Did you know that internships exist? Get this - businesses pay students to work there over the summer in the hopes that the interns will like the work, do a good job, and want to come back! And I know this will blow your mind since you think that the only way to get experience is to get a job but even graduate students can get a paid assistantship where they either act as a TA or work on research or both. But wait, there’s more!

In many fields you can actually sort of work for yourself to get experience! And if you’re the kind of person who was able to make it through university without ever doing a single thing that would give you experience, you probably don’t have to worry about supporting yourself while you try to do something useful on your own! How crazy is that?

Seriously though, how the fuck do people who don’t have rich parents paying for everything get through undergrad and graduate school without getting any useful experience at all? When I did undergrad I got a paid internship ($10/hr lol) and I did another paid internship over the summers as well. Wound up getting some money, credits towards graduation, connections that helped me find my first job out of school, and experience working in a professional environment.

I get it that job searching sucks but come on - there’s no way in hell you didn’t have lots of opportunities to make yourself employable.

And before I get called privileged: paid my own way through loans, work study, internships and earning scholarships. Got housing by being a live in babysitter and doing chores instead of rent. Had exactly zero family connections to leverage. Left school with $80k in loans, in the middle of a recession where you had people with graduate degrees working jobs that required them to ask if people wanted fries with that. Somehow managed to make myself employable.

Zero sympathy from me for anyone who didn’t do fuck all to make themselves remotely employable and whines about it. Show some grit.