Help Wanted, Part 2

Manhattan’s loss will be Washington’s gain when Amari heads to D.C.

By Susan Braudy

After grad school, I pushed and pulled my life so that I could immigrate to Manhattan.

I was in love. With everything here.

I remember telling my grandmother how I loved studying each different ethnic face on subways. My ardor was undiminished even when she worried from San Diego that I should move to a safer place.

These days, young people are still smitten with our city. But it’s almost impossible for recent college graduates to find gainful employment—even when they’re our best and brightest. Bottom line: They lack experience.

“Internships” (unpaid positions) are the new entry-level jobs. These kids are a frighteningly large segment of unemployed Americans.

How can we make room for this generation of talented people who are in love with the city? This is the second of two columns describing two amazing 2009 college graduates.

Amari Hammonds, the subject of this column, just left Manhattan—and me—and trust me, I’ve never had a better, more lovable part-time assistant.

Four years ago, she’d decided to attend Columbia on a visit from St. Louis because she too fell in love with Manhattan. She loved Columbia’s campus embedded in the great city filled with noises and interesting people in the streets and not hiding in cars. Besides working for me, until recently she sold tarts part-time at Balthazar Bakery.

Despite her summa cum laude graduation and her early Phi Beta Kappa, Amari couldn’t get a toehold here. Her resume is surreally impressive, but mostly internships. At New Line Cinema, she adroitly handled press screenings of new films and rubbed shoulders with cast members of movies such as Hairspray. For ID PR (despite her confidentiality agreement), we can reveal that without pay she effortlessly coordinated press screenings for Slumdog Millionaire. But those glamorous jobs didn’t put her on a career path that led to an actual salary at a film or PR company.

Fortunately for her, three weeks ago Amari learned that she’d been selected for a distinguished position at the White House. She will intern there for four months.

Background on Amari: She’s African American and very wholesome in a Midwestern and yet sophisticated way. She attended Columbia University on a $50,000 grant from an ABC TV show called The Scholar (sort of like The Apprentice) and a hefty Columbia scholarship. Her out-of-pocket expenses were only plane tickets home to St. Louis, snacks and some books. She’s clearly the best of the best—totally competent—and seems to me to be spontaneously and thoroughly good-hearted. She knows just about everything about computers, including how to sell my stuff on eBay. Unlike me, what she doesn’t know she isn’t afraid to noodle around with until she finds it.

Alas, I’m losing Amari and so is Manhattan because she plans to live with her aunt in Washington and make a career in that city, not here. (She won’t be paid for the White House internship, but afterward I know Washington employers will get the point about how valuable her job skills are.) She’ll stay in Washington because her aunt works for the government and has lots of contacts—and Amari sees it’s time to try a new job market.

Says Amari in her upbeat way, “I get it and it’s okay. I’ll find my way in Washington even though the market’s saturated with people my age trying to find jobs.” 

–
Susan Braudy is the author and journalist whose last book, Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left, was nominated for a Pulitzer by publisher Alfred Knopf.