I don’t have the best employment record.
At least not since i graduated college. I don’t like to admit this but i think I should throw it out there. Therefore, despite my high hopes, my thank you notes and my follow up via email yesterday, I was a wee bit upset when I awoke to this email…
I’m sorry to inform you that we won’t be able to offer you a position at this time. We had a large number of extremely well-qualified applicants, and this was a difficult decision for us. I wish you the best of luck with your job search, and thank you again for your interest in the [redacted].
Really???
Seriously???????
I thought I had that one in the bag. Granted the salary was about $5k short of what I’m hoping for. And the position would be a bit more administrative than what I’d like…but the people were great, the office was in a primo location about a block south of the Dupont Circle metro, and I’d be working with a gal from Vermont who knew a gal that I worked with on my hill internship.
Not so much.
Rejection? Sucks. In all facets. I should know this since one of the first boys I had a big ole teenage crush on rejected me 15 times in 14 days the last two weeks of seventh grade. In my defense, it was my friend M who insisted on asking him out for me all those times. And also in my defense, I was only thirteen. Whatever, he’s a big time pot head and apparently got escorted out of high school for dealing a couple years after I transferred in 9th grade. His loss.
But on the job front, every job I’ve wanted, in relation to coop jobs, and the like, I’ve gotten. When i graduated? Not so much, in fact just the opposite. Maybe it was my punishment for fucking up “the plan”. The plan that the ex and I had established just before graduation where I’d move home, we’d visit until we both got jobs in DC and moved there together, making everything work out and we’d live happily ever after.
Instead, I broke up with him after too many guilt trips and fights two weeks after graduation and the night before i left Boston, moved home, acted like an angsty teenager who was being holed up with a curfew of midnight at the old age of twenty three and moved the eff out of my fathers house less than a month later. Two months later, I met my future husband over margaritas while sitting next to his ex girlfriend. We started dating almost two months later, two days after I was fired from my first salaried job at a settlement law firm in Georgetown for “not being the right fit.” Of course in the two months i was there, they also fired one other person who was hired only weeks before me so I sense it might not have been me as much as I thought.
As you can see though, things haven’t been on plan since day 1.
Interview after interview, prospect after prospect, I get my hopes up, I send well written, short but sweet thank you notes and I hope for the best. Hope for what seems like, on paper “the best job ever” – of course they never are. My job was supposed to be perfect despite the low salary offer that was non-negotiable that was offered to me just over a year ago. Not so perfect any more when I repeatedly want to stab myself in the eye with a pencil.
Wanna know how many letters that I have EXACTLY like that one that showed up in my inbox at 7:51am this morning? (WHO SENDS EMAILS THAT EARLY!?!?! HONESTLY!) Too many. The thing with DC is that you’re in the big leagues. I could compete back up in Boston for internships at the state house. But here? There’s THOUSANDS of college graduates all vying for the same underpaid shit jobs thinking that some day they’re going to run for office. And you know what? I was that way. I wanted to move home in a few years, run for office in Vermont, get my masters. Now? I don’t know what I want to do. i want to write the next great American novel, write neat columns for some great newspaper about life and all it’s ups and downs, I want to be a stay at home mommy blogger some day, I want to have a job that utilizes my degree while at the same time financing my growing JCrew addiction (not cheap I tell you).
*sigh*
Alas, what i really want? Is to be challenged again. I mean there’s something mindless about scheduling conference call after conference call, dealing with expense reports and sending out fed ex packages. The substance in my job that was so vibrant four or five months ago, seems to have gone away and I appear to have become a secretary of sorts making each day kill me a little bit more inside.
Is this my punishment? Also, what i really want to know is who the hell gets these jobs? Not to say that I’m the best employee out there but seriously, what qualities am I lacking that I keep getting rejection after rejection after rejection. Am I jinxed? Someone, please, give me a hint. Because I really think I’m missing something. Though it took me a while to get on my feet, my resume is substantive, I’ve been with my not-going-anywhere-fast job for over a year now…and it’s time to move on. So damnit…SHOW ME THE MONEY! Or give me good interviewing skills? Maybe show me if there are any typos in my cover letter – which I don’t think there are…and I really didn’t think that my interview skills were bad…so yeah, just show me the money. Or a job interview where they love me and offer me the job on the spot.
*sigh* Time to stop bitching and actually do something about it.
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