if you don't know what to do, do something

try not to get downhearted. it can infect your job applications with a tinge of desperation or bitterness.

a piece of advice from my old maths teacher: if you don't know what to do, do something. you might not always get the right answer, but you might learn something in the process. it might help to see jobhunting as a process rather than a means to an end.

i haven't got the right answer yet, but i'm definitely learning.

1. learn where to find the jobs you want.

2. learn how to get an interview.

3. learn how to get a job.

i'm at stage 2. referring back to my previous post, i have a good bank of sites and resources that advertise the kind of positions i am interested in and for which i am qualified. i have been invited for a number of interviews, and attended a few, but i had been unsuccessful in earning a job offer. however, i did receive some great feedback, so that's part of the process, and useful to getting myself to third base (sorry).

this approach is useful because it avoids pinning hopes on one job or one goal. if you see each job opportunity as a part of the process, you can approach it positively using the lessons you have learned from careers advisors, peers, and from previous application feedback, or from your own reflections from past performance.

i had an interview for what would have been a great job (although part-time). my application was fantastic, because i've honed my skills at this stage of the process. however, i knew i did not nail the interview. i was more reserved that i should have been, and forgot to highlight where my skills are exemplary. next time, i'll try a different tact.

You can take the politics...

It was a month since I tried to demonstrate the important difference between lolitics and not-lolitics and I had promised to follow up with an explanation of why political humour can sometimes be damaging to political discourse. I have not forgotten about this promise.

I had started by writing a commentary on the whole BNP/Question Time debate to compare the notion of political debate on the BBC with that of political punditry in the USA. By the time I had finished my 'draft' it was over two thousand words long and not yet finished. I wanted to comb through it to give it some finesse when it dawned on me that something frightening was happening.

Two thousand words sounds very much like an essay draft to me.

It seems that you can take the girl out of the politics degree, but you can't take the politics degree out of the girl. Not that there's anything wrong with writing politics essays when one doesn't have to, but I was alarmed to find myself doing it mostly out of habit.

Nobody wants to be writing politics essays "out of habit" and I doubt anybody wants to read such essays either. So instead I've been intently following America's Next Top Model and Project Runway and making a concerted effort to avoid any broadcasting or commentary involving X-Factor. I've left my embryonic essay on the back boiler for now. I'll return to it at some point soon.

Thatcher has died

Thatcher has died.

Gears of lol

Last week we had a month's worth of rain in one day. In order to achieve this, rain must be both relentless and heavy. As you can probably imagine, that's no fun to be out in, so work was the quietest that I had experienced it to date. This suited me fine because I was safe and dry at work; I also had friends staying over and was glad not to be too tired to entertain them.

After shop had shut, we went for dinner and drinks and catch-up. We went to a reasonably priced Mexican restaurant, asked if we could have a table outside and provided much entertainment for the serving staff. We ordered after much gossip, deliberation, and menu scrutiny by my nouveau-vegan friend (it all happened after she broke up with a butcher). We ate, teased the waiter, tipped well, had after-dinner coffee and gin, bought some soy milk, and called a taxi back to my village.

It was all very lovely until the taxi passed a village at the top of a hill, reached the bottom of the hill and splooshed into a giant puddle, which turned out to be a burst river, which broke the engine and brought the taxi to an unceremonially pathetic kaput. We four girls and the taxi driver were stranded in a river.

I laughed nervously and felt incredibly bad for my friends who had travelled for hours on a bus to see me and what I had promised to be a beautiful corner of the world. Friend A reached out of the window to dip her hand in the river which reached up towards the car door handle and produced a reasonable current. She reminded us all that she couldn't swim. Friend B whipped out her iPhone to update facebook status and text friends about our situation (a reply from a mutual friend: "oh noes! i can has dry? hello to girls in a taxiboat!"). Friend C became increasingly concerned about the large damp patch that was forming at her feet while the taxi driver assured us that the car was waterproof.

We sat for an hour while a people-carrier taxi from the same company approached from the other side of the burst river and decided it was too deep and wide to be able to rescue us. Another car sat some way behind us on dry land flashing their lights (were they alerting other drivers or were they gloating to us that they weren't stuck? We never found out). Eventually a tractor from a local farm came along, and the farmer gallantly towed us back to his farm before going off to rescue more drivers of a foolhardy disposition. The people-carrier taxi took us home, for free.

Luckily the next day was dry, the view was beautiful, the burst river had entirely disappeared, and I went to work while the girls partook in some shopping before heading back to the city. I found out later that the taxi's engine was totally wrecked to a cost of £5000 and our driver was completely contrite about what had happened.

All this excitement with the taxiboat reminded me that I haven't held up my side of the "moving back home" deal. I need to learn to drive. I have been putting it off, but I really don't have an excuse now, especially as I have announced it to the public domain of internetland. I know it sounds pitiful but I am incredibly nervous about this, not just because of the taxiboat incident, but because I am scared of traffic. People assure me that it's not a big deal, "it's just like riding a bike".

