Americans push, Spaniards nudge  Today, the secretary of the elementary school where I work asked me to come to the office so he could update my file—he needed my telephone number and year of birth. Jokingly, I asked him to guess (my age, that is). Twenty-nine, he replied. In any other situation I might have been offended, but here in Spain, it’s almost unheard of for people to have graduated from college and obtained a job before the age of twenty-five. He was quite surprised to hear that I’m only twenty-two.
In America, there is a palpable push to get out into the work world after college. Students who choose to take an extra year to graduate are derisively referred to as being on the “five-year plan,” nudge nudge, wink wink, as if these students are somehow lazier or dumber than their peers.
I think this push is partially due to the financial burden that college students must bear in America. The absurdly high cost of higher education in America drives many people into debt for decades after graduation. For many students, graduating without a job is not just socially frowned-upon; it is financially impossible.
Still, many people who graduated with me, who could seemingly afford to travel around for a bit after college and bum off their parents, instead choose to go into high-paying jobs in finance, law and consulting. To me, that suggests that there’s still a stigma for those students who graduate without a job. Eye brows rise, seeming to ask, “How low was his GPA? What did she wear to the interview? Did he even go to the Career Services Office?”—all of which imply the bigger question: Why did you dedicate the last four years of your life, as well as $160,000, to studying a subject in college if you don’t know what to do with your life?
Here in Spain, the push to get a job after graduation is less like a push and more of a gentle nudge. The youngest teacher at my school is 25. He started just a couple months after I did; this is his first job. He lives with his parents and sister, and just bought his first car. In America, we might kindly say that he is a late-bloomer. But in Spain, he is one of the only people around my age that I know who has accomplished so much. Many university students in Spain take five to seven years to finish a degree that in America you could complete in three or four. Very few hold summer jobs; most live at home well into their twenties, moving out when they marry. And marriage and babies also come late. Seldom do I see parents of young children at my school who look under thirty.
The reasons for these differences are easy to spot: university is cheap; housing is expensive. Failing classes at university is not abnormal—in fact, it’s almost expected. Because so many students attend university in their hometown, living with mom and dad is an obvious and customary choice. They are young until they are old. While Americans tend to spend their twenties trying on adulthood for size, experimenting with jobs and cities, playing dress-up with ties and pumps, Spaniards actually enjoy their twenties the way they enjoyed their teens. And once they reach that point in their early thirties where they’ve finally secured a job and a spouse, they are more or less set in life. A Spaniard doesn’t ask herself what her next career move is, or where it will take her, but rather “Why would I work more, or differently, when I can afford to feed my family, maintain my house and car, and live at the beach on the weekends?”
Suffice is to say, I don’t think that either culture is inherently better than the other. But I do think that Spanish culture gives young people who want to break the socio-professional mold a lot more wiggle room when it comes to starting jobs and families sooner or later than their peers. It’s that wiggle room that I’m taking advantage of right now—living abroad working just twelve hours a week. My mom still asks when I’m going to get a real job; but in Spain, at 22, I’m way ahead of the game.
- Bethany Holmes graduated from Middlebury College in 2007. She is currently working in Spain, but plans on returning to the motherland sometime in the fall of 2008. Staying true to the Spanish way, she plans on moving in with her parents and delaying adulthood for as long as possible.
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