IN TRANSITION #6
This is one in a series of occasional reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.
To my shock, driving to work on the last day of my summer internship I had to turn up the heat in my Honda. Way up: the driver's side window is busted. The cold air kept seeping through.
Fixing it had been on my to-do list for weeks. And now it sure felt like fall.
For the first time in my life, school would begin without me.
With my internship over, I took a job elsewhere as a temp. A promotion? No. As an intern, at least I knew my role, however limited. I wasn't expected to carve any long-lasting impression on the organization. But I was on track. I worked to immerse myself in an environment, to gain experience that might one day be valuable in a respectable career -- and there would be one.
As a temp, I just work. I perform the unenviable role of substitute. It implies only the sense that I am between things. Temping pays the bills, but leaves a knot in my stomach.
While there may be no shame in temping, there's certainly no glory.
At a staff meeting the other day, scarfing down the lavish continental breakfast (breakfast is a rarity in my life), I tried to be discreet while the other employees went around the room introducing themselves. All but two were women. Several were more than three times my age. They welcomed a new assistant, pretty and petite, with smiles and flattery.
Then they turned to me.
''I'm temporarily working as a replacement," I mumbled into my plate of crumbs.
''Are you just out of school?" whispered a woman next to me. I nodded. ''So this isn't really what you want to be doing," she added, relieved for my sake.
But I wasn't relieved.
An hour and a half of shallow backslapping later (''The work you all do is so important to us"), I returned to my (pretend) office in a daze. An out-of-place kid, one who missed his summer vacation.
That day, I spent my lunch break outside in a park, soaking up the dying summer light. Two toddlers wrestled on the grass, twisting in and out of the shadows that fell upon them. In my head, I replayed highlights from the summer -- returning time and again to July 4, the trek back to Cambridge along the Charles, the dazzling fireworks display still dancing in my retinas, the cheap beer at the MIT fraternity keeping me going with a slight buzz, my friends alongside me, laughing, singing, full of life.
''That was a quick lunch!" my boss exclaimed, surprised to see me when I returned to my cubicle long before the hour expired. I had no answer; simply nowhere to go, nothing to do. For the 10 minutes that followed, I stared at the curser blinking on my screen, waiting for something to jolt me awake.
Earlier this summer, I scoffed at spending my 20s in a job that bored me. It felt like surrendering the last shreds of my youth. Maybe it is. Yet a salary with benefits, if not the holy grail of employment, would help settle my stomach.
Soon the students will be back. Temping will end. How long is the grace period before I'm just plain unemployed?
Benjamin Toff is living on a futon in his former college roommates' apartment in Cambridge, but he is moving to Somerville soon. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.
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