An Open Letter

to the Job Market

Dear Job Market,

I don’t want to be a designer, a marketer, an illustrator, a brander, a social media consultant, a multi-platform guru, an interface wizard, a writer of copy, a technological assistant, a personal assistant, most any kind of assistant, a data calculator, an aesthetic king, a profit-maximizer, a bottom-line analyzer, a meme generator, a hit tracker, a re-poster, a sponsored blogger, a starred commentator, an online retailer, a viral relayer, a handle, a font or a page. I don’t want to be linked-in, tuned-in, “liked,” incorporated, listed, or programmed. I don’t want to be a brand, a representative, or an ambassador. I don’t want to be your special candidate, your human resource, or a coin in your bank of human capital. I don’t want to be an entrepreneur of myself.

Don’t listen to the competitors, the magazines, the newspapers, the founders, the pundits, the editors, the forecasters, the researchers, the career counselors, the prime minister, your haughty GDP brother, and whatever it is all these people call “the economy”. Step outside the box that asks for workers who “think outside the box”!

I want to be a lover, a wanderer, a parabolic teacher, an assembler of words, a sculptor of the immaterial, a maker of instruments, a Socratic philosopher, and an erratic muse. I want to be a community center, a piece of art, a wonky cursive script and an old-growth tree! I want to be a disrupter, a creator, an apocalyptic visionary, a master of reconfiguration, a hypocritical parent, an illegal download and a choose-your-own-adventure! I want to be a renegade agitator! A licker of ice cream! An organizer of mischief! A released charge! A double jump on the trampoline! An old beachcomber! A wayward youth!

I want to be a curator of myself, an anti-preneur!

But I also need money. So please post these jobs, instead of the other ones.

And stop it with the unpaid internships.

Sincerely,

Danielle Leduc

Underemployed Graduate Student in the Social Sciences