Work your way up ladder
By Jessica Sanders
Co-news Editor

When I was a kid I wanted to be a princess. I would marry Prince Charming and live happily ever after in a Disney-style palace. I would settle for nothing less.

But as years went by, I began to realize that being a princess was not a realistic career goal for a Texas commoner.

So I chose journalism. True, I had to forgo tiaras and castles for deadlines and a newsroom. But I will have the high honor of serving as a watchdog for the public interest. And I like that almost as much as a tiara. As long as I can get a job I actually enjoy.

As seniors start to think about life after TCU, many of us slowly succumb to what we don’t want. We call it realism. Realism, often defined as a job in a cubicle with opportunities to move up to a bigger cubicle.

However, in today’s economy, job seekers would be lucky to have cubicles to call their own.

An insecure economy means there are lots of graduates scrambling for jobs and holding on for dear life when they find one. According to ABC News, in 2000, 56 percent of graduates said they expected to be in their first job for less than a year. But today, 58 percent of graduates expect to stay at their first job for one to three years.

And if you love the job, great. Just don’t hold on to it because you are afraid to try something else.

A study by the Conference Board, a research group, surveyed 5,000 Americans and found that only about half are actually satisfied with their current jobs. Now it could be because they are planning to move on to something better. It could be because they need money to support other pursuits, or they may have simply given up.

I’m not suggesting a collective snub of unexciting jobs. Many lower level jobs provide excellent opportunities for advancement. We’ve all got to start somewhere and no one should expect to start at the top. Let’s take me for example. An entry-level reporter in Fort Worth can expect to make around $24,000 a year, according to (www.collegegrad.com.) Before taxes that’s about $2,000 a month, and when you add in living expenses, things get pretty tight. When you are living paycheck to paycheck in order to support that distant dream, settling for that cubicle job starts to seem like a pretty good idea.

But the important thing is that the entry-level job does not define you. It is a stepping stone toward bigger and better things. With a little persistence, you might get that castle after all.