Three and a half years ago, I sat in my Boston apartment in the days leading up to the second semester of my junior year of college and began to read Dante’s Inferno. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve long been a fan of the classics, and Inferno had always been on my radar, so what better way to spend my last few days of calm?

Three and a half years later, I realize now that Dante forgot a very crucial circle of Hell while writing: job applications.

I’m not sure if it’s a symptom of online applications, living in a post-COVID economy, or an oversaturation of applicants, but applying for jobs after college has become a Sisyphean task, a constant cycle from which I have no reprieve. I have both a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree, things which were proverbially beaten into High School Liz’s head as practical guarantees to succeeding in life, yet I have written over fifty cover letters for jobs that have either rejected or ghosted me. And while I have the reprieve of my friends and TikTok showing me that other people my age are in the same boat, the temptation to fall into the river of self-deprecation is all too great.

The crumbling job market is by no means a new phenomenon, nor am I the first person to write about its effects. But there are real emotional consequences to this, regardless of if it’s “normal.” Just as I said in my intro post to this blog: people talk a lot about the normalcy of something (not knowing what one’s doing, the struggle to get a job, etc.) but they don’t talk about how much that sucks. I know that I am not the only person who is struggling to get hired right now despite being qualified, but that knowledge doesn’t stop that wounded feeling from chipping away at my pride whenever a rejection email comes through. It is as though these emails give credence to my innermost insecurities, no matter how much I try to ignore them. What if, actually, I am not qualified for these jobs? What if I’ve made a huge mistake by entering this field? Is this the rest of my life? Thoughts I would normally never entertain suddenly seep their way into the forefront of my mind, and my LinkedIn feed showing all of my peers’ successes becomes my worst enemy. Knowing I am not alone does not lessen the blow to my ego. 

It’s as though I have been left out in the middle of the ocean, desperately trying to tread water while watching everyone I’ve ever known be rescued by the Coast Guard. I’m still here, begging for a moment of rest that never comes. And I know, I know, I should not be comparing myself to other people, but when has anyone ever taken that advice? Despite knowing otherwise, it’s so normal to compare our successes (and our failures) to others, and I don’t think we should deny that we do so to save our pride. Jealousy is a human emotion just as valid and common as happiness, anger, and frustration, and pretending we don’t feel it in order to make ourselves look better seems counterintuitive. 

I don’t write this to complain about my horrible luck in the job industry –– at least, that’s not the only reason I write this (I’m allowed to be a little bit self-indulgent, it is my blog after all). Rather, I write this for the same reason I started this blog in general: to give voice to those who are perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed for being in the same position. It is disheartening to apply for a job these days, and that sucks. It is rough out here, especially for those who graduated from college in the midst of the pandemic. I don’t necessarily have the solution for this (I am not a job recruiter, I don’t work in that industry, and I have no experience in it) but I still think it’s important to talk about. Our society focuses so much on hustle culture––the idea that if we are not consistently working, producing, and capitalizing on what we are good at, then we must be failing––that we forget to acknowledge and nurture the very real and valid frustrations that arise in these situations. It is okay to feel dejected about the state of the job market right now; it makes perfect sense. But we get up, we continue, and we try again, despite the nagging voice in our brain telling us not to.

And hey, Dante eventually got out of Hell, right? Maybe we will too.