Following Jesus at the Job Fair

Abstract

Last January at the University of Notre Dame, where I live and work, scores of representatives from business corporations and the military gathered in the Joyce Center for the 2000 Summer Internship Job Fair. The purpose of this annual event, sponsored by the University's Career Center, is to enable students to make contact with potential employers for an internship the following summer and quite possibly, if the internship goes well for both parties, for a full-time job after graduation. As suggested by the name, this event has something of a carnival atmosphere to it, with rows of makeshift booths, colorful signs, and a variety of devices designed to catch the attention of students strolling by. Arthur Anderson was giving away yo-yos. Illinois D.O.T. was handing out yellow Frisbees. Nabisco offered cheese and crackers. Students were blowing bubbles at the Proctor and Gamble booth. But these corporations were offering to students much more than fun and games, as could be surmised by the tables stacked with glossy pamphlets and smart, graphically designed business cards. They were offering jobs, opportunities, careers--a [End Page 15] way of life. Thus there was a curious juxtaposition of playfulness and professionalism at this job fair, corresponding to the work-hard/play-hard style of life espoused by so many college students today. The corporate representatives understood student life, for most of them had only recently graduated from college themselves, in some cases the previous May, and more than a few were from Notre Dame. Fashionably coiffed and dressed in the smartest of twenty-something style yet still literate in the latest campus idioms, these corporate neophytes were able to mediate two worlds to our students, and so to point the way that crosses over from the collegiate world of Notre Dame to the corporate world of the Company-That's-Right-For-Them.