Job Fair

Between the various types of Greek personalities, pseudo-intellectuals, and hulking athletes that you see loafing to classes around campus, there exists a special breed of people marked best by their formal dress: campus job fairgoers. These people, who think of themselves as having a leg up on you in the search for post-college employment, extend to all disciplines of education. They are the ones who prick their ears up at even the slightest mention of an internship or a job, and they are the principal patrons of the all-too-routine spectacle that is the campus job fair.

I decided to attend the Communication College Fall Job Fair just to get a nice look-see at these specimens in action. Sitting outside the fair in the Union, I quickly realized how underdressed I was in shorts and a t-shirt. Crowds of my fellow students walked by in khaki pants, long black skirts, dress shirts, and blazers designed to communicate that each of them is perfectly willing to submit to the authority of the office dress code.

The women, who far outnumbered the men, were really the first thing to cross my mental and physical line of vision. They were so mature-looking and business-like with their long straight hair and black-accentuated curves that you immediately wanted to approach these young women, these individuals who seem determined to take patriarchy by the balls. Yet, on second look, they seem the type who obsessively check Blackberrys and won’t sit still unless at an important meeting where not listening could directly cost them. Competing for the attention span of someone with money on his or her mind can cost one more mental dollars than it is worth.

I judged the males by their coverings as well. These guys have the same urge to seize the world as their female counterparts, but you root against them like the plague. With short, spiked hair and uninteresting conversation, they think of themselves as the next percentage point in the amount of Fortune 500 executives to graduate from your school. They only came to UT because of its high-ranking programs anyway, and they pompously refuse to identify with anything but the highest percentile of their narrow-minded criteria. Luckily, they probably have similarly generalized attitudes in mind when they think of me, so I don’t have to plan on crossing paths with them much in life.

Right on the inside of the fair, I noticed a cousin of mine who has some position or another at the local CBS affiliate. A great man, he let me stand aside for a second and watch as my peers desperately tried to woo him.

We look so strange when we cater to those who we think can serve as the gonnection to our desired life. With nervous smiles, we have to walk the continual tightrope between talking about our own greatness and that of whatever money-grubbing corporation has set up a booth at the fair.

The companies represented at the fair were, collectively, some of the organizations most adept at making our world worse. Clear Channel, which has helped turn the radio from a tool of democracy to a mindless trash machine, had a table. So did Phillip Morris, which has helped tobacco smoking become so much a national institution that the government won’t let us have any other type of fun. Even the police, who can make your life terrible at the snap of their fingers, were recruiting from our population.

Yet, there were some people there who gave me hope. Teach For America and Peace Corps, which may or may not have their own shortcomings, at least seek to ease the suffering or the world. And their tables had just as many visitors as any others.

Their popularity reflects a growingly-evident concern among some of our generation to have a direct positive effect on their worlds. Just from being involved in my class discussions, I know that there are people among our ranks who are aware of the state of the world. And I think we all just might do something, whether it is small or large in importance, to improve humanity.

This past weekend was another reason for a positive outlook. I just couldn’t get over the spirit that overtakes us during Halloween. All of a sudden, it’s not weird for two people who don’t know each other to communicate. Wearing costumes that show something about ourselves, we leap many bridges that we would not normally. It’s as if we all have something in common.

This means that we don’t all have to take admirable or prestigious jobs to make a difference in the world. If we all can only remember walking around West Campus and greeting each other jovially, our mere presence will open up so many windows that need opening. If we all realize that we share this world with someone else, we can take over Clear Channel and actually play good music. We could become sensitive policemen, and executives who give back to society. We don’t have to follow anyone’s lead to start the revolution, we only have to do what’s right to us in the here and now. Once we do that, I guarantee that nobody will have to get all bent out of shape about some stupid campus job fair.