Me: 1 Covid-19: 1
Why Covid-19 and I are tied — for now.
Senior year of college is already tough enough but adding a global pandemic into the mix makes it especially hard. Right now, there are a lot of ifs, buts and what-ifs in my life.
I want to stay in Dallas but if I cannot find a job, I might be forced to move back home to Washington, DC and live with my parents — not the ideal situation for any recent college graduate.
I decided I wanted to stay in Dallas post-graduation as Southern Methodist University (SMU) has a great reputation in this city. Graduating from SMU with a dual degree in Marketing and Fashion Media while minoring in Advertising and Journalism, I think I am qualified for lots of entry level positions. I want to take advantage of the education I was able to get while at SMU as well as what I learned from the internship opportunities I had along the way.
I’m entering the real world in a terrible economy where, according to the Washington Post, 22 million people in the United States are unemployed. Before the outbreak of Covid-19, the class of 2020 college graduates was supposed to enter a booming job market — the strongest in the last 50 years.
My saved jobs on LinkedIn and other job boards went from fifty to zero. All of the jobs I had saved and was planning to apply to stopped accepting applications. I see “currently, there are no jobs available” way too often.
Celeste K. Carruthers, Larry Kessler, and Marianne Wanamaker write in a Market Watch article that “economic improvement is expected throughout the second half of 2020 and into 2021.”
So, while I wait for this to happen, I will continue to look for a job and email hiring managers of every place I can think of, I have decided to take this time to work on an idea I had for a new business.
Instead of looking at the negative things in life right now, I want to focus on the positive. This past semester, I was lucky enough to take an entrepreneurship class which taught me a lot. Our project for the entire course was to create a business plan from start to finish with a group of two other students. Although the business plan we created was for another student’s business idea, I learned how to put together a business plan from start to finish — which is very valuable to me right now.
After I’m finished with my final projects, assignments, and exams, I will focus all my time and energy into creating this new business plan. I am working with my best friend, her mom, and my mom on this. We want to keep the idea a secret right now, but I will say it is an exciting idea for a new, never before seen restaurant concept.
I refuse to let this tough situation we are all currently battling against to win. While it is very difficult to find a job and Covid-19 might have beaten me in the aspect right now, I will beat Covid-19 by using the education I earned towards one of my life passions.
I am taking the advice of Forbes writer Jack Kelly. I will “use this extra time as a gift to be proactive” and “allocate [my] time towards productive and meaningful endeavors.”
So, watch out — you might see a new restaurant pop up in Dallas in the near feature and it might all be thanks to the lack of job openings and the free time I had on my hands during this lockdown.
