So as more and more people I know go through the job-getting process, and begin to get offers from various places, I’ve begun to think more about the dynamics of getting a job. As occasionally happens when I get all thoughtful, I’ve stumbled upon a revelation: getting a job is all about bullshitting and kissing ass. It’s a process that makes little to no sense, especially if, like us, you haven’t done it before. Here are the things you need for a good job search:

The Suit: I suppose this isn’t what should be at the top of my list, but as it’s probably the easiest part of the whole process, I decided to tackle it first. At the career services information session at the beginning of the semester they told us we should dress as if we were going to a funeral. The lady then described a picture of great horror to me: solid black suit, with a skirt below the knees and pantyhose. To top the entire horrible ensemble off, we should also wear closed toed black shoes, with low heels. This has to be the most ugly, boring outfit ever. It seems odd to me how anyone can do well in an interview dressed like that. First of all, this is Houston and during every month between February and December it’s ass hot. If you’re wearing black, you’re almost guaranteeing a day full of praying your sweat hasn’t leaked all the way through your suit coat. Pantyhose are particularly uncomfortable in the heat, and they inevitably end up with runs just as you get out of the car to walk into the building. Additionally, how can you look at your interviewer and say something about how you can bring creative energy to the team or some shit like that, when you and everyone else in the waiting room is wearing the exact same thing? Apparently even pin stripes are frowned upon, which makes no sense, because what’s more professional than pinstripes? It’s not like wearing camouflage or something, although that’d be a pretty interesting suit.

The Resume: This always bothers me, because a resume is all about making the things you do sound like you actually have some kind of skills. This is particularly hard as a college student with no marketable skills. When I sat down to think about what I had learned from my various jobs over the years, here’s the list I came up with:

• Parents always think that their baby peeing on someone else is funny and adorable.
  
• Three year olds will lie to you given the opportunity
  
• Parents are stupider than their kids about 75% of the time.
  
• Iced Tea tastes the same whether the glass it comes in is foggy with water stains and detergent, or clear because it came fresh out of the box.
  
• If there’s only 4 of a dessert left, 5 people at a table of eight will want it.
  
• There’s no point in having an ice cream freezer if the temperature is the same as in the Deep Freeze.
  
• Nothing is too professional for glitter
  
• People will hear only what they want to hear.
  
• And finally, no matter what job you end up getting, you’ll spend 90% of your time finding ways to look incredibly busy while doing nothing at all.
  

The problem I’ve found is that employers don’t particularly care for my brand of honesty. They want to hear about the leadership skills I’ve cultivated through one bullshit activity or another, or my extraordinary motivation and ambition. Unfortunately because I’m only 21, and am more focused on the many things I’ll buy with my first paycheck (TiVo!) than whatever job will be providing said check, I’m having trouble proving any such thing to anyone, which is probably why I’ve yet to have an actual interview.

The Interview: Basically the interview is where you have to spout off all the bullshit that you wrote on your resume while keeping a straight face and wearing the least comfortable outfit known to man not made of hemp. Somehow the idea that whatever job I end up with will be based almost solely on my ability to lie successfully to someone’s face provides me with a little bit of comfort. I mean, if there’s nothing else I’ve learned in school, it’s how to lie. Really, the arts of bullshitting and kissing ass will be more useful to me than anything that actually appears on my transcript. It makes me wonder how my transcript would read if it included what I had actually learned as opposed to the classes I took and what I was supposed to be learning. Things like “How to make a plausible excuse for a paper that’s two months late,” would be on there as well as “How to get through college with no motivation.” I think my all time favorite would be, “How to lose all dignity and self-respect, and still be able to look at yourself in the mirror the next day.” (The materials list for that particular class would consist of gratuitous amounts of alcohol, a mostly empty stomach, and a slutty Halloween costume. Yay, lack of self-control!) Anyway, I digress. The interview of course being the most important part of any job application process is also the place where it’s most easy to lose the job before you even get it. Fortunately for me, I haven’t had the opportunity to worry about that right now, and can focus my energy on drinking even more gratuitous amounts of alcohol, and beating my previous high score on Bejeweled on MSN games.

