30 Signs You're Overqualified

30 Signs You're Overqualified and Underemployed

1. The wall on which your degree hangs is not your own.

2. Your current job has little or nothing to do with your college major and does not enable you to pay back your student loans.

3. Because you cannot find a job that will pay your meager living bills and your massive college loans, you move in with (a) Mom and Dad, (b) a co-worker who has recently divorced and has three nearly-grown children, (c) your college roommate who works at your employer's competition.

4. Since you can't afford both TV and internet, you give up TV. This is not a bad trade-off, as you quickly learn where the best streaming bootleg TV can be found. Back episodes of Jon Stewart online are also helpful.

5. After seeing a hungry man holding a cardboard sign at the entrance to the shopping center you work in, you begin thinking of clever 'out of work' signs. In fact, you go so far as to google "clever unemployed signs" and write down your favorites.

6. You create one of your own that includes your resume and qualifications, and states that you will write grant proposals for food.

7. You look at your part-time work schedule and wonder if you could make any money with your clever sign.

8. You then wonder if that is somehow mocking or capitalizing on a grave problem of which you are not yet a part, and decide not to try.

9. You look forward to Spaghetti-Os night.

10. Your roommate begins selling his/her possessions on ebay. You look up your own non-essential but deeply cherished possessions on ebay and try to convince yourself to sell.

11. You wonder if the newly opened "Cigar Lounge" downtown is really a brothel, and if you could get some part-time work.

12. You decide to save that option as a backup, should your childhood memorabilia sell for less than you hope.

13. Gradually, you stop being thankful that you have a job at all, and begin to resent the fact that your money and effort spent in college didn't get you a better one. That was the whole point, wasn't it?

14. You are annoyed by your full-time coworkers who make more money than you by doing less.

15. After sulking for a few days, you to adopt a new work ethic that consists of doing your menial job as though it is the most honorable, respected, scrutinized career in your field.

16. You take pride in the fact that your cheeseburgers are the neatest and cleanest ones to leave the grill.

17. This only works as long as you don't think about where the cheeseburgers came from, what's in them, or where they are going. Once you do, you realize you're taking pride in gorging the population on unhealthy, environmentally-damaging food made from poorly-treated animals.

18.Your goals, which have been somewhat hazy since getting your part-time job, shift from wanting a career for which you're 'qualified,' to simply wanting a job that doesn't contribute to the de-evolution of society.

19. You begin to rate potential jobs this way, and aspire to move from fast food to Whole Foods.

20. One night, perhaps after watching a few episodes of streaming Star Trek bootleg, you start to wonder about the utopian future, in which there is no money, and everyone works to improve themselves. Who still works behind the counter at Starbucks?

21. You discuss the possibilities with your mother/coworker/roommate.

22. You suggest robots. S/he suggests that some people simply have a passion for coffee. You then realize that coffee shops of the future will not be managed by disinterested youth, but by coffee-loving entrepreneurs who will take pride in brewing and serving the best.

23. This makes you wish you had the savings to start a shop for your own passion, and reminds you that your current goal is getting out of your present situation, in which you contribute to the dystopian human future depicted in the movie WALL-E.

24. You draft a business plan anyway.

25.You actually start to miss college, because it was one of the few places your geekish knowledge didn't alienate you from your classmates the way it now alienates you from your coworkers. You learn to never mention Tesla again.

26. Sometimes you pretend you are already living in the utopian future, and that your menial job has a very important function in the larger workings of intergalactic peace. This helps you feel better.

27. Eventually you realize that there are many overqualified, underpaid people in your 'survival job.' These people, however, do not have much sympathy for you, because when the recession ends, you and your degree will quickly find a better job. They will be left making burgers.

28. You begin to feel uncomfortable with this. It makes you wonder if getting a 'real job' will actually help humanity move toward the utopian future, or if your participation in the artificially constructed system of qualification will simply reenforce its chokehold on society.

29. You almost wish you hadn't read so much about the ethical and social concerns regarding the insitutionalization of education.

30. You wish you'd have thought of this before you took out the loans to go to school.