A GOOD Job

When my class visited the courthouse in Xiamen, we were on the bus for about one hour there and one hour back. It was interesting talking to the students during that time. I was asking one student what she wanted to do when she graduated, and she said, "I just want a good job." Of course I had to ask -- what makes a job a good job? Her immediate reply, "Making 5,000 RMB per month." (That's about $650.00) . What about job satisfaction? It isn't important, she said.

I thought that was a curious response since the student told me she disliked the job she had between college and law school. She worked for the government as kind of an "Internal Affairs" investigator, or as she put it, "We looked for people to discipline who had made mistakes in their work or personal lives." And she added, in what I took to be understatement, "People did not like us very much."

But if it's a good job, she said -- that is, one earning 5,000 RMB per month -- "it doesn't matter."