Working Girl

So, in my lengthy course of schoolwork, amidst endless complaints about professors, reports and exams, everyone always said "Wait to you get out to the real world..." Blah blah blah. I knew I was overworked and broke, and that the working world would be a welcome change from the hells of grad school. But I admit I was a bit naive in my optimism.

Working is superior than school in many ways. We have a general feeling of superiority as someone to gets paid to do things rather than paying someone else to be taught. I'm not sure if it's a power booster, confidence maker or what (I'm trying not to laugh even hypothesizing about being as SLP as a power boost...), but there is a palpable difference in respect you give yourself, and are given when you are a working adult versus a student, despite your age. Maybe I'm alone in this perception, but whatever.

There is, indeed, the paycheck. It's not great, but it's a nice feeling to be slowly chipping away your debt rather than continuing to dig yourself further and further into a hole.

You have a hell of a lot more free time on your hands. 

But, with the above perks, comes a whole lotta shit.

Your coworkers aren't necessarily as intellectually stimulating and challenging as your academic cohorts.

It's very hard to respect your boss as much as one should when you recently left a progressive university world that mocks people with such- well- not such progressive views.

People that have had the same job for 15 years really don't give a rat's ass about your ideas or suggestions.

When you screw up, you are held accountable. There's really no pointing fingers.

Your coworkers are not amused or impressed with you always playing devil's advocate, showing off your fancy education. This is how they've always done it, and it works just fine, thankyouverymuch.

I could go on, but it could get really mean really fast. The bottom line is, many people feel that their work sucks. And I somehow always thought I would avoid that, since I truly followed my passion. So, the question is, how much shit are you entitled to put up with at work, in trade for a decent paycheck- and when is that line crossed when it's not worth the quality of life sacrifice of your happiness, and you should look toward greener pastures. Do those greener pastures exist in a drought?