The way things change

So it's been about 10 months.

I have moved from my small town in New York to across the country. Where I am currently working in retail.

I haven't gotten exactly to where I want to be, I honestly don't even know if I'm closer to it now than before I moved out here.

Realizing what field I want to go into has been half the battle, but it is extremely hard to get any notice with all the competition going around. I want to be a career coordinator or headhunter or whatever I can do in the area of career services.

There have been several interviews since I've been out on the west side, but no bites after the interview. It's pretty disheartening. But! I've been able to satiate my desire to help people with their lives and job hunts by helping co-workers and their families with resumes.

But anyway, this is about surviving after college after all...

Belated Holiday Wishes

I trust everyone had a good Holiday.

I left off with my interview being pushed. After some finagling and a couple stressful moments I finally had my interview right before Christmas.

It went fairly well, but being realistic I don't think I'll get the job, for the lack of experience in that particular field. Which is fine.

It was pointed out that I have the mentality of "I have to get out!" Basically meaning I'm trying to find and take whatever job I can get to get out of the town I'm in. Which in reality if it's not the job or career path I'm really looking to go, maybe I should just relax a little bit and really look into the direction I'd like to go.

It's really hard to set goals when you just plain don't know what you want to do. I have an inkling of an idea, my problem is that I'm too wishy washy and easily swayed, then I doubt myself, and go back to doing nothing.

I've got myself figured out. :)

Disappointed

Alright, so my interview got pushed. The interviewer was sick, unfortunately, and didn't want to do the interview from home. We are rescheduling.

It was a little disappointing but things happen. I haven't heard from her yet but I imagine it'll be sometime next week.

I had a dream last night that she called my up and just hired me without an interview. It went something along the lines of, "Your resume is just fantastic. I don't even need to interview you. You're hired. When can you start?"

haha now if only. :)

New Interview

I have an interview today. Eek. It is a little nerve wracking I do have to say.

If I were to get this job that I am interviewing for it would do a few things for me. Move my life forward by:
a.) Getting me out of the place I've lived for the past 10 years
b.) Let me explore an entirely different industry which I think would be absolutely awesome.
c.) I would be able to afford an apartment!

I'm trying not to let my self get too excited for fear that I'm just going to end up babbling during the interview. I tend to do that when I'm nervous. It's worse when it's a phone interview. On the phone you can't read peoples reactions to what you're saying so you really can't tell if you're saying completely the wrong thing or doing well.

So at 11:45 a.m. I will be on the phone with a potential employer and am hoping all will go well and, fingers crossed, I will get this job.

Staffing Agencies

Ok this may seem pretty simple, but this idea has escaped me until this past week.

Staffing Agencies are a great way to find jobs. Duh!

You don't have to wait for them to contact you after you posted your resume on monster.com or whatever other search engine you posted it on.

There's a fabulous website called: www.headhuntersdirectory.com
There you can search by state and city and find staffing agencies and search the jobs that they're trying to fill.

It's awesome! Try it.

College Education at Work

The day started off quite well even with a threat of a big snow storm. I was actually getting geared up for it and was hoping to have a couple feet dumped on us today. It is into the 2nd week of December and we've barely had enough snow to cover the ground until today. Very unusual for the area where I live.

I got into work and was promptly greeted with an almost empty box of unsharpened pencils. Why does this matter? Well, where I work is a little slow on keeping up with the technology end of things. So why quite a few (generally larger) institutions have an electronic system in place for evaluations, we still do things the old fashioned way with paper and pencil. I had complaints about there not being any sharpened pencils; so I spent part of my morning sharpening pencils because the people who use them don't want to do it themselves. Ok fine. So in the midst of this task I had someone say to me "a college degree at work" and "let them sharpen their own damn pencils." The last part made me smile...the first part made me cringe.

4 years at a school to get a degree in a field where I can't even get my foot in the door (I've long stopped trying really) and here I am sharpening pencils.

I guess it's not the worst of fates. At least I have a job.

After a Very Very Long Hiatus

I kind of gave up on the blogging sphere and took a very long break...obviously.

Life got hectic, the novelty wore off and readership was down (not that it was very up to begin with).

But I thought maybe I'd start trying to update again and include useful things.

Ignoring the useful things for now:

Here has what has happened up til about now.

