Sir, – As a freelance journalist who has had to jettison work-life balance in the interest of making Dublin rental prices every month, I read Fionn Rogan's piece (Opinion, August 2nd) about students benefiting from getting jobs with interest.
Rather than looking back at my time working during college and secondary school with pride or nostalgia, I look back on it as a waste.
I can’t remember what I bought with the money I earned, I can’t remember what I did on the weekends when I was too tired from working to do anything.
There will be plenty of time for working when you’re forced to for your entire life. Students should keep that in mind.
Secondly, the idea that there are plentiful jobs if you’re just willing to show some gumption is risible in a country with youth unemployment as high as it is. I was forced to leave Waterford for work and I return home to see a lost generation of people in their mid 20s with nothing to do, aimless. Many of them are graduates. That is not due to a lack of get-up-and-go, it is due to chronic structural neglect.
Lastly, I would suggest to the writer that his experiences as a soon-to-be Trinity graduate about to work in a big four accounting firm are perhaps less universal than he believes.
Perhaps his milieu are coddled and privileged – requiring the humanisation of labour to learn the common touch - but that is far from my experience of the many beleaguered young people growing up in this country.
– Yours, etc,
DAVID HUGH HARTERY
Old Cabra Road,
Dublin 7.