I’m nearing the end of grad school and starting to get a bit nervous about finding a job. Google spreadsheets full of companies, NGOs and university research institutes — some hiring, more not — are constantly open in Firefox, Idealist is constantly being refreshed, networks are being tapped. There is an abundance of stress.
I was cleaning out a drawer yesterday and ran across a stack of index cards held together with a yellow binder clip. In the statistics class I help teach at SIPA, I ask my students to write down an interesting fact about themselves on the first day of class. It’s a fun way to get to know people, and sometimes it’s easier for me to remember who’s afraid of emus or whose favorite color is mauve than whose name is Greg or Jamie.
I shuffled through the cards before tossing them in the recycling bin and came across one I had forgotten, less “interesting fact” and more “dark confession”:
I was almost singlehandedly responsible for the near collapse of global capitalism in my former career.
You know? All things considered, my life could be much worse.