What about personal responsibility?

I was discussing this recent news story with my coworker CL today about how this woman actually sued her college because she hadn't found a job in the three months since she graduated. She blamed the career services department, and claimed that they didn't do enough outreach and networking on her behalf.

CL commented that she thought it was a pointless suit because this grad's inability to get a job wasn't the "fault" of the school, but rather the fault of the economy, and that the current economic situation means that unfortunately a lot of graduates are struggling to find work in their fields. CL also commented that, unfortunately, due to the economy recent grads and job seekers in general are often obliged to take jobs for which they are over-qualified, but that's an unfortunate side-effect of the recession. This grad implied that jobs in the retail and service industries were beneath someone like her.

While I agree with what CL said, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this lawsuit-happy recent grad is completely delusional, and has a ridiculous sense of self-importance. She place the onus of finding a job on the school alone. It seems like she seriously expected to put in the minimum amount of effort and still have jobs thrown her way.

And while I don't want to make any personal attacks on this woman, she has a GPA of 2.7. Unfortunately, that doesn't make her an outstanding candidate on paper. And since there are far more candidates for fewer jobs, I'd think that a less-than-stellar GPA would drop her name down a few slots on a potential employer's list of candidates. So she should, with that knowledge, really try a bit harder to show off her positive attributes.

People FAR more experienced and qualified than this woman have gone months and even years without finding "the right" position. The ones that I know have made some really serious efforts to find a job - any job or jobs - that will get them through the next couple of lean years.

Hopefully this woman will take a good, hard look at herself AND the world around her and realize that even in the best of times, we don't always get what we want when we want it, much less in times like these. And because of that, everyone - job-seekers and working people alike - unfortunately have to work harder to get what they want, and sometimes get less than what they want.