apoptosis or something. "In teenagers, unused brain cells are pruned away." It happens in adults too, not just with cells in your head but kind of all over (muscular atrophy a popular example).
I just feel myself dumbing down. My learning curve has plateaued, took a steep dive, and is now in the negative. It's hard for me to remember new song lyrics, for instance (although I surprised myself by singing along, nearly flawlessly, to 'N Sync's "Tearin' Up My Heart" this morning - some knowledge, it seems, becomes deeply ingrained at childhood). Spell check automatically corrects my mistakes (ettiquite, privilege, seperate).
Or is it low morale, when you wonder, how much was college education really worth, and is any job really beneath you, (or is it arrogance to think that, or are you undervaluing your worth applying to jobs that could be "beneath you"), and how many years behind the salary curve I could be if I were to take a low-end, low-paying "survival job" (as some would call it, particularly those employed, snappy article writers). I remember reading an article that mentioned Asian American women were taking jobs they were overqualified for, and for lower pay, at higher rates than other gender-ethnicity combinations. Damn, I wish I could remember where I read that (all I recall are a bunch of pie charts) and oh efff, that's my demographic now isn't it?
During my brief period of "unemployment" (well, I am still pretty much unemployed at this paid internship), I watched nearly no television and spent all my time online, scouring online job search engines (hello, Indeed.com and Craigslist), reading articles about the consequences of taking a low paying job and blogs about writing winning cover letters, and then searching for other "unemployment blogs" (blogs whose writers bitch about being unemployable. Oh hey, Stuff Unemployed People Like).
Even if I were to find a job now... well... and I quote from "The Curse of Class 2009": "Even those who land jobs" during a period of recession "will likely suffer lower wages for a decade or more compared to those lucky enough to graduate in better times, studies show." Never mind that we are officially no longer in the "Great Recession," the worst is not over for many. And as an art history major, it also makes me really happy to read that "for science and engineering graduates... immediate prospects may stink, but if they can land a job in their fields, their earnings bounce back quicker than their non-science and non-engineering counterparts" (via http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/2009/05/lower-pay-for-c.html, which I don't feel like SEO'ing).
There's also this lovely interactive map published by the New York Times that shows unemployment rates across the US.
Am I too quick to get all glum about my prospects, as it hasn't even been six months yet? Expectations are such terrible things.
Typing in html codes fragments one's thoughts.
