I suspect a lot of seniors are now wondering, \What am I going to do when I graduate and enter the 'real world'?""
Here are some thoughts on the yuppie path too many take after college.
There are two basic patterns to everyday life in the ""real world"" for most college seniors turned young urban (or suburban) professionals or yuppies. The first is obvious and widely recognized'the second far less so.
First, unlike college, life becomes organized around a monotonously regular schedule: 9 a.m. or earlier to 5 p.m. or later, five to six days per week. This first yuppie life pattern contributes to the second: what economic sociologist Juliet Schor in her recent book ""The Overworked American"" calls ""the insidious cycle of work-and-spend."" For the sacrifice of most of the yuppie's waking life to a job, in return most expect to make a good income. The longer the job hours and the greater the responsibility, the more the yuppie expects to get paid. The harder the yuppie works, the more the yuppie makes, the more the yuppie spends, the more the yuppie has to work to keep up with the new expenses (e.g., SUV, new clothes, pricey restaurants, ski trips, scuba lessons). In some yuppies' lexicon, this work-spend cycle means ""work hard, play hard.""
Most college seniors who make this conventional transition from the relatively frugal college student's life to the life of the work-and-spend yuppie embrace it, no matter how much they occasionally grumble about being overworked. The speed and ease of this embrace is not too surprising when we consider the vast armies of corporate advertisers and marketers dedicated to keeping young professionals running on the treadmill.
It's not until the marriage-home-kids nexus eventually develops, though, that most yuppies become fully ensconced in the work-spend cycle'whether one parent stays home or not. This nexus (usually settled in suburbia)'with its accompanying, endless chatter about home improvements, relationships and kids'is the work-spend lifestyle prescription for a happy, healthy life outside of work.
Sounds delightful, doesn't it? It might be if it were not such a contrived and insulated life. This life is contrived because it is less the reflective practice of free individuals than the taken-for-granted product of years of aggressive marketing. It is hardly authentic, but it is highly profitable for home builders, furniture, toy makers and many others. This lifestyle is insulated because there is little if anything in it which connects yuppies to the wider world.
The irony then is that this ""real world"" disconnects yuppies from the real world. The salesman's SUV does not carry a sign daily reminding the yuppie of her weekly contribution to global warming. Home Depot's furniture is branded with a trademark, but no mark that the yuppie's escalating home improvements contribute to tearing down old growth and rain forests. The label on Gap clothes does not remind the yuppie parents how their kids' jeans were made by kids laboring in sweatshops. That would not be profitable.
Of course, not every yuppie falls into the work-spend treadmill in private circles of family and friends. Indeed, some consciously construct alternative paths which connect them to the wider world as responsible citizens rather than as traveling professionals or tourists. However, until we can mobilize enough people to make such a real world lifestyle as common and appealing as the work-spend cycle, most college seniors will continue to follow the marketers' profitable prescription.
