Hughes, Deana: Paglia

Since the latest recession started jobs have become a precious commodity. The threat of losing jobs looms everywhere. Even my father, who had worked for the same company for eleven years found himself unemployed for most of 2009. My generation seems doomed from the start. If jobs are hard to keep for seasoned employees, how hard will it be to secure a first job or start a career? Based on personal experience, I say the jobs are there but the hard part is being noticed by employers.

Camille Paglia discusses in her article Revalorizing the Trades that the predicament of losing jobs is not going to disappear any time soon (par 1). She also says self-fulfilling jobs are a thing of the past for most artisans and that only medical and law students have a hope of a guaranteed job once they get a degree (par 2).

For years my plans were to become a doctor because I believed it was the only way to be financially safe. During the last few years of high school I realized that I would not make a good medical doctor. To put it bluntly people who complain annoy me, which is not a good trait for someone who must listen to complaints from patients every day. I investigated other medical professions such as pharmacy where practitioners do not see patients often. But I am not a fan of math. My original dream was to work with animals. Horses are my passion, but anything that is furry, feathery, or has claws will do as well. I thought of becoming a vet. Unfortunately, that idea did not stick with me following the experience of having to put my own horse down.

My high school happened to have a program called Fundamentals in Research Methods or FIRM which required every student to pick a project and write in-depth papers on the topic. Based on the type of topic chosen these papers could be purely research or experimental in nature. My topic happened to be experimental and I found my niche. After 18 months of crying over data, statistics, and grammatical errors Science Fair came. One of my judges was a park ranger from the nearby National Park. He seemed particularly impressed by my presentation. Afterward I stayed behind to talk to him because of my interest in everything outdoors. The first thing he did was offer me a job. At first I did not think I heard him correctly, but come to find out he was not just a park ranger. He was the National Resource Manager for the entire Hot Springs National Park. He gets to do all kinds of cool research on government property with government funds paying for all sorts of neat equipment every day and he wanted me as an assistant. Doors suddenly opened for me that I had no idea even existed. I had heard of the National Park Service but I had never thought of it as a career opportunity.

After being in the Park Service for a summer I realized the problem. The Park Service has specific programs in place for hiring students of all majors from Anthropology through Mathematics to Zooology. The problem is educators do not know these programs exist. This past summer my boss and I worked with my high school to create a research partnership which lets the students use the National Park as their lab. The Park had partnered with universities before but never a high school. The jobs are out there. It just takes a little research to find them.