1. I was offered my temp job and became a full time, benefit eligible employee. This happened towards the end of July.
2. In the process, before I was offered the job, I almost moved to Massachusetts without a job and was going to strike it out there while living with my sister and brother-in-law. A very tough decision after I was offered the job. I struggled for about a week before deciding to stay. Who was I to spit in the face of a paying job with benefits?
3. After accepting the job, I was told, because of budget cuts, that my time was going to be split between two positions...
4. So now I am an Administrative Assistant and a Career Coordinator. Two full time jobs being done in half the time, about 19 hours a week for each, give or take a couple hours here and there.

So needless to say I was out of my head from August-September, while I was getting used to the idea, being trained in a new position, and taking up more responsibility that was left out on the temp job.

But! Experience is experience...and even though at times I feel like I'm going to strangle someone if they ask me to make 4 copies for them when the copier is larger than life right next to me, I have coped. I am learning.

I do have to say that I really have learned how to beef up my resume and cover letter.

Highest Paying Jobs

Thank you Yahoo for once again letting us know what the highest paying jobs are for kids graduating out of college are.

Unfortunately, unless you are mechanically minded you're screwed. :)

High Paying Jobs

Officially

I am officially, gainfully employed. I was offered my temp job about two weeks ago.

After I had decided that I was going to Boston...finally. I had nothing tying me down here anymore.

Once I told my boss I was planning on leaving in a month I got a call that night with an unofficial offer, and another call the next morning with an official offer, with pay raise.

So I tossed and turned over my decision.

Some may think "What's to decide? You got a job in this forsaken job market. Don't be stupid."

Well I was relishing the idea of doing something stupid for once, stupid in the sense of irresponsible.

But I have taken the job. I have done the responsible thing once again. If I didn't have student loans I would have been out that door and on my way to Boston. Ah, but the price of education.

So here's to hoping that this is the right decision and a happy one at that.

Decaf Espresso

What is with decalf espresso? Seriously. Doesn't that "decaf" part defeat the purpose of espresso?

Granted there is still some caffiene in anything decalf.

But isn't the purpose of espresso to give a person a jolt of highly concentrated caffiene? I thought so.

Sorry just a mini rant.

Oh So Bored/Web Comics

Work is very very slow right now.

I seriously had maybe an hours worth of work so far today and I've been here since 8:30 am. It is now 10:30 and I have to be here until 4:30. Oh poooor me.

What bothers me the most is that it is such a beautiful day out today, an actual real day of summer, when it has been raining so much for the past few weeks.

So I'm being fidgity, looking for things to do and reading comics. I forgot my book again.

Here's a couple web comics that I keep track of. They're really good

Girls with Slingshots

Anders Loves Maria

I really owe the credit to my boyfriend for introducing me to these.

Happy reading

Now for Cover Letters

Last post was just a quick link for resumes. This link below is for the daunting cover letter.

If anyone of you are like me, the cover letter is probably the toughest part. I reworked my cover letter last night and pretty much edited out the whole thing and started over.

Now if you're lucky enough to have a great brother-in-law (or other relative) like I do who reads these things for a living (among other parts of his job) then you're in a good spot to have someone help you edit (Thanks Andrew).

If not, this link might help. I know it helped me rethink a lot of my cover letter last night.

Click me! Click me!

Even if you don't have someone who is excellent at grammar and placement of sentences, find someone to check it over for typos at least. It's easy to miss them when you know what you think you wrote and just skim over the mistakes.

Working late

Oy! I have been away for along time again. Onset of summer I suppose.

No matter.

I am in the process of job hunting again along with many other lucky people.

So for those who are in the same rut as I am here's a link to help bolster your resume:

Click me!

Go have fun and stay up late working on your resume and cover letter like me!

Hi Mom! Hi Dad! I'm home :)

Here's a quick bit of an article for those of the college grads who will be returning home.


The Chronicle of Higher Education
From the issue dated May 22, 2009

JUST ASKING

Verses of Economy
By STEVE KOLOWICH

Poetry is all about economy. Words are used with precision and thrift. But not all poetry is about economics. In fact, almost none of it is, and that is a tragedy, says Stephen T. Ziliak, an economics professor at Roosevelt University. "An economics without poetry" he says, "is an economics that is blind."

To supplement their studies, Mr. Ziliak encourages his economics students to compose haiku, the Japanese poetry that consists of three lines of verse in a 5-7-5 syllabic order. He assigns haiku challenges for bonus points on exams, and even holds haiku workshops as part of a course on rhetoric in economics.

