The Future Conan?

In the year 200000000000.
In the year 200000000000000000.

Aside from the common middle 20s angst and loss of idealism, not knowing what you can do let alone what you want to do to earn a living for the rest of your life is extremely limiting.

You focus your energies on the day to day struggle to survive in lieu of planning your future. You can’t relax with debt looming and you can’t pay off your debt when you’re simply trying to survive. Not in any significant way. It honestly comes down to a decision of whether to eat or keep the utilities on.

So what do we do?
You’re supposed to go to college to advance your education.
To establish yourself as an educated person.
I think we all know plenty of “educated” people who can’t string together a coherent sentence.
Then there are the loans.
Few people, save those who were smart enough to go to a CUNY or SUNY school, graduate (or drop out for that matter) without tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt.
If you live in a major metropolitan city like New York, you might be able to get a job that pays the bills if you have a roommate and meager expectations as to what constitutes a life.
The debt remains and you scrape by.
If you’re lucky and you know someone, you may get a chance to change your circumstances.

My ex, who dropped out before completing undergrad, met a girl who worked for the standard of journalism. He happened to have been the EIC of his college paper and had a prestigious editorial internship one summer.
These meager qualifications didn’t get noticed when he applied in the years after dropping out.
When he started a relationship with someone who worked there, he was suddenly hired.
It’s not about what you know. It’s about who you know.
It’s the George Bush brand of cronyism, nepotism and the lack of merit based hiring and promotion that keeps most qualified people from gaining the success they may rightly deserve.
It also discourages people from actually trying to achieve. What is the point of accruing the actual necessary experience if I don’t know anyone who can put my resume under someone’s nose?
What are the chances, of the hundreds of people who respond to a job listing, that my resume will even get a glance before anyone else’s?

Are we doomed?
Who do you know?