Joey_M

Lately I have been getting very stressed out because I am having difficulty finding a career. I graduated from college about one whole year ago and to this day I have been sending my resume around and calling a number of places, yet nobody seems to want to hire me. So as a result, I have been working at one terrible, low paying job to the next. I am currently washing dishes at a local restaurant because it was surprisingly a better place to work than my last job, front desk of a hotel.

The problem started when I picked my major in college, hospitality management. At the time I wanted to be a hotel manager, but after working in a hotel for about two years I have found that it was not a decent place to work. If I would have continued to work in the hotel industry, I would have to probably start at the front desk and work there for about ten years. The bad part about this is that I would have to start at this position for about $8.00 an hour and probably get a .25 raise every year after that. After this I would probably become the manager of the front desk (probably a job that would pay in the high 20,000s) and then ten years after that I would finally become a General Manager. As a front desk manager I would be getting paid in the high 20 thousands and end with making only a few thousand more after a decade. In the majority of hotels, the only two decent paying jobs are the GM and the Director of Sales. However, the problem with these two positions is that in every two years the majority of hotels are usually bought in sold and consequently these two positions would lose their job. In fact, the first GM at my hotel was fired because of the new owners and has actually worked at five different positions in five different states in as many years. Three of those positions took place in the last six months. So I would have to work on average 10 years starting off at $8 per hour and ending at $10.5 (if even that much) and work another ten years to finally get a job that would start at the high $20,000's (again, if even that much). Then finally I would be a GM and would most likely lose that job every two years and looking for a new hotel to work at. I don’t know about you, but when I am in my 40's I don’t want to be making in the low 30,000s. I know of a number of different people who have graduated from college and six months later are making more than that. Because off all this I have no desire whatsoever of perusing a career in a hotel.

I was originally blaming myself for choosing such a silly major, but now I have been blaming my school. My school of choice made not effort into informing me any of this when I was deciding on a major. I even researched it in my early college years and found nothing like what I would experience. I remember even seeing, from my research, info that said that the average entry level salary for hospitality industry can be as high as $38000. I dont know where they get this info from, but you are not going to even get that in Long Island, let alone where I am from. I now want to work for a large company, but when I apply for an entry level position, I do not meet the minimum requirements because they want someone of a different major. Now I am constantly going over this in my mind how bad the hotel industry is and how I never found this out from my school. I cannot help but to get upset about it when I go into work, when I am looking for jobs, etc... Is there anything I can do to help me from thinking about this all the time?