The Benefits of Underemployment

There are benefits to underemployment. That's what I'm going to tell the next person who asks me what I do with the 20 hours a week that I don't work for UCO.

I recently read an article in Time magazine entitled "How Underemployed is Generation Y." You can read the article here .

I was not surprised to read that 53% of recent college graduates are either unemployed, or underemployed. For example, in my young adult bible study most of us either work part time, or work a combination of odd jobs full-time. I know a lot lot of smart, interesting,young people who go to college, major in something cool like Victorian Literature, and end up having to work as an administrative assistant to pay back their student loans. And that's a best case scenario.

I am a pretty typical millennial. I graduated from college in 2011 with a degree in English Literature and History. After I graduated I took a gap year to serve in Ann Arbor, MI, and now I work part time for University Christian Outreach. I'm actively looking for part-time employment, but with my skills and this economy, it might be a while before I find work.

I refuse to allow my underemployment get me down. I have decided to embrace this unexpected phase as an opportunity for self-improvement. So like most media-savy millennial, I've compiled my thoughts into an easily skimmed list.

Top 5 Benefits of Underemployment

1. Open Yale Courses
I was heartbroken to graduate from university and leave behind reading assignments, papers, and brilliantly quirky professors. About a month ago I stumbled upon this gem. Open Yale Courses are Yale University introductory courses offered free to the public. Their website gives you access to course syllabi, and course lectures. Right now I'm going through Amy Hungerford's "The American Novel Since 1945." Between the reading assignments and the course lectures, this passion project takes up about five hours of my time per week. Plus it allows me to ask my housemates about their school days without turning green with envy.

2. Attend Pittsburgh's FREE cultural programs
A drawback of underemployment is that you don't have much discretionary income. But with a little research, you can explore your city's culture on the cheap. Case in point. Pittsburgh's Regional Assistant Development (RAD) donates money to area libraries, museums, and gardens. Every organization that receives donations from RAD must host a RAD day, where they make their attraction free to the public. In the last week, I visited Phipps Conservatory and The Andy Warhol Museum. My only expense was the $5 I spent on bus fare.

3. Learn to Bake
Baking is like writing: everyone thinks they can master it if they just had the time and the right ingredients. False. Baking is like writing in that they are both skills that get better with practice. Now that I have the time, I try to bake something new every week. Below is a picture of my latest creation.

Pumpkin Cookies

4. Coffee Dates

Moving to a new city means hitting the reset button on your social life. Building new relationships takes time. I enjoy coffee dates because they provide a space for getting to know someone casually. I like getting coffee instead of a drink because it keeps you awake, and gives you something to talk about. Plus it's cheap. And coffee dates motivate me to shower and put on real clothes on days I wouldn't have otherwise left the house.  

5. Pray

In working with college students, I've found that lack of time can really derail a person's prayer life. It takes time to learn how to pray. It takes time to prepare to pray (brewing coffee, gathering materials, finding a quiet place). And it takes time to pray well. Now that I've got the time, I've set a goal of 30 minutes of daily prayer and scripture reading. I really like the discipline and structure that daily morning prayer gives me. I try to spend only five of those minutes praying for a part time job.

How I Became a Homemaker

Our dining room table

When people ask me about my life these days, I tell them that I feel like a homemaker. No, I am not married. No, I do not have kids. Nor do I have a white picket fence, a dog named Sparky, or awesome cleaning skills. But I feel like a homemaker non the less. Let explain why.

I work for a Christian organization called University Christian Outreach (UCO). One of our charisms is discipleship, or helping our students grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ. One of the ways that we help our students grow in discipleship is by encouraging them to live together during their college years in living situations referred to as Households.

What is a Household? At it's core its a group of same-sex folks ages 18-24ish committed to living together and supporting each other through their Christian walk. While each Household looks and feels a little different, each member of the house commits to several household patterns each week, mainly morning prayer, dinners together, evening prayer, and Saturday Lord's Days.

Preparing for a Lord's Day 

In order for Households to run well, each member also commits to upholding certain rules. Rules give each house member clear expectations for things like bills, curfews, modesty, and service expectations.  The area of house rules was a challenging one for me to accept at first. Especially the rule about no television in house common areas. But overtime, I have learned to see our house rules as a source of freedom, and a way for me to love and serve my sisters.

The women's household in Pittsburgh is an interesting one. Six women, plus a mischievous bowling ball named Bob, live in it. We're a fun mix of backgrounds, college majors, and personalities. All of us are slightly addicted to Pinterest for inspiration for household meals. Our house doesn't have a name yet, but I think we should call it Cookie Manor seeing as we all love to bake. We even have a tradition known as Cookie Thursday where one of us bakes a new cookie recipe to bring to our UCO prayer meetings.