The Decision: For people who are on top of their shit, this is the finale, the concluding moment that all the shit has led up to: picking your job. Unfortunately, I’m completely unqualified to even comment on this part of the job search. I’m the real world equivalent to that kid in high school who decided to apply to college in mid-March when everyone else was starting to hear back already, and then was surprised when they couldn’t even get into state school. Consequently they ended up at a community college, but were determined to “transfer out” the next semester. Three years later when you go home for winter break, they’re still in community college working on their associate’s degree in something or other and have developed an affinity for hookers and chewing tobacco in the meantime. They still plan on transferring to a four year school, just as soon as they have the money saved up, they explain to you as they spit a wad of black, cancerous, inner cheek tissue into the snow next to your boot. Yeah, that’s me.

And once again, here are some things I’ve been wanting to bitch about lately:

-Why is it that room temperature water feels room temperature, but room temperature coffee feels like there are ice cubes floating around in it?

-I really hate in TV shows when a couple is having a fight, and at some point one of them will say something along the lines of “well maybe we just shouldn’t do this anymore!” and the other one will inevitably say “wait a minute, what are you saying?” or “are you breaking up with me?” Of course he’s breaking up with you; people don’t usually say things that sound like “we should break up,” if the idea hasn’t at least crossed their mind. It also kills me that these characters act like they never saw it coming. If you’ve been arguing and cheating on each other for the better part of a season, chances are it’s time for you to break up if only so that we don’t have deal with any more of your ridiculous arguments. Ass-hats.

-Reality TV has gone too damn far. Jiin-yu and I saw a commercial for a reality dating show yesterday where, in order to pick a girl to go out with, a guy has to go on a date with each girl’s mom. Jeez. That’s almost as bad as the reality show where all those guys attempt to make themselves into cross-dressers. I’m really sick of reality TV; when is the rest of the country going to join me?

-What’s with Vh1 and E! and all the countdown/clip shows? I don’t think I’ve seen anything different from either one of them in the last couple of months. In the last week alone I’ve watched “The 100 Most Hard Rock Moments,” “The 100 Most Influential Rock Bands,” “The 100 Wildest Red Carpet Moments,” and “The 100 Sexiest Celebrities.” The sad thing is that with each one of them, I had to watch all the way to see who was number one. The result is me watching four hours of random TV factoids despite the fact that I could have checked the channel’s website and found out who the number one person was in two minutes. Oh well, I never said I was smart. It’s all the reality TV that’s killing my brain, I swear.

-I hate the fact that more men are now willing to admit that they’re completely emasculated. It takes the sting out of insults like, “Don’t be such a pussy, real men don’t cry/knit/wear panties,” when the guy responds, “Ha! Joke’s on you! I never said I was a real man!” I mean, c’mon. At least pretend, will you?

-Who are these people in class who insist on bringing a full damn meal with them? In my 10am class there’s always these two girls who sit up in class and eat a bowl of cereal, a container of yogurt and an apple during class everyday, and I’m always like, lunch is in two hours, can’t you wait? There’s nothing worse than sitting in class trying to hear something possibly important, and having the girl next to you slurping milk and crunching on granola for half the damn class. Bitches.

-I hate PowerPoint. I have yet to see a situation in which it’s actually useful in class. I have two kinds of profs: the kind who put so much on each slide that you spend all of class scribbling furiously to get down all the notes, but since they move so fast, you’re stuck with all these half finished paragraphs in handwriting that looks like it was done with your feet. The other kind of prof is the kind who puts three words on each slide and only has ten slides in the entire set. Consequently you end up with half a page of notes in bullet form with a word next to each bullet without any context whatsoever. There’s nothing like cramming for a test the night before, and attempting to remember what the words/phrases “Sociological Interactionism,” “Youth,” and “Voting Rights,” have to do with each other. To top it off, these notes are also hard to decipher because all the free time in class causes me to doodle like I'm still in 8th grade Algebra. Eventually I just give up, because even if I can pick the word “Dysfunctional,” out of my mini-mural of aliens, flowers, and random astrological symbols, I still won’t know what it refers to in the greater context of the class. Better to just grab a beer and play Bejeweled instead while I wait for the newest episode of “The Real World: Philly” to come on. In the eloquent words of Aaron Karo, “fuck me!”