I feel like a failure. I earned my BA two years ago, and I'm still in retail. It's like, why did I spend all of that time and money in college if I was just going to end up here?

Don’t put yourself down-give yourself some grace. I didn’t feel settled in my career until four years ago after I got my degree. As long as you remember what your passion is and keep working toward it, you know retail is temporary and just a means to earn income while you pursue your career.

You are a million quadrillion miles away from being a failure, but the job search failure is standing on your feet. So many times including today I've wanted to give up because I'm so tired of the whole damn job application process, but I know me, I won't be told or made to feel I'm not good enough., I am

You didn't fail, the system failed you. Everyone was told, GO GET A FOUR OR SIX YEAR DEGREE! The market wasn't built to support sixteen thousand business majors. It wasn't built to sustain the lives of eighty thousand art majors. And, screw them for letting people go into a lifetime of debt claiming French poetry of the seventeenth century is something you should be getting a DOCTORATE IN! They tell aspiring actors and musicians to get a degree to fall back on, and they should tell academics to have a VOCATION to fall back on. I'm a bartender, and I work with people drowning in student loan debt because they thought they'd be living in a Manhattan loft, wearing lace and quirky glasses, discussing William Blake over $400 bottles of Chardonnay, and now they're taking out payday loans to cover groceries.

You didn’t fail !!! in the late 80s. It was a degree in the mid 90s. It was experience in the 2000s is who you knew, did they repeat itself again you just gotta get in the loop

I graduated nearly 18 years ago with a BA in Psych. Haven’t used a lick of it. I took a job I could do, paid attention to what I seemed to do best, and bent my career toward that. After 12 years, I’ll probably have to do it again.

You’re not a failure, friend. You’re a work in progress, just like the rest of us. It’s hard to drop comparisons, especially when comparison and competition is pushed on you from so many directions. Keep your eyes on your own work, and think more about yourself rather than what others think you *should* be doing.

It’s not an easy road, but it’s a more interesting one.
A disappointed college student, former EMT, former camp counselor, current pastry chef in Portland is rooting for you ✊🏼

Because the system lied to you when it said the only path to success was a college degree