Buried Dreams in CVs:
The Silent Genocide of the Educated Unemployed
By Victor Omoshenni WILLIAMS DBA
We were told that “education is the key to success” and we believed. Hence, we clung onto our degrees like passports to a better life. But we never knew the locks to our acquired ‘keys’ had been changed. And new keys do not fit.
Today, someone is boiling water not for tea but to silence the growls of an empty stomach.
Families have produced top graduates (even first-class – A name once called with thunderous applause in convocations, now relegated to what you can do with it!) “Just apply” “Try harder” they’ll say. But the flooded inbox filled with rejections or even worse an unprecedented silence with no reason for why an application has been rejected is enough discouragement.
We are the generation that burns candlelight, walked kilometres to school, shared textbooks, only to sit at home scrolling past job posts that requires 5-year work experience for an entry level position. Connection! they’ll scream. Network your way in! Talk to people! Use social media! They’ll emphasise.
What if you come from the less privileged part of the society, with no one from the middle or high-end part of town, and the only thing you have is the hard-earned degree which you were taught to value so much. What if the only network you have easy access to is the one that disappears whenever it rains?
A girl with a bachelor’s degree currently works in a local bar where perverts slap her behind as she walks by. Another has resulted in using what she has to get what she wants. A boy with a master’s degree has ventured into cybercrime, and sadly, drugs, out of societal pressure to survive and be strong. And we see them every day – eyes swollen with hopes they dare not voice.
They are dying, not physically yet, but emotionally and psychologically. Dreams roting slowly, not with explosion but with quiet erosion of hope, day by day, application by application, interview by interview. And yet they smile because society says we must be strong. If you cry, you are weak. And if you complain, you are reminded of being alive, which is a greater privilege.
But what is life? When you have done everything, you were told was right and still wake up jobless in a system that has cultivated the culture of according values to you based on your economic capability. The clergy would encourage us to “wait for God’s time” as He’s is the best. But the backlog of debt and family responsibilities push many into depression and others into crime.
To employers reading this: Do not scroll another CV like it’s just “another one”. Someone bled hopes into that paper. If not anything, at least read with the understanding that someone wants you to know they exist with a certain skill-set.
To the connected: Help if you can. Share, Recommend, Open a door
To the unemployed: You are not lazy, you are not alone [though some of you have been wrongly misled to cultivating the entitlement mentality] – This system was just never designed for many to succeed.
One they, many would be buried with hard-earned degrees clutching to their chest, as the only thing they could achieve while alive, but still a testament that they did try.
But still, fight. Do all you can to beat this maliciously designed system.
And one day, just one day, some of us would have our names written in gold, as those who against all odds overcame a system that was designed to break us.
- If this touched your heart, share it
- If this reminded you of someone, send them a message of comfort
- If you are employed, lift someone else
- If you are unemployed, connect with others and give that doubtful but consistent assurance, that no one should be left alone in this.
Victor Omoshenni WILLIAMS sent this article from Ibadan.
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