For those on the job threshold, just as the struggle for one's school identity is completed, a new and greater one looms. And what if the results are less satisfactory than those of the school years? Here's one person's story.
Little happened at Charlotte Raglin's alma mater without her being involved. She had written scripts for two senior plays-the first at the end of her junior year, the second just before graduation-and had parlayed a lively sense of humor into two smash presentations. Not incidentally, she played the lead in both. Her homeliness-at the age of 23 she had the drooping features of a 50-year-old, and her round-shouldered figure traversed the stage with a sideways shuffle-helped her in the comedic roles. She ran for president of the senior class and won a landslide victory. Any undergraduate, and sometimes members of the faculty, who wanted to get anything going in the school-whether it was to raise funds to redecorate the student lounge or stage a protest against nuclear proliferation-started with Charlotte.
In short, Raglin's name became the campus conjure phrase, her last year a surging triumph of public acclaim and admiration. Had there been a yearbook feature with the traditional mosts and most likelies, Raglin would easily have come off with the "most likely to succeed" designation.
Friends who asked were told her plans: "Something in the theater," she said. "I've got a couple of scripts that are pretty good. One's just right for Woody Allen."
The self that Charlotte Raglin had grown at school didn't succeed in the outside world. Her two scripts-which would have done well on any college stage in the world- were considered sophomoric and unsuitable for professional production.
She went down the well-traveled path from Broadway producers to Off Broadway, then to Off-Off Broadway groups and their adherents and supporters.
Finally, with the help of 3,000 sweat-earned dollars contributed by her doting and hopeful family (her college success had confirmed their idea of her worth and eventual triumph), one of her scripts, Zingers and Zongers of the Southland, a topical review, made the boards in a little East Fourth Street theater, where it struggled and gasped for two weeks, then expired.
Charlotte was not deterred. She eventually made a belated move, looked up some of the more affluent people in her class-or their relatives. Initial reactions were hearty: "The great Charlotte Raglin? I've been watching the theater pages for your stuff, Charlotte. . . ."
After many months, her requests shifted from theater-related matters to employment of any kind. Initial pleasantries died at direct requests-for a job in the friend's father's company, or for an introduction to an executive who might give her a job, and so on. But the qualifications that might have made her the newest Broadway success didn't look so good on a resume.
Eventually, her mother's cousin, who was a partner in a Wall Street brokerage house, helped her get a job as a tab-punch operator. Down to her last few dollars, Raglin took the position, thinking up some witty comments to use in telling people what she was doing: "The president of the firm wants me to learn the business from the outside in. . . ." Or, "Thought I'd do a couple of months of research for a satire that will rip Wall Street wide open. . . ."
Charlotte Raglin met and married a man who owned a dress shop in New Jersey. "Sweet guy," she said, not only because she thought he was but also to cover the fact that he was not in the theater. To everyone's surprise, including Charlotte's own, after she had gained some experience in the family shop, she did well selling. Once again she was popular; the customers enjoyed her wit. The humor that didn't go on Broadway played well in a boutique in Ridge-wood, New Jersey.
Of course, she still talks of making it on Broadway. "I'm finishing up a script that Marty [her husband] thinks is terrific. . . ." And from time to time she sees producers' agents or performers' agents. "Something's got to give someday" is her public conviction and her private defeat.
Those about to enter the job world are preoccupied by two questions.
The first is how the transition will be made from a present familiar self into an as yet unformed image. What does one do? What can one initiate?
Second: What if the new image is less worthy than the previous one? Fortunately, the odds are against the Charlotte Raglin fate, or the one implied by an interviewee mentioned earlier: "When I left college, I knew my best days were behind me."
For every Charlotte Raglin, there are many who make it in the more common avenues of employment, and find there a world of challenge, and form a new identity based on acceptance and achievement.
The qualified and the capable needn't worry whom they will find when they find themselves in the working world. And the happy discovery will reflect not only the external factors of money and status but also the ego needs involved in fitting into the adult world of work in some self-fulfilling way.
The more insightful individuals understand that the likelihood is for drastic change in self-image. Whatever the persona may have been, it will recede into the past.
There is especially good news for some. Those who fared poorly during the indentity-crisis-laden school years now may see improvement-the cliche confrontation of the college nonentity, successful in a new job and radiating an aura of accomplishment, meeting the college star selling newspapers on the street. Charlotte Raglin, typical of the latter group, made a fatal and avoidable error. She assumed that the personal qualities that made for college triumph would apply in another milieu. She was wrong.
What many people don't realize is that the world of work is geared for their success. But it takes some cooperation, and a willingness to adapt.
Those undergoing initiation into the world of work eventually benefit from a crucial fact: The difficulties of the initiation itself are not an inherent part of the world, but are a rite of passage, a transition phenomenon; when it's over-that means being on someone's payroll-the individual is ready to start one of life's great adventures. And the future, as has never been the case before, is fluid, shapable by the new citizen.
