The Devil Wears Prada

I just finished reading it for the second time and must admit it's still as terribly written as the first time, but the story itself rings true. THere are a ton of bosses like that scattered throughout the city. Bosses who make their assistants show up at weird hours and then send them on errands for dry-cleaning and household supplies and copies. There are bosses who force their employees to show up at certain events, demanding everything from black tie to gallery openings.

When you're in your early twenties and just starting out in this city you can't say no, either. becuase you wouldn't even be here without the terrible job you're dragging yourself to five to six days a week. Maybe you're doing that and bartending on weekends because what I've found is that starting salaries aren't very high, considering living expenses and that college degree your parents photographed you with in the good ol' days of school, when you imagined job offers pouring in as people realized how smart, capable and fun you were to work with.

Job offers did not come flying my way and the ones that did offered no benefits, no vacation time and a salary that was less than my rent for a year. When one finally came along that at least pretende to offer me something useful in the way of experience, a tleast, I attacked it, happily leaping upon it the way a hawk leaps upon a snake in the grass. Jobs in New YOrk are elusive. They are never around very long (we pay people to literally carry things up and down the blocks) and you need some sort of psychic ability or connections to even know they're available half the time. Jobs in this city go back and forth with the discretion of the mob, or so it seems.

I'm worried about what's going to happen when I'm "done" with my current job and forced out into the world of the unemployed again. My first instinct (as with most twenty-somethings) is to go back to school, immediately, quickly. To duck back into the world of college and late afternoon drinking games and daytime television. I salivate just thinking about it. But then I read that you're not supposed to use grad school as an escape from reality. I mean, why the hell not? What better escape from the depression associated with the Republican party right now and our faltering economy?