I was walking through downtown Oakland, Calif., aimlessly, much as I had been wandering through life. It was my first visit to the city, and I'd been wondering if this might be the next place I called home. I was headed to the BART station when an eccentric lady peering at me piqued my curiosity. Crossing the street to get closer, I realized the mystic storefront was only “strategically mystic”; this was a fortunetelling business. Now, I don’t usually believe in this sort of thing, but it was an upside-down time in my life. I had come to California from my home in Dallas in search of a job. If I didn’t know my next step, maybe she did. Plus, it was only 10 bucks -- half price.
The recession had not been good to us recent college graduates, who had been promised the world if they just got a good education. It was especially brutal for idealists like me, who wanted to make social change. Psychology had been a way to help people, a balance of the philosophy and science I enjoyed. But there wasn’t a job market without graduate school, and I already had enough student loans. As the eldest son of immigrants, my mother widowed, it was expected of me to step up. I needed to help out and I wanted to make my family proud, and I wasn’t doing either. So I took odd jobs: market research and analysis, database administration, SAT tutoring, delivering food, and computer repair. Nothing that got me on the successful career track I wanted.