We live in Shadyside, a neighborhood located within the city of Pittsburgh. Despite it's name, Shadyside is one of Pittsburgh's hidden gems with plenty of places to eat, run, and drink coffee. Ellsworth Avenue, Shadyside's main drag, is home to some of the most beautiful homes I have ever seen. The neighborhood is a nice mix of graduate students from local universities, young families trying to figure out how to walk their dogs and their strollers simultaneously, and senior citizens who can trace their ancestry back to Pittsburgh steel tycoons.

Home Sweet Home

The house itself was built in 1900, before electricity, central plumbing, or refrigerators, so naturally we have two fruit cellars. The house is quite spacious-we each have our own room, and can comfortably fit twenty to thirty people in our living room/dining room for parties. Like most turn of the century homes, something is always falling apart, much to the annoyance of our household leader. If you look out from our front door, you can picture carriages pulling up to drop off ladies for afternoon tea.

Horse and Buggy Shot

Living in Household makes me feel like a homemaker because it gives me the structure to create a home for myself, my friends, and college women in the Pittsburgh area. My 19 year old women's studies major is probably rolling over in her grave right now, but I really like my new role. I am very grateful that the Lord has called us together to be a home, a light to the nations, unified by our love for Christ and each other.

The Best Place in Pittsburgh: Seat 107 CLP (Main)

Instagramed shot of CLP (Main) 

While all Pittsburgh natives agree that Pittsburgh is the best city in the world, no one can agree on what the best place in Pittsburgh is.

Sports buffs love cheering on 'dem Stillers at Heinz Field. The Pittsburgh version of the hipster (those uber cool folks who really do bike uphill both ways to school) can tell you which neighborhood farmer's market to go to for the best Saturday morning flowers. Come Lent, parishioners of the 50+ Catholic Parishes of Pittsburgh will shamlessly plug their parish for the coveted Best Fish Fry of the Year Award.

But as a Pittsburgh native, I know what the best place in Pittsburgh is. The Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh (CLP).

I first encountered CLP during my childhood summers. During the summer months, charged with looking after a bookish smart-aleck while her daughter put in long hours in the operating room, Granny was always on the lookout for free ways to entertain said bookworm. Her solution? Tuesdays became Library day.

During the late 1990s, CLP began to sponsor a program called Summer Reading Club as a way to trick (I mean, encourage) kids to continue to read once school let out for the summer. Every time you read a book, you were given so many raffle tickets that you could submit to win a prize. The more books you read, the more chances you had to win. And they were good prizes. Like 164 packs of Crayola Crayons.

Since she lived in Glassport, Granny decided to sign me up at the McKeesport Branch of the CLP. She bravely co-signed for my very first library card,  and gave me my very own cardboard box to carry my ten weekly books back and forth in.

But Granny, always on the lookout for ways to tame my already healthy ego, knew that she needed to find some kind of service for me to do lest Tuesday's turn her granddaughter into a reading monster. One day, her sister-in-law mentioned that she planted fresh flowers on the graves of our relatives at the McKeesport Cemetery. But Aunt Mammie worried how she would find the time to care for the flowers between her work schedule, and caring for her mother and brother? Granny told her not to worry, she knew just the eager eight year old for the job.

From then on, Tuesdays became Cemetery and Library day. Every Tuesday morning during the summer we would load up Granny's blue min-van with four empty plastic milk cartons, two knee pads, and a small shovel and travel to McKeesport Cemetery to weed and water.

At first I was not happy with our weekly trips to the Cemetery. I saw them as an unjust encroachment on my library time.  I may or may not have thrown a tantrum or two. Or three. But Granny was insistent. No cemetery. No library.

I look back now and see those summer Tuesdays as the highlight of my childhood. Spending time with Granny in the cemetery taught me  a lot about my family history, respecting my elders, and creating beauty in an ugly world. CLP's Summer Reading Club helped me to fall in love with reading, learn to finish tasks I started, and appreciate the consequences of breaking rules (i.e not returning your books on time).

Granny passed away from ovarian cancer during my senior year in high school. At that point, I was working as a page at another CLP, and would soon begin my studies at the University of Pittsburgh as an English Literature and History major.  Granny was buried with the rest of our family in the McKeesport Cemetery. A couple Tuesdays a year, I drive to the cemetery to scrub bird poop off her tombstone, and water her plastic flowers.

As I sit here and write this from seat 107 in the reading room of CLP Main, I hope she's looking down from heaven and smiling.