Q: Mom and Dad, I'm home!
The job market is nasty —
Where is my bedroom?
A: Invisible hand:
Mother of inflated hope,
Mistress of despair!

Copyright © 2009 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Original Link (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i37/37a00604.htm)

Higher Paying Jobs

Thank you Yahoo for narrowing the job market for all of those looking to get payed a ton of money per hour.

Yahoo posted today a list of high paying jobs for all of those aspiring to make $40 or more per hour during a work day.

Yahoo was careful to pick one job out of a few different possible fields so that everyone might be able to find something.

Albeit most of these jobs will require an expensive education or lots of experience (i.e. Art Director) it is hopeful to see that there are higher paying jobs out there that are still open at this point.

One of the flourishing fields is medical care. Unsurprising really. Us humans will always need medical attention. Whether it's just a cold that won't go away, to continuing to do that silly thing called having children, to car accidents etc.

So if you can stomach the idea of stiching up someones wounds, poking around in someones intestines during surgery, giving shots, and examining snotty nose kids who will more than likely sneeze in your face, the medical field might be a good thing to look into.

You can read the Original Post here.

Mer

While I'm sitting here, waiting on dinner to cook and jamming to the easy listening music on the TV guide channel (because there isn't really anything on right now), I thought I'd update since it's been a bit.

Continuing my addiction of games. Thanks to my brother who posted here I have become addicted to yet another game. Kingdom of Loathing (KOL).

It's funny, witty, and just plain simple fun. Go ahead and waste your day, especially that time between when you're supposed to be looking for a job...

Nice Weather

Nice sunny weather here is a rarity. The weather starts to go downhill around October and goes through April or May.

There will be a smattering of good days in April. You can definitely tell when the nice weather hits, because class sizes get much smaller and if you take short walk down to the lake you can find a good portion of the college students playing hooky.

But now classes are out and I get to go to the beach after work :)

I ended up taking a 2 hour lunch today...it was legit on the fact that I had my normal hour lunch and then ran into my two supervisors and chatted outside for another 45 minutes. Works for me.

The thing about living in a high winter impact climate is that you learn to really really appreciate the sunny warm weather.

Yay for summer!

Things to do

For the longest time after graduation, I wasn't working a full week. On my days off, besides looking for a full-time career, I'd spend most of my time here

For awhile there the thing I looked forward to was new badges or cards to play for. That's when I knew my life was either getting really sad or I was much easier to please than I thought.

Either way it's still a fun site.

Speaking of which, I need to go get the new badges...

Graduation time

It's that season. :) Graduations are happening all over now. Congrats to all of those who have now passed on from college into the real world.

The graduation of my Alma matter was this past Saturday. I attended and was near sniveling the entire time. I knew a few people graduating so it was nice to see those people making the passage that I did last year.

Quite a few are asking the question of "What now?"

My answer: Try to find a job...

Seriously get your butts out there and do the leg work and apply to a gazillion jobs until you can find one. That's the best thing you can do for yourself right now.


have fun... :)

Wandering off...

I've gotten the sense that this blog may have meandered away from the supposed intention of being helpful to college grads or ones to be.

Then I thought about it.

It's supposed to be about life after college. Nobody said that meant it had to be useful or insightful in anyway.

Then I realized that I lead a fairly boring, day in day out kind of life and it really can't be that entertaining to read about.

Today, for example, it's Mom's day. So I gave my mom her present this morning, went to church, came home had lunch. I made her strawberry shortcake and tea then flopped on the couch for most of the rest of the afternoon and watched a marathon of "Whose Wedding is it Anyway?" Which sadly, in between laundry and packing for the next week of puppy sitting that I'm doing, inspired me too browse through wedding dresses and start planning a wedding. A wedding, mind you, that is not on the horizon as of yet.

Moving on.

I heart Amazing Race! The finale was tonight, so of course I needed to watch. Yay! Asian kids for winning! I liked them. :) I was tossed between the brother/sister Asians and the Mom and Deaf son. I thought that they were two of the best teams on the race and would have been happy if one or the other had won.

Now it's iron chef time.

So you see, this is my life. Work and being absorbed by cable tv now that I have it. At least until my mom decides to downgrade to basic cable, in which no more wedding shows or iron chef for me. :(

That is that and if do anything that's actually remotely interesting, I'll be sure to tell all of you about it so that it may inspire your post-college life as well...