by Sophia Devine

Created on: February 16, 2007   Last Updated: May 21, 2007

Truthfully, I'm afraid for my future. In fact, I'm afraid for my peers as well. Being an adult was not supposed to be this hard, right? Apparently I was wrong. I was not informed that at the age of twenty two, I would still be living with my parents, working a dead end job and struggling to get through college with no guarantee that I'll get anywhere with my degree. Now, let's back up. I wasn't supposed to go back to school. There was a brief period of time when, instead of a college education, it was seemingly easier to get a job, put in the time and move up through the company. Somehow, that changed through the past few years. Retail, a once somewhat lucrative career choice for those without a college degree has become more of a nightmare than it was before. Companies don't think on terms of employees, or their survival, or even their well being in general; they think on terms of numbers. Hours virtually don't exist any longer. Forty hours a week for a full time position is laughable. Try thirty two or less and the part time position that most companies hire for is basically a joke. How many people can I get in this company at ten hours a week for almost minimum wage? Then there are the benefits. The word itself is a joke. These companies don't offer benefits, they offer what they feel is enough, and just barely. Sure, they've started offering part-time benefits, but what they don't tell you is that part-time benefits through certain companies could set you back as much as three hundred dollars a month, and if a part-time employee is only making eight dollars an hour, at twenty hours a week, that's roughly a little more than six hundred dollars a month. Which leaves them where, exactly? Way below the poverty line. These thoughts haunted me as I struggled through jobs, quitting one after the other until finally concluding that I wouldn't be happy living that way. Below the poverty line. My parents didn't live that way, why am I? Why are so many people letting this happen? And why isn't anyone doing anything about it? I realized over the past few years that this way of living just isn't for me. Where it's almost impossible to get a car because your income doesn't meet the requirements. Thanks Mom and Dad. Where living in an apartment is out of the question because how could I make a car payment and an apartment payment and still have money for food and gas? Keep in mind, this is with a room-mate and with a full time job. Somehow, my generation slacked off until this happened. Now people are paying for it in a big way. Eventually, children are just simply not going to leave their childhood homes. Believe me, it's not because we don't want to, it's because such a simple dream has become exactly that. A dream.

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