The Job Hunt Pt. VI: The End

This will be the last entry in the "job hunt" series.  Today I got two job offers.  I accepted a job as a Development Officer at the National Network of Abortion Funds.  I am very happy.  It is a nice bump in salary and responsibility.  I finally feel like Jake and I are both moving forward, rather than me just tagging along.  I was worried that I would have to settle and take a step back or stagnate and now that's not the case.  I'm excited and nervous, as anyone probably is before a new job.  But it puts my move to Boston in a whole new light.  I feel like I can finally be excited without worry, without holding back.  It is a great feeling. 

And I am feeling very lucky.  Today the stock market took its biggest dip since 2008 when the bottom fell out before graduation making my first job hunt so much more difficult.  So many of our fellow recent graduates are unemployed or underemployed.  We were taught that if we go to school and work hard everything would be alright, and for a lot of us, this economy is a real slap in the face. 

It really makes me sad.  The Tea Party made increasing the debt ceiling, something the United States had done 74 times since the creation of the ceiling (including many times under Reagan and Bush), into a national charade.  As a result, for the first time in history our debt rating has been downgraded and confidence in the American economy has been shaken.  I remember learning in my Economics class in college that people and countries will always lend to the United States because we always pay our debts.  Now just a few years later, that was put in doubt. 

People all over the country are struggling to find employment and working class and middle class Americans are being asked to bear the brunt of a downturn caused by financial markets and greed run amok.   I will never understand how it is okay to balance the budget by laying off government workers and slashing services that the most vulnerable rely on (usually costing us more in real dollars and economic stability in the long run) but it is blasphemous to ask millionaires and billionaires to pay any more in taxes.  It the general scheme of fairness it seems more moral to ask someone to give up their yacht before we ask someone to give up their kids' braces. 

I will continue to vote and work with my conscience, to support equality, opportunity, and justice.  Today I am grateful.  It is not really the end; it is the beginning.