That's all very well, but I can't ride a bike either.

twit

I joined twitter.

Obviously I'm following Stephen Fry already.

sharpen the soul

I did something foolish.

I know it is foolish and I know that it may have been a terrible decision, but I also think it was the right thing to do.

I received an email last week inviting me to a telephone interview for a paid internship directly related to my career interests. I had applied for the internship in July and since forgotten about it.

My heart leapt with excitement. This is good news! So what did I do?

I emailed back and said I was interested, yes, but unavailable until the new year. Let me reiterate: I turned down an interview, for a potentially ideal position.

Why?

During a tough moment about a year ago, a friend was telling me about the seven habits of highly effective people. I can't actually remember any of them (which I guess doesn't bode well) except for the final one, "sharpen the saw" which I actually misheard as "sharpen the soul".

I had asked my friend to explain it, and he regailed the story of the guy ferociously and unsuccessfully trying to chop down a tree with a blunt saw, believing that he did not have time to sharpen the saw, which would in actual fact save time. It resonated with me because I was working by day and studying by night and weekend, rarely letting myself take a breather or have a distraction. If I had, I probably would have been more productive.

So now that I have a chance to take a breather and enjoy distraction from the overall goal, I am taking and enjoying it. Don't misunderstand this; I am working 5-6 days a week as a supervisor in a posh deli, earning back money.But I'm enjoying the job and I'm not taking the next step of my career, yet.

It is one thing to be able to make opportunities for oneself. I worked hard to get my degree(s) and learn languages and gain skills and was offered an opportunity as result of this. However, it is another thing to be able to turn an imperfect opportunity down. The internship could have been perfect, but I know that it wasn't the right time, and therefore I know it isn't perfect.

Maybe I am a fool, or maybe I am astute. Only time will be able to tell... not the time it takes to sharpen a saw, but definitely the time it takes to sharpen the soul.

it will all be worth it

People always ask kids what they want to do when they "grow up". It's only now I realise how misleading that question is. I know very few people who have only had one career in their lives. Most people I know have had rich and interesting fits and starts and stories about how they reached the current point in their life.

As I had no clue what I wanted to do "when I was grown up" I entered the habit of setting myself short-term challenges. Going to University was kind of like one of those challenges; I studied what I enjoyed, rather than a particular vocation. One summer at Uni I challenged myself to get a "real" summer job and gained experience in Marketing. The next summer I challenged myself to getting a summer job in New York and had fun working on the Coney Island Boardwalk. The next year I challenged myself to find a "graduate job" or get elected as student union president, but was unsuccessful in either.

During a slow day at my "non-graduate job" for the government I decided that in order to change the world, I needed to learn more about how the world actually works. How was I going to do that? I suppose I could have done any multitude of things; the world is a big and varied place after all...

So I made a swift decision to apply to do a part-time MSc in European Politics. Yes, really. I am sure that there area much more interesting ways to find out how the world works than this, but this approach appealed to my geekery for all things political and educational. I was swiftly accepted, swiftly and inadvertently embarking upon a huge, huge challenge.

I went about things the hard way, I think. I was working full time in order to afford fees and rent, volunteering with a political party and attending night language classes as well as doing my Postgrad degree. (This is far too much for a mere mortal to attempt - do not do it.)

Banks collapsed around me and the jobs market looked less and less pleasant. I tried to motivate myself to study while working in a job that, frankly, I did not enjoy. I had set myself this challenge purely out of interest, but part of me wanted to make sure that it was a worthy investment. Grades were and weren't important: I chose to write on topics that I knew little about in order to broaden my knowledge, but of course this probably affected my grades, along with trying to balance deadlines with other commitments and time-pressures.

All through this I had a handwritten ink-note blu-tacked on my bedroom wall to keep me going: It will all be worth it.

Although I don't necessarily recommend setting yourself the same challenge, I do not regret it at all. I challenged myself to learn how the world works, and while I am under no delusion that I am now a worldly expert, I certainly I have learned a great deal. I learned more than I could have expected, and much more than was included in the course curriculum. These unintended lessons have been just as revealing as the classes I attended. I have learned about the world, and also learned about myself, and other people.

When I handed in my final piece of coursework and started packing to move back home, I tore down that little note of encouragement. I didn't need it anymore. It tore away some of the wall paint with it, I guess the idea had stuck...eventually.

I got my grades last week.

Was it worth it?

Well, of course, as you know, I don't have a job related to my desired vocation...yet.

Was it worth it?

My grades were good enough for me, and nobody can take them or the experiences I gained away from me.

Was it worth it?

Damn right it was, but I'm bloody glad that challenge is over!

And as for the current challenge, well, it's to recover from the last, mentally and financially, as well as to prepare for the next...