reason you will get promoted, a raise, transferred, what have you. At that point, they’re your demigod. Unfortunately.
You talk about the egomania of newbie workers. Where does that come from?
Ball: A lot of it goes right back to school, because they’ve been coddled by parents, by professors, by career center staff. You know the whole Saturday Night Live bit: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone it, people like me.” That’s the whole thing. Companies in this regard are equally culpable because they come to campus with this big dog-and-pony show. They give you the whole multimedia presentation, these over-caffeinated reps, and they’re saying how it’s going to be so sexy and exciting. They really play up your expectations. | Only registered users can write comments.
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