See, I am one of the 18.6 per cent increase in Centrelink recipients between March 2012 and 2013. I am still a freelance journalist, but as I've started a Masters degree my time for anything other than ridiculous amounts of textbook reading has gone down to close to zero and as such I am left to suckle on that delicious government teet.
But... wait. Is it delicious though? There is a bit of stigma around 'dole bludgers' in Australian society. Typically, they can be seen as lazy and directionless. They're known for mis-spending the little money they receive, usually on booze, ciggies or drugs. All I can say is, if they are managing to afford that... they must at least be some sort of economic geniuses. I'm a smart guy and I'm yet to figure out how to make the meager C-link payment stretch over the whole fortnight. I will have one week where I'm pretty poor, and one where I'm stony broke.
If this wasn't a blog post, and it was in fact just me crapping on in your ear about how much it sucks to be on Centrelink, this is about the point in the conversation where you would probably tell me to 'get a job'. Now, I'm not averse to jobs (OK, well maybe a little) but that statement is such an easy throwaway remark and really doesn't help the situation. Most people when they say that mean, "get a shitty job if you want money so bad". But the problem is, I don't want a shitty job, I want a good job. And so does everyone else. We're all taught in school, paradoxically, to shoot for the stars and think outside the box, yet that you have to 'start at the bottom'. The desire NOT to be a shit kicker is, however, one of the defining traits of Generation Y. I blame all that self esteem we were pumped full of as kids.
Consider an excerpt from a story a friend of mine told me on Facebook. To keep some modicum of privacy, I'll refer to him just as JP.
JP: So I've spent the last 6 years at uni getting two degrees, a Bachelor of Business with a major in Marketing and an Arts degree with a dual-major in Ancient History and Religious Studies. After getting my final results I realise I now have nothing to do and a crap load of debt, so it was time to get a job.
Over the last 2 and a half weeks I've had 5 job interviews. A car dealership needed a Car Detailer, there was a part time position as a bank teller, Assistant Marketing Manager at a club, Assistant Manager at a local store, and a Customer Service guy at a different store in the same shopping complex (I can give you the company names but I didn't think it would be wise to point fingers.)
The car dealership and the Customer service role told me that I was too over-qualified, and even though I assured them I had no problem with those positions as long as I was given opportunities to advance I still got nowhere. The Assistant Manager and the Assistant Marketing manager roles were denied me because I've been too long out of the work force while working on my degrees. And the Bank Teller role was the cherry on top. I got off the phone with the HR girl at lunch time. She told me that while I was a little over-qualified for the role, the reason I didn't get it is because of my lack of work experience over the last 5 years. In her words I "chose not to work while studying and now I'm paying for it". I was one of five people being considered for the role, and I met the others at the group interview. I was the most qualified and the most experienced. The others consisted of a German guy that spoke in broken english, a uni student in his third year of a Science degree that has never worked a day in his life, a hot chick that was wearing clothes that were three sizes too small because her resume consisted of working as a secretary for her daddy for six months, and an old woman 4 years off retirement who applied for the job because she's bored at home. The bank went with the hot chick.
If this was all that I had to deal with I wouldn't worry too much and have a spoonful of cement. But when I relayed the above to my job search provider and asked if there was something different I should be trying they told me that maybe I shouldn't have gone to uni, or at the very least I should have done a part-time degree so I could have worked at the same time.I really couldn't help but laugh at the end of that. I immediately pictured JP's job provider guy as something like this:
Now, I can relate to JP's experience very well. I've been rejected from no less than 4 jobs recently for being 'too qualified' for the role, which I'm sure is just like the job interviewer's version of 'It's not you, it's me..." but the logic is that over-educated people tend not to be very good workers. Which, really, is just one of many problems faced by over-educated folks.
So for now, it looks like my second degree will be filled with more poverty than my first, as now I'm too educated for the shitty jobs, my degree takes up too much of my time for the full time jobs, and well, there's not that many journalist jobs at all anyway. So I'm making my peace once again with my governmentally-imposed minimalism, doing my Masters coursework on a shoestring budget, saying goodbye to festival tickets, imported beer cases, videogames and all the little luxuries that having that extra income provides.
Realistically, I'm blessed to have been born in a country that gives me welfare while I take my shot at Uni Degree 2.0. I could have been born in Syria, or in Australia in the 1910's or something. So I am grateful for that. Just remember the human when you think of Australia's 788,364 'dole bludgers' in future. A lot of us have become slaves to our own educations, victims of choices we thought we were making correctly in our teens. A lot of us have talents that should not be discounted. A lot of us have the capacity to become fucking amazing at what we try. Don't give up on us yet because we sit at home contributing nothing to society (except a lot of empty Mi Goreng packets) -- most of us haven't even got off the ground yet.
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