Note: this post is not finished – Last edited Nov. 16 by Bethany Velarde

As a senior, I’m balancing writing final papers for my courses this semester with the transition to post-graduation life and the uncertainties inherent in that like graduates before me. This semester I’m taking 22 credits while I try to graduate a year early and it’s acclerated the thinking I planned to be doing about my future in two years to right now. It’s been hard for me to find the role I envision for my first post-graduate job, and even harder to find the time to search deeply and quickly. Being drawn to newness – innovation, dynamic teams, big ideas – has made me interested to start working in some kind of consulting. New projects and problems to solve, responsibility for and agency in my work, and training and mentorship opportunities built into my first full-time role are the dream, and it seems like a consulting role could match me. However, as a Scottie, if I’m ‘engaging with the social and intellectual challenges of our times‘, not many consulting firms seem to also follow that north star. If they exist, they will be hard to find. 

It almost goes without saying that no role I have looked at so far has everything I want. Every day I save a few opportunities on LinkedIn and Handshake, even though each role is missing something because I have high standards for the values, ethics and innovation of the job. I’m starting to wonder if I should take things I want off of my list.

Instead, I take a step back and check in with my career coaches. Together we conclude that the perfect role does not exist, but by having this framework of what I want I can hopefully find a best fit and match most of those criteria. Even if it’s not perfect, I can still grow. I’m a person who thrives in challenges, in not knowing everything when I start. I need to look for those stretch opportunities; stepping willingly into discomfort is the point of a ‘first’, or whatever follows it. Why would I want to begin my career in something perfect?

As I’m looking, I find a role with a unique vision. It’s a fellowship to build ideas around a social media start-up specifically for and by people of color, Somewhere Good. Looking at the application, I see that they want responses to two questions: “What new frameworks are you currently creating through your work? What does the future of social media look like to you?” I put the due date in my calendar, and focus on my homework.

Because we’re in a pandemic, most of my interactions with other people is online and through social media. There is little time for long phone calls for me right now, so I have been relying on mass Facebook and Instagram updates to reach everyone. Before Covid-19, social media was a supplement to my real life, a liminal virtual space where I documented the highlights with the knowledge that physical reality existed outside the box. Now it’s crammed inside the box too. It was always problematic, but I did not rely it as much as I do now. I used it to organize and document collaboration, but I didn’t dwell there. Over the last six months, I gradually withdrew from social media, posting only when I felt I wanted to share something important publicly. The overreliance on digital visuals pushed me away from the grid; Zoom fatigue made looking at a screen exhausting even though social interactions bring me joy. I was retreating from a 24 hour news cycle and trying to make new boundaries between what college in-person was and my life now, forever. So I was already feeling the social media strain and pulling away when Instagram changed its layout.

In the past I also avoided the ‘explore’ feature, knowing it accelerated doom scrolling, but now a shopping feature is centered directly where one would upload a photo. It’s an unconscious dive of habit into influencer marketing, no chaser. This week, I watched The Social Dilemma, and it confirmed all the thoughts and feelings I’d been having, reiterating the truth of the matter as users as commodities. Our attention is being sold to advertisers. We are ad revenue generators, addicted to natural human connection and community.

I can’t help but feel like we all should have seen it coming, when Facebook acquired Instagram. Or in messages like this interview, with Eva Chen on Who What Wear. I’m skeptical whether this global marketplace is for the small businesses or the big brands and corporations which are already established. In the same interview, Chen cites Glossier as a brand success – they don’t have to worry about user engagement because they have the holy grail, followers who answer each other’s questions, build the brand